My garden is wearing her winter structure already. Harder angles, the stick shapes of shrubs like my red twig dogwoods. Giant pussy willow boughs naked of leaves and catkins bobbing when a breeze blows. Looking up, the trees and their limb structure look like giant arms outstretched, and everywhere are squirrels’ nests (and even a squirrel box for our Eastern Flying Squirrels!)

Our annual tree work is done and the flower beds are resting comfortably under piles of oak leaves. I pruned the rose bushes a few weeks back, and planted my bulbs. I still spray for deer every few weeks, however.

Now as we enjoy the remainder of the Christmas season and are headed towards New Year’s Eve, I have already started the countdown to spring and wondering what the garden will look like because every year as my garden matures, it’s a little different.

As we head further into winter months, my inner gardener always gets twitchy. It’s hard to dig in the dirt when the ground is frozen, after all.

So how do I bide my gardening time until it’s spring? Gardening and seed catalogs and gardening books.

This winter’s reading list for books will be as follows:

• Down To Earth by Monty Don
• The Complete Gardener by Monty Don
• The New Shade Garden by Ken Druse

Read a review of Down to Earth HERE. You can buy new and used copies on Amazon and eBay.

The Complete Gardener has been out quite a few years now. My edition is 2003. But it is worth the purchase. My copy came from eBay and a British book seller. Also available through many sources including Amazon.

The New Shade Garden by Ken Druse first came out in 2016. I had to do a bit of a search to track down a copy of this book. It’s a little pricey too. But it is an awesome book thus far. The book has suggested plant lists which I love. The author, Ken Druse, also has a website which is terrific.

Anyway, these are the books I am delving into while I wait for spring.

Thanks for stopping by.