January 13
I feel I m in need of some kind of winter distraction, so today I'm planning to buy more seeds. However, before I go to the store, I must prepare carefully and make up a list of all the plants I've been lusting after. I also have to settle on a fixed amount to spend, although I know from experience it will be only a small percentage of what I actually spend.

I go through this every year and, as usual, when I get to the store the seeds I want aren't on the shelf, and instead I come home laden with stuff that will germinate prolifically and put a strain on my plant room s resources.

And of course, I will discover an overpriced packet of something rare and exotic that I can't resist buying, a packet that contains just one viable seed in a thousand that I ll have to pamper like the last emperor until the end of summer. That happened last year, and on the day when it finally bloomed the neighbour s cat showed up to anoint it.

January 14
As the tattered remnants of three seasons are calmed by the first snowfall, stillness comes to the garden. No shocks of colour craving attention, no heroic blossoms competing for glory. The battle is over. The veil of green is now a shroud of white as shrubs and trees are gently sculpted into ghostly memories. Peace falls silently as the garden rests.

And the mad gardener rests too, at least until the snowplough returns. It s snowed so much that all I can see in the backyard is the top of the rusty swing-set and the big hump of the compost pile. I hope Shirl calls soon.

January 28
Freezing rain is in the forecast for today. Freezing rain, if it isn't excessive, is my favourite winter garden effect; too much and it's a disaster. It can bring down power lines, destroy whole forests, and put half the posties in town in hospital.

But just a little coating on trees and shrubs, magic. I can stare at it for hours. I actually did that one morning when I went out to take a closer look at a tree after waking to a particularly impressive display.

I set one foot on the sidewalk, then with a whoosh and an aaaaaaaaarrrg, I made it down the front yard to my tree in .003 seconds. There I lay, gazing up at the glorious effect created by the ice that clung to the twigs and branches above me.

I was still lying there when I heard another whoosh and another aaaaaaarg and the postie joined me. See that one small branch on the left, I said. It looks like an angel in ice. 
Yes, she replied, it s lovely, but you really should spread a little sand on your sidewalk, you know here's your mail.

There's a legend buried somewhere in the pages of my seed catalogue, but I can't seem to find it, and I swear they've changed some of the symbols since last year. I think I have most of them figured out the watering can is obvious but I m not sure if the happy face with the big nose means the plant is fragrant 
or it causes hay fever.

March 15
The weather has finally warmed up and the snow is disappearing fast. I can see parts of my garden again, and it's surprisingly colourful. I spent an hour last night picking up garbage from the front yard: the detritus of winter candy wrappers, bits of old newspaper, and the worst offende, flyers. 

I swear the Popsicle-sucking kid that delivers them stands at the windward end of the street and dumps the whole pile. I think he does it to spite me because of the big sign I have on my mailbox that says, Thank you for not delivering junk mail. Of course, he ignored it until I added the fine print on the bottom, which 
is a little more specific as to what he should do with the stuff.

May 25
My beans are up and running, and so am I. I should be wearing running shoes instead of garden boots because it really is like a race. This has been an amazing spring so far. The early bloomers are flowering so fast I barely have time to admire them before they re done and drooping. All day long, I'm pushing plants in with one hand and pulling weeds out with the other. It's plant, plant, plant, and weed, weed, weed. 

May 26  I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I m three-quarters finished planting (first phase) and they're forecasting a low of three for tonight, which is too close to frost for my liking. I can either cover things up or risk disaster.

I go through this every year and it is so tedious. It always happens after I've planted so much stuff that I don t have enough pots and pails to protect everything, so I have to use what I can find tarps, burlap, sheets, and blankets. 

Of course, then the diblets complain because they're cold in bed. It is such a hassle, especially since I don t recall a late May frost ever being severe enough to cause much harm.

The twenty-fourth is supposed to be my frost-free date, yet the last three years have seen frost warnings in June. Does this mean I should wait until July to be safe? I m beginning to wonder if my calendar is off because fall seems to arrive later too. It's as though all the seasons are sliding forward, except for Christmas, which is sliding backwards into Halloween.

I think this all started when people began putting up their Christmas lights in August. They've messed up the sequence, and now Mother Nature is looking at her watch and giving it a good shake. I just hope she doesn't shake it too hard.

June 5
My peonies are about to pop their buds, and if everything follows the usual course of events, it will pour with rain the moment they open and turn the blooms into big blobs of melting ice cream (raspberry). 

It is so disappointing, but then my peonies have always disappointed me. I only have two a pink one and a pink one that was supposed to be a white one. I planted the pink one that was supposed to be a white one in my white bed two years ago. 

It flowered beautifully, except it wasn t white; not that it made much difference. Everything in my white bed is supposed to be white, but so far every white plant I ve put in there has decided to be any colour it feels like. I have white campion (rose), white lupines (yellow), white geraniums (pink), white balloon flower (blue), white phlox (pinkish), and white yucca, which is guaranteed to be white, but it hasn t flowered yet. I do have a lovely white delphinium, but I planted it on the other side of the yard.

So many times I ve ended up with such a completely different coloured plant from what I thought I'd planted that I'm beginning to wonder if someone walks ahead of me at the garden centre, changing all the tags. Still, I'm not going to change the white bed because, surprisingly, this is the first time in my life I've managed to create something that looks perfect until the rain bashes down the peony.

September 20
Brrr! Frost last night, which is appropriate as the first day of fall arrives tomorrow. I was hoping we d get a good one since everything is dying of thirst anyhow put things out of their misery, kind of.

Fall has that effect on me; it's been a long summer and I'm ready for a change. Besides, I m tired of eating tomatoes. Hard to believe that only a few months ago I couldn t wait for the first one to ripen. Now, even though the leaves are drying up and falling off, the fruit are hanging on, mocking me. The plants look like pathetic little Christmas trees, something I don t want to think about, at least until the pumpkins are piled on the compost heap. 

This is the time every year when I wish I had a shredder to mulch all the garden waste. I've tried to build my own in the past, so far without much success. Maybe I'll pull out the plans and try again.

November 5
Brrrr. Ice on the pond yesterday morning. It s not that I didn't know it was coming, or that it happens every year around the same time'sometimes sooner, and I know there are colder places, but it's the shock, the sudden harshness of the stark reality that this is IT.

All life in the garden has been snuffed out, including the nasturtium, which truly redeemed itself by clinging on to the bitter end. Apart from a couple of roses and my one aster, it was the only thing left in the garden with a bloom on it. Now it hangs limply from the pergola, the pallor of death in its foliage.

After all the horrible things I said about it during the summer, I feel its loss most poignantly. Today, I shall tenderly unfurl its winding stems, and gently unearth its roots, before carrying it reverently to the end of the yard, where I shall lay it to rest on the compost heap. Yup, summer is definitely over.

November 11
Before I totally close things up for winter I must do a quick inventory of all the objet trouve and random bits of junk that I've picked up over the years. This is the stuff that makes my garden my garden. I keep most of it on display, although some things are placed in such a manner as to appear unobtrusive. There are one or two items I should throw out but I haven t the heart, so they get shoved out of the way behind a shrub for me to discover serendipitously when I'm crawling about weeding.

This is only a partial list:

• Two plastic bunnies purchased as gifts by two small boys. 
• A huge chunk of root from an ancient cedar tree, a remnant of the giants that once grew around here.
• Three nifty glass insulators from an old telephone post on my late Grandfather-in-law's farm. I thought they might be useful in case he tries to reach us. 
• A collection of old galvanized pails that I found in the bush and use as planters. Someone said they were maple syrup pails. 
• One concrete garden gnome that stands beneath the crab apple, a gift from someone special who believes no garden is complete without one. 
• A handful of railroad nails with dates on the heads. I found them along a stretch of disused track where I used to walk a dog I knew, many years ago. 
• A chunk of rock that reveals a face when viewed from a certain angle. I call him 
• Albert, the garden guide, after my old dad.
• And Boris of course. 

  And that's about it. Oh, there are lots of other bits and pieces, but these are the ones that bring back memories, and always will. There is much we should never forget . . . In Flanders fields the poppies blow . . .