The New Year always brings me renewed hope for the upcoming growing season. I pour over the latest seed catalogs, wishing that I could order all of them. I envision the largest, fertile, most productive garden that I have ever had. Yes, The New Year is a wonderful time for optimistic gardeners like me, and if you are anything like me, you’ll be itching to get started on your 2012 garden.

Planning your perfect garden for 2012 will take time and effort, but it will be well worth it when your garden begins producing. Take some time now to look over the records you kept from last year and evaluate what worked and what didn't. Since 2011 was full of extremes, with blazing heat and extreme drought, looking back just one year’s worth of records might not be enough for this year's planning. Dig out your records from several past years and review what plants did well, and which didn't. Ask yourself if you and your family liked the vegetable, and if the answer is “no,” don’t bother to plant it again. Start to narrow your wish list you started from pouring over the seed catalogs down to reasonable numbers, but always include a few new plants you’ve never tried before, too.

If you didn’t keep good records last year, one of your New Year’s resolutions should be to keep better records for this year. You don’t need anything too elaborate, even a notebook or ring binder will work. I use a program on my computer, and there are several garden planning sites online you might want to check out.

I hope you enjoy the winter months’ slower pace with fewer garden chores, but get ready for the best gardening year ever!

Over the years I have gathered quite a collection of Christmas cactus (botanically known as Schlumbergera x Buckleyior Zygocactus) plants, including red, hot pink, white, and peach bloom colors. I also have an Easter cactus (Hatiora gaertneri) that usually blooms in the middle of February, instead of at Easter. The Christmas cactus is a hardy plant that should last for years, and it seems to thrive on neglect, so it is a perfect plant for me.

For years my plants did well, putting on new leaves (which are really stems, the plant has adapted to a drier environment by loosing it’s leaves and using its leaf-looking stems for water storage and photosynthesis), but they rarely bloomed. This always bothered me, and I wondered what I was doing wrong that my plants never bloomed. I did a bit of research and found that the plants need either long periods of darkness, with no artificial light at all, or cooler nighttime temperatures in order to form flower buds.

The last few years I have taken all of my houseplants outdoors during the summer, putting them in a shady spot close to the water hose so I can water them frequently. I don’t bring them back into the house until the threat of a hard freeze, which can vary from late October to early November. This year the plants had buds showing even before I brought the plants indoors, and they are now almost bloomed out. I doubt that I will have one bloom left by Christmas!

Since I have had problems with keeping the buds from falling off before they bloom I did a bit of Internet research and found that I am probably watering the plants too much after they start blooming. But maybe I’m not watering enough! The information online has given me both reasons for the buds to fall off before blooming, so I need to decide whether to water them more or less.

You can find Christmas cactus plants easily this time of year. I have even seen them at the grocery store. If you decide to add a Christmas cactus to your houseplant collection, beautiful blooms and an interesting growth habit will reward you after the blooms have faded. With care, which is actually more like neglect, you should have a great houseplant for years to come.

With the harsh summer weather conditions we had in central Oklahoma I wasn’t sure we would see much fall color, but I’ve been surprised and delighted by what I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks. The sumac (Rhus spp.) is beautiful, with colors ranging from dark oranges to bright red; and the willows and native pecans are beginning to show bright yellow. Even the oaks, which usually only turn from green to brown, have delighted me with shades of orange, copper, and dark maroon. I was so enthralled by nature’s beauty I decided to take a mini-foliage tour. What is a mini-foliage tour? No, it’s not just looking at small-leaved plants, it’s taking a few minutes of my day to enjoy the beautiful fall foliage. You can do it, too….

Slow down a bit… Drive the speed limit instead of trying to race the person in front of you for a 10 second lead. If you’re in heavy traffic, keep your eyes on the road, but if yours is the only car on the road, slow down and take a look around.

If your daily drive to work or the store seems routine, adjust it a bit by going a block out of your way and then doubling back, especially if it means you will drive through a neighborhood you haven’t driven through before. Those homeowners have made an effort to landscape their yards, so take a moment to appreciate it.

This is such a colorful time of the year, so take a few minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature’s fall foliage bounty.

This is such a colorful time of the year, so take a few minutes to appreciate the beauty of nature’s fall foliage bounty.