My 8 to 5 job is busier now than it was for the past 6 months. I just completed two large design projects (rewarded myself with a new plant, lemon balm, on sale for $3.00), and there's lots more on the schedule. So, allocating daylight hours to hobbies such as gardening, and finding time to write and post the blog/newsletter, has gotten trickier to manage. But I'm making it work.

I also enjoy keeping up with a variety of online accounts as part of my overall gardening project, and don't want to neglect any, although I've had to choose which to concentrate on. Twitter gets the most attention, but I recently checked back in on Pinterest, and am hoping to post on that platform more often this year. I spent some time there last week, looking at collections of antique garden images. What an appealing realm to escape to: ornately illustrated seed catalogs, old photos of estates and cottage gardens, vintage containers and wrought iron benches...

Bygone ages have their charm, but perusing these images led me back to appreciating, in contrast, the advancements of our interconnected present time, where a gardener in New Zealand can instantly share anecdotes, advice, and photos with me in California and others in Europe or Asia. We could also email gardening books, or recommend a wise product purchase on Amazon! What a wonderful world.

I figure that gardening is a perfect passion for introverts. We can spend a satisfying amount of “alone time” in our gardens, and then find a sense of community by interacting with others online, when we're so inclined.

In my own, non-digital garden reality, it's the time of year that moss tries to take over various surfaces in the yard. I let it do its thing on the lawn, knowing that I might need to re-seed grass in the mossy areas later this year, but at least it's a vibrant green groundcover until it dies out in a few months. I do need to remove moss from the pavement around my potted plants along the pathway. The best method I've found so far is to pressure-wash the asphalt, and then use a barbecue grill wire scrubbing brush to get the rest off.

Winter's a fine time in the garden in other aspects: for instance, camellias and rosemary are blooming beautifully, many weeds are dormant, and there are very few insects. Squirrels are the main (minor) nuisance at the moment: they're digging holes all over the place to bury nuts. I've protected my lettuce and snap pea planter boxes with netting, but the lawn and smaller containers are susceptible to digging. Squirrels are otherwise fun to have around; I love watching them scamper up and down the trees, twitching their fluffy tails, and eating seeds from our birdfeeders.