Happy New Year, everybody!

It’s so strange that I’m not feeling the new year vibe. Is anyone feeling “meh” about the new year? I remember feeling “opportunities abound” at the start of 2025. Perhaps, the days and years are starting to meld together. Or perhaps I’m just counting down the days when I’m back to work because this “break” has lasted a little too long for my liking.

I spent yesterday doing something I promised to not do until after the new year – seed starting. I couldn’t help myself. I was bored out of my mind and perennial seeds do take forever to germinate, so why not? I sowed a tray of hardy vegetables like purple bok choy, swiss chard, kale, and a tray of perennial flowers and herbs. I think the veggies should germinate in around a week and perennials might take 2-3 weeks to sprout.

I try to start perennials from seeds each year and I seem to fail every year. It’ll either not germinate or will die suddenly. If my success rate this year doesn’t improve, I think I’ll just give up and go buy some transplants.

What happened in December?

I’ll do a recap of 2025 in a later post but this post will be focused on the month of December.

This has been an unusually warm December. The raised beds remained uncovered for most of the month, allowing the vegetables to bask in the sun and grow in the comfortable 60-degree-Fahrenheit temperature. The calendulas and alyssum continued to bloom even as the day-length dipped to only 9 hours and 15 minutes.

It wasn’t until the day after Christmas that the weather took a turn, causing to to had to add an additional frost cloth inside the nursery plastic to give the plants a few extra degrees of protection in the frigid overnight temperatures. Because I’m a numbers person and love any type of numerical data, I installed some outdoor sensor this week to help me monitor the temperature and humidity fluctuations in the covered beds. Let me tell you, the data has been very interesting and surprising.

I also completed the installation of 2 rain collection systems in the backyard in early December. It might had been one of the hardest projects I’ve done so far. The hardest part was installing the diverters because I had to saw the gutter downspout in order to install the diverter. Once that’s installed, it was a matter of connecting the diverter to the barrel. I live in one of the driest states in the lower 48, so every drop of water I can save from the sky is a drop of water I don’t have to get from the faucet.

What’s in store for January?

Not much, I’m afraid. January and February have always been the boring months of the year. The weather is unpredictable. The days are cold and wet. If there’s anywhere worth a visit, it will be indoors and I can’t think of anywhere exciting indoors around these parts.

Unlike 2025, there’s not many big garden projects in 2026. The only project I can think of would be redoing the PVC trellises in the back garden and create a wire trellis along the back fence. This trellis will be for the grape vines that I’m going to plant in April. This project will need to wait until March when the ground has thawed. For January, though, I might be spending plenty of time in my garage, watching the seeds grow day after day while possibly will be starting the next batch of seeds in the middle or late January.