I use a spiral bound notebook, with a pen attached with a length of cord. The information is written in my own code/shorthand, along with planting maps of individual beds (garden is a collection of raised beds). The date goes left of the margin. I record any gardening activity I may wish to remember, what is planted where, rainfall, unusual weather trends, and nature observations of interest (e.g., "first Japanese beetles arrive.") I do a "note to self" section each year, which I keep on the last pages of the notebook. Here I record action points that I want to remember next season, e.g., grow more or less of this or that, this variety was terrible and that variety was spectacular, start the eggplants sooner, etc. I find it very helpful to distill these points out from the main narrative pages and record them separately as the season progresses and while I am thinking of them - then I have the "lessons" of that season compiled in a neat list, without having to wade through the main pages searching for them. In my experience my note taking is much more reliable and complete if the notebook is always in a special spot in the garden (once we start growing outside, of course). Currently that means my notebook lives in the glove box of my golf cart, since I always take the golf cart to the garden (being far from the house). In gardens past it has meant leaving it in a special spot in the garden shed, or in one garden with no building, installing a mailbox in the garden to keep the journal in.

Kitty, I am so sorry that you lost your little bunny. It is so hard to give up on them. This has been a very difficult summer for our animals. Horrendously hot and so very dry....we are way behind on rainfall. The hot spell was off and on (seemed mostly on) for July and most of August with 108 being the highest temp we reached. The past week has finally seen a bit of a turnaround. We have had three spates of rain with a total accumulation of about three inches. Things have turned green again. We lost four of my little grey Japanese bantams one day despite regular water changes and a box fan blowing on them. Then, the youngest of our three peacock chicks just faded away. The other two are doing great, though, and I just had to giggle when I saw one of them "courting" the other one. Wish I could have gotten a picture. He was draggging his wings, with his tiny little tail stuck straight into the air while he was slowly circling the other chick. He was just about a month old so they do learn early in life. On August 19th the last of our summer's guests left for home so we have been trying to readjust our lives a bit. The first arrived the second week of June and we did not have a dull moment for two whole months. Three sets from Florida and finally, my son & family from North Carolina. While they were here we did some house searching for them and his wife did some job interviews. They are planning to move here in November. We did find an old farm house for them to rent about six miles from us so they will have a place to land until they get their house built. Great fun. I fell late in July and fractured my right wrist. Am a bit osteoporotic and the break was not cleanly across the bones but caused some splitting. It has been the most painful break of my life. And, having a cast on my right arm (am right handed, of course) during this 100+ degree weather has truly been something I do not want to repeat. Even with the guineas working tirelessly we have had a bumper crop of teensy-tiny, little ticks this summer. Just out in the yard a half an hour today and got two on me. Looks like we will wait until after frost to finish cutting the winter's wood supply to avoid the ticks as much as possible. Am sending in reinforcements! We just turned twenty lavender and pearl guineas out of their pen for the first time today. Here's hoping they can find the little blood suckers! My young americaunas will be the next of our little group to be "freed". We got ten little pullets in May that look fully grown now. Funny looking girls, with those fuzzy faces. Jude, would give a bunch to be able to pick blackberries with you. Ours burnt up on the vines before they got a chance to ripen. Here's hoping for next year. Sure good to catch up with you all again. More later!

Hello, All: I use the Neil Sperry gardening calendar and have done for 2 decades. Neil is an A&M-trained horticulturist who has had a radio program for 30+ years in the DFW Meteroplex and now has a monthly newsletter for all of Texas as well as the calendars and magazines. He's our Texas guru - the university research antithesis of the local, but also popular organic 'Dirt Doctor'. The calendars have a square for each day where I pencil in the temps and rain or whatever and the item(s) I'm focusing on that day. Of course, on busy gardening days I have to use a sort of shorthand, and for detailed analysis, I use a writing tablet of some sort and I save those. I like to go back years later and read one of my monthly reports from a garden walk-around. When I do that, I just jot down everything that occurs to me as I walk whether it's an observation of a plant or a note to myself to do better next time. What I really like about using the garden calender is that I can pick up a calendar for whatever year I want to refer to and turn to that month and see what was happening and compare it to what's happening in the current year. I can see when the ice storms hit and what damage was done and I can see how long a drought lasted and what I did about it. I can see when I sprayed for nutgrass and when it's time to spray again or when I started using Ornamec on the bermuda that crept into the liriope. I note when I took a tree out and what difference it made and how well the plants did with more sun or whether I had to rearrange the plants or replace them. I make a note of what kind of mulch I use and when I order bulk compost and how much. I can look back and remind myself what varieties I tried and when I lost them. : ( My calendars turn out to be kind of a table like Kay uses, but w/o as much detail and organized by month and day instead of location in the garden. I started getting the calendars because they came with my N.S. Texas Gardens magazine subscription, but as years went by, the calendars have come to mean much more to me than the magazine. I now want more detailed info than I can get in the magazine, and it's so easy to locate it online. I keep intending to punch holes in the calendars and put them in a binder and make a kind of book. (They're all the same size so this would be possible.) I've saved a couple of oversized binders for this, but I never can decide if I want to order the book by month or by year. As soon as I decide that I want to order my book by months (like having chapters of Januarys or Februarys, etc.) so I can flip through and see what happened in all years in the winter or summer or spring, I then realize that I really like being able to grab a calendar and see the progress of the garden from month to month for that particular year. Oh well. At the bottom of each month of calendar squares, Neil lists must-do garden tasks for particular areas of Texas as well as cautions and other reminders. This is not so valuable now that I've grown as a gardener and don't need the reminders. Now I'd rather have more space to write. But all in all, I'm really glad I have the calendars and have kept records. Here's the location of the calendars - I put the info in as a link, but haven't done that before and don't know if I'm doing it right. http://www.neilsperry.com/store/neil-sperrys-texas-gardening-calendar/neil-sperrys-2012-texas-gardening-calendar.html I've enjoyed learning what you all do or don't do. It probably reflects our various personalities and the business of our lives, and I feel I know you a little better. Lou Here is a link that might be useful: Neil Sperry's Texas Gardening Calendar

I keep daily weather logs because I'm a weather nut. In my weather logs, I make brief garden entries. I used to keep a specific garden journal but after decades of gardening I decided my garden was a place of enjoyment, relaxation, & peace. It was not a science experiement. Maintaining detailed records became a chore & when I got behind...I felt somehow guilty. Realized I was making work out of pleasure so I stopped. I do maintain a list of everything that's planted in the gardens & note if something dies. And, that's more for if/when we sell the property since our gardens & my botanical listings sold our last home before it hit MLS. Keeping track of the weather has been of enormous help to me in my gardens. I've learned that my perceptions of what the weather has been are almost always wrong. Having actual weather facts has resulted in much positive shuffling of plants in my gardens. For example, this year I don't think my lilac met its dormancy requirement explaining the ridiculously poor bloom. If it happens again next year, I'll probably give up on lilacs. Global warming is very evident in my shoreline garden. I'm 'sperimenting with new hydrangea varieties because now even variegated ones are blooming for me. But, no journal of exact bloom dates, diseases, critters, etc. Tricia