I am tired to the core. I have always greeted January with circles under my eyes, no spring in my step. My sense of humor is rock bottom.

There is nothing like a month of cold and dark to revive my sense of wonder. How do people who live in temperate climes manage? When do they get their second wind? Without January I would be naught but a husk.

No sitting under a bank of glaring fluorescent for me. The only lights on are those to read by. Novels at that.

As we move deeper into this wondrous month I will refocus my reading energy to gardening books. I do have my favorites and the odd thing is that I have yet to read one of them all the way through.

Gardening is, to my way of thinking, all about doing. Action. I have been trying to cultivate contemplation into my gardening activities. No luck. I just get out there and garden. Right now, at this very moment, I am ever so glad to not be gardening. I have no yearning to garden year-round.

This is the time of year that I really love to field gardening questions. It all seems so very possible. I have a dear friend who is toying with the idea of composting. I can tell that she thinks it is way more work than she is willing to address. She works full time and is really not interested in complicating her life. But she is suffering from tomato envy. So she is asking about how to go about the whole process. I threw myself into the whole "how-to-build-a-compost-pile" mode that I love to expound on. I saw her eyes glaze over. I will need to try a different tack to win her over.

I have been writing this column for 14 years and that has been my focus: winning you over. I want you all to garden. On whatever scale you can handle. Be it a deck with containers in which you successfully grow salad greens and peas, or raised beds that can hold all the vegetables you will need to see you through to the next growing season.

We may have a short growing season but not an impossible season. If you have arrived in Homer from somewhere else (as so many of us have) you may be thinking that you will never be able to garden again. Not true, you will just need to adjust your thinking. Maybe you will have to work a little harder at it. But garden you can and garden you will.

Get yourself to the Homer Public Library on Pioneer Avenue. They have a selection of gardening books that is both excellent and ridiculous. The excellent being those that are pertinent to our location and the ridiculous being those that have nothing to do with us but just may inspire you to action.

Now is an excellent time to join the Homer Garden Club. This worthy organization in going on its 20th year of bringing information to Homer gardeners. The membership fee covers monthly programs and a newsletter.

This is the place to meet like-minded people and glean gardening knowledge from those who have been gardening in Homer for years and years. Nothing like picking the brains of your neighbors.

This is also good time to read the magazine published by Taunton Press, "Fine Gardening." You can learn so much from this one.

I also have rediscovered Rodale's "Organic Gardening." I subscribed to this for years but it fell out of favor with me when it started to look and read like a comic book. All is back on track (in my opinion) and I have been pleased with the information packed articles. I think both of these magazines are available at the library. That way you can get a good look at them before you subscribe.

Use January to revitalize your whole being. Use it to ski the trails, walk the beach, listen to your children (no matter what their age is), go to the foreign film on Fridays, try new recipes, get together with old friends.

Live your life in the deep, dark, cold quiet of January and be the better for it.