One of my favorite books as a child was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I've always thought of gardens as magical places and have loved tending my garden here in Sussex County.

In Florida, where we lived for 20 years, gardening was more difficult because of the heat. My mother prevailed in those temperatures and created a beautiful garden in her backyard by going out at dawn and working at least a couple of hours each day.

For the most part the difficulties here are created by our wildlife - deer, rabbits, and groundhogs - who also enjoy our gardens. Maggie, our Lab, gets her exercise by running after them. Also a very effective spray (for flowers only) does well in making the flowers less enticing to those who would eat them. We also had an extremely wet summer this year, so while watering was not a problem, the extremely wet soil had some effect on my plantings.

Over the Memorial Day weekend last year, I went to one of my favorite nurseries in the area and bought my yearly supply of "Wave" petunias. I've gotten them for the last three or four years, and they are wonderful! For those of you who may not be familiar with them, they are a petunia that needs very little care other than feeding about once a week. They grow quite rapidly, get thicker as they grow, and need no deheading as the regular petunias do. This time I bought what is called purple but is really a reddish purple color - very vivid. They are a relatively new petunia and growers are working on producing more colors. Check them out.

 A new addition  is a small water garden within my flower garden. I had someone install it and it's working out quite well.  It has a small waterfall so we can hear the sound of it from our family room. Frogs also flocked to the pond and created jungle-like sounds at night.

I read in the newspaper recently that Starbucks is giving out free coffee grounds for use in gardens. In searching the internet for information on coffee grounds, I found that they are wonderful for enriching the soil. My soil needs help, so I'm going to try in both the garden and in pots. (I'll report back when I see what happens.)

For all of you gardeners out there - real, about-to-be, or just dreaming-of someday-being, I've collected some gardening links that I hope you'll find helpful and fun. It's fun visiting and dreaming of spring planting time.