Although I still go out every day to see if anything has changed (and to make sure the squirrels haven't found the anemones), there just isn't a whole lot going on. Thank goodness, then, for garden books.

Armchair gardening in the winter months is one of life's great pleasures. All you need is a comfy chair and the right book. Fortunately, gardeners are a verbose bunch. Throughout the history of plant cultivation, they have felt compelled to document their knowledge, experiments, joys, triumphs, and yes, even dismal failures. While it all begins with Pliny in early first millennium, I tend to read more widely among the English gardeners whose books are filled with lush portrayals of perennial borders in their prime and tart warnings to those who would sow seeds without properly preparing the soil.

Garden books, like gardens themselves, tend to cover a wide spectrum. There are practical guides, appreciations, histories, as well as the grand photo-filled coffee table varieties. Whatever your taste or interest, there's a garden book for you. Many publishers have also reissued some of the old classics, making available generations of wisdom and lore. One of my favorite sources of garden books is used bookstores where long out-of-print garden guides can often be found for a song. I've managed to pick up such classics as Xenia Fields Book of Garden Flowers (Hamlyn, 1976) and Organic Flower Gardening by Catharine Osgood Foster (Rodale Press, 1971) for a dollar apiece.

As anyone knows, gardeners are an opinionated and fanatical crew, dedicated to the proposition that next year's garden will be even better. This passion tends to spill over into books by gardeners, making them endlessly interesting. A good garden book is apt to comprise a compendium of everything the author knows about the subject. For instance, Foster's "Organic Flower Gardening" was published when she was 70 years old. A lifetime of gardening experience is in her book, for the rest of us to build on.

Another such book of gardener's wisdom is Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden (Bullbrier, 1985) first published in 1894, the year she died. Celia was the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, and lived with her children on the Isles of Shoals, 6 miles off the coast of New Hampshire. I was initially drawn to this book because my ancestors lived there as well, when they first came over from England in 1640. But "An Island Garden" would be interesting to any gardener. Her account of her patch of ground is both poetic and practical, with much advice on manuring and slug control amongst sililoquies on poppies and the miracle of the seed. To top it off, there are numerous illustrations painted by the American impressionist Childe Hassam.