I practically feel like a Midwesterner today. It’s so cold and I’m even wanting a piece of apple pie with cheddar cheese on it. (I heard they eat this odd combination there.)

I practically feel like an old Grandpa. Just got an email from a young guy who used to work with me. He’s a proud man who’s publishing his first scientific article—in English and Chinese.

I love both feelings so I’ve been gardening, doing all the stuff listed below this week, with a new young, interested fella.

In between the outside and inside task list below, I and you perennial gardeners should be thinking, dreaming, telling stories and sharing. Tell stories that help others, who don’t have time to garden, kindle a connection to the earth. I’ve even found myself telling my young friends, “hey pay attention now, you may not get it today, but this is me, passing down a conservation ethic, a few little tidbits that might serve you well one day, as a hobby or even as a necessary life skill.”

Garden List for Mid-January

1. Cut back perennials. I’m a brute. I just machete down or in some cases take the lawn more and cut back all the dried stuff including perennial species of Mums, Marigolds, Cuphea, Crinum, Salvia, Aster and Aniscanthus.

2. Seeded In. I keep in the truck; lettuce, larkspur, nigella, toadflax, smyrnium and money plant. I just scatter the seed over anywhere I’ve cut back perennials.

3. Pruned shrubs. It still feels a bit early for roses so I stuck to crepe myrtles, eucalyptus and coral bean bush. All of those are things that I’d incorporated into a large scale perennial garden.

4. Planted and divided. My favorite new Camellia handelii got planted in everybodies garden. But perennial wise, I divided Eupatorium, Mums, Verbascina and some unknown Packera that just came into my life on it’s on. I’m kind in love with these Packeras now, as they’re nice perennials for flowers and they have evergreen leaves.

Perennial Preparation List

On the cold days, and most mornings, there’s gardening work to do inside. Lots of people are sipping coffee over seed catalogues. I’m sipping coffee with metal grinds in it as I:

1. Sharpened knives, shovels and machetes.

2. Read some amazing gardening notes someone slipped me; notes from just yards away from our farm, notes made in 1850 by James Henry Hammond, a real experimental gardener.

3. Saw Peter Hatch do a lecture on Monticello Vegetable Garden. One of the best lectures I’ve ever seen. Don’t miss him if he comes your way — he’s selling a new book with exquisite photographs.

4. Wrote the final manuscript and organize hundreds of photographs for my own book. All is due to Timber for publication process in a few weeks. Nothing grand, just stories of my favorite country gardeners intertwined with my manifesto for kinder, gentler gardening.