“Librarian’s Shelf” by Robert Trautwein   I’ve begun to daydream about flower gardening. I can’t help myself! It’s probably some primordial urge built into our collective DNA structure. Come the first of February, we instinctively begin to think of growing things. It makes no matter that, when I look out into the backyard, I see drifts of snow and a frozen lake. I ignore all of that and, in my mind, I plot out where to plant my annuals and where to move some of the perennials. Daily, new mail-order gardening catalogs arrive to beguile me with visions of leaf and color. My geraniums, the old standby (when I need a guarantee of color in a particular location) are being wintered-over in the basement of my house. The blossoms of the 40-or-so plants--- salmon, fuchsia, pink, red, and white---look especially vibrant under the banks of florescent grow-lights that keep them healthy. Last spring, in my eagerness to garden, I planted nearly all my geraniums on May 10th. The next morning—supposedly the first “guaranteed” frost-fee date, it froze and I lost 80% of my wintered-over plants. It didn’t bother me nearly as much to lose the newly purchased tomato and pepper plants. But, to lose my beautiful flowering geraniums that I had tended for months, well, that was another matter. This year, I’m waiting until May 17th to plant anything susceptible to frost damage. This year’s “crop” of new flower gardening books has begun to arrive on the “new book” shelf at the Library. “Design in the Garden” by Ursula Barth with photographs by Gary Rogers is an inspiring source for beautiful yet practical garden spaces. “Gardening with Perennials”, from the editors of Horticulture Magazine, offers the reader many examples of perennial flowers that are practical, as well as beautiful, for a Midwest garden. “Perennials for Every Purpose” by Larry Hodgson gives hands-on advice to flower gardeners. He especially likes to use lesser-known flowers to add interest to perennial borders and groupings. Noel Kingsbury’s “Designing Boarders” is another beautifully illustrated book with great diagrams illustrating interesting planting designs to maximize the color and the foliage of the plantings. “The Essential Garden Design Workbook” by Rosemary Alexander is a godsend for those living in a new house on virgin land. By following the author’s guidance, one can design and landscape his lot. The book is also helpful for those with mature gardens that need some renovation. “The Most Beautiful Gardens in the World” by Alain LeToquin is just “too much”. Well, maybe if you have a hundred thousand dollars or so to spare on gardening, the book might be practical, but for the majority of us, the book is just a great coffee table book of absolutely beautiful gardens. The “New Garden Book” by Better Homes and Gardens is a treasure of great photographs and plant profiles. The 600 pages of this book will keep any gardener engrossed for days on end—a pleasant prospect for a cold February evenings. “The Gardener’s Life” by Larry Sheehan explores the passion gardeners have with their creations and why a garden is a place where art and nature combine with technique and toil to create a gardener’s paradise. With all of the new gardening books at the Library and all of the current seed and garden catalogs arriving at my home, it’s very hard to resist the temptation to plant a few packets of seeds under the grow-lights. But, I must remind myself that the geraniums take precedence because they are a sure-thing, whereas the fragile seeds may never germinate.