Happy New Year to you and your family! I can't believe that Christmas has come and gone and it is 2007. I'm not sure why, but as soon as I hit the new year I feel like Spring is just around the corner and I have to start planning my garden and get organized for a new year. Even though Spring is still a few months away there is no harm in starting to plan your garden now. This year I have a few things I want to accomplish in my backyard:Finish filling in the hole and plant grass over the area I uncovered and removed four yards of concrete last year

• Improve the drainage in our backyard, it's pretty wet, especially in the Spring
• Get rid of all of the moss and have a nice green lawn, living on the west coast we get a lot of rain that moss really loves
• Re-install the drip irrigation system to the flower pots on our deck, this worked really well last year
• Install soaker hoses or some form of irrigation to garden in the back
• Get the garden shed cleaned up and organized
• Start planning the new deck and garden space

With the Christmas break I finally had some time to clean up the mess from the last month of storms.  We back onto a creek and a piece of property with some very large trees including cedar and cotton woods. With the rain, snow and high winds it brought down a lot of big branches, cedar boughs and leaves. It took me a few days but I know have every thing cleaned up. Now we are back to rain and high winds. The last thing I need to do now is clean out the gutters. We have a nice waterfall off of the back gutter because the drain is plugged in a large cedar bough and some leaves. Hopefully, I can get to this chore this week once the rain stops.