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I love this time of year, admiring the time and effort that people have put into their bright green lawns and colorful flower beds, germinating vegetable gardens and blooming baskets. But how depressing to drive home and sigh at my own lawn bed of clover. Nurseries and retail garden shops are beginning to look picked over and the July heat puts everyone on alert to make watering a must, but there is still time to jump into the growing season.

Despite my complete lack of landscaping skill, I enjoy flipping through the newly published items that attempt to motivate the laziest of people to color up their yard. Entire publications on pruning, weeding, fertilizing and even the perfect flowerbed arrangements, but I’m still waiting for the short pamphlet style book on what to plant and just leave it to admire for years to come.

Maybe this year I’ve found something close. Karan Junker’s “Gardening with Woodland Plants,” if nothing more is a beautiful encyclopedia of plants. Each entry gives insight on bloom time and coloring n makes everything look so easy. Of course, then you get to the maintenance section. Good news is, in established woodland, weeds will be present. My kind of thinking n sure kept me reading. But what, it’s no use just hacking back the undergrowth? Oh well, at least there is an entire section on the benefits of mulching and even the worst of black thumbs can handle mulching once a year.

This year’s crop of new publications also included Ray Roger’s “Coleus : Rainbow Foliage for Containers and Gardens.” Now, this I can do. Again, the most brilliant photographs to motivate and convince you the talent for this lies within you. Of course, before I picked up the book, I could never have defined a coleus for you, but now I recognize they are the very things I’ve been admiring around my neighborhood for some time. “For many coleus enthusiasts, many respond very well to a minimum of care and provide great satisfaction when given a little something extra.” I found my planting of choice. Of course, as usual, it looks like you need to take some time to select from the right coleus for your color desire, location and level of care, but I think I found a start to my gardening career and it didn’t take more then browsing the 635 section at our Holmen location to discover even I can do it.

Whether you’re a recovering black thumb or a Master Gardner, check-out the La Crosse County Library with locations in Bangor, Campbell, Holmen, Onalaska and West Salem to uncover a new direction to take your garden yet this year or to plan for next year’s season.

Chris McArdle Rojo is the La Crosse County Library System director.