Seasonal affective disorder (also called SAD) is a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year. If you’re like most people with seasonal affective disorder, your symptoms may start in the late fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody.

Don’t be quick to brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the “winter blues” or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own. For those seriously affected, treatment includes light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications.

For the rest of us, taking deliberate steps to keep our mood and motivation steady during winter is enough to see us through to spring. A week with my brother in Florida is not possible this year, so I’m having to devise treatment right here at home.

Seed catalogs are good. I’ve found filling my mind with the possibility of what I might grow in my yard come spring is highly therapeutic.

I am also grateful that January and February are two of Ironton in Bloom’s busiest months. These two months are when we finalize plans for the downtown floral display and sign the completed contract with the growers so that plants will be ready to put in the hanging baskets and big sidewalk pots by May.

We were somewhat disappointed with the 2013 display; therefore, we are working extra hard to find plants for the coming season that are filled with really eye-catching blooms, as well as those hardy enough to endure any kind of weather.

Having chosen pink as the predominant color, our growers have helped us find some spectacular looking varieties with delicious-sounding names such as “Supertunia Raspberry Blast” This particular species promises to bloom profusely and each small, individual blossom shades from white, to pink to almost purple for a really startling effect.

I am so taken with this spring’s selection that I hope I’ll be able to plant them in my own front yard. That is a possibility, since another project we’re planning is our annual fundraising plant sale, conducted downtown each year on the Saturday before Mother’s Day, the same day we plan to plant the downtown flowers. The growers who plant and maintain the baskets and pots will supply the unique plants for this sale. Mark that May 10 date on your calendar now.

Hey, just writing this column has really improved my frame of mind on this snowy, icy morning – I hope it has had some of the same effect on yours.

Onward and Upward.

 

Judy Sanders is a member of Ironton In Bloom. She can be reached at JudyS1944@roadrunner.com.