check out this 9-month-old baby’s 4-hour play time smooshed into two minutes of video.

Whether you are a Baby Boomer, disabled or just plain lazy, these are bleak times for gardeners here in Zone 5. (Tonight, it’s minus 6 degrees fahrenheit with a predicted wind chill of around minus 20)

For inspiration and reminders that winter WILL end, we’ve been turning to Carol, a Zone 5 gardener from Indiana who writes May Dreams Gardens, a Web site for people who dream of “the days in May when the sun is warm, the skies are blue, the grass is green and the garden is all new again.”

Carol, who just made application to the Society of Gardeners Age 50 and Over, is the founder, president and secretary of the Society for the Preservation and Propagation of Old-Time Gardening Wisdom, Lore, and Superstition (SPPOTGWLS or “the Society”).

The Gimpy Girls follow Carol on Twitter where she is known as Indy Gardener. And if you need some bucking up from winter, Carol can do it for you.

In this post, Carol gives us the four phases of making it to Spring: “Putting Away, Settling In, Chilling Out and Surviving It” - the phase we are in right now! And here, she reminds us sweetly, yet powerfully, of what is just two months down the road.

She knows a “wicked lot” about gardening inside and out, and if you are having trouble hanging on to May dreams, bookmark her or stick her in your Google Reader as we have. She’ll get your gardening dreams into shape and back on track.

These old girls know what friendship is all about!

(via Dooce)

Our friend Tom Lowy of Philadelphia maintains there’s only one way to store T-shirts - carefully roll each one up and stack them together in a drawer.

It’s quick, space efficient and, surprisingly, they come out fairly wrinkle free. And if you exercise as much as Tom, and go through T-shirts as quickly as Tom, it’s definitely the way to go.

If, however, you like taking better care of your shirts than Tom, here’s three other ways to fold them by buying something, making something or just using your pinkies.

The Flip-Fold comes in several sizes, is sturdy and would be easy to use if you have limited coordination and strength.

If you’re crafty, here’s a do-it-yourself flip fold made from cardboard, and if you’re fingers are nimble, here’s the way to fold it yourself using just your pinkies.

Andrew Wyeth has died at his home in Chadds Ford, Pa., at the age of 91.

Our friend Mindy Shrum Alexander was influenced by Wyeth and his Christina’s World when she wrote this post for us about Gimpy Garden Pillows.

While Mindy and millions of others saw Christina’s World as a iconic portrait, it turns out Wyeth said he thought of it as a “complete flat tire” when he originally sent it off to the Macbeth Gallery in Manhattan in 1948. The Museum of Modern Art bought it for $1,800.

In Wyeth’s obituary, The New York Times had this to say about Christina’s World.

“Wyeth had seen Christina Olson dragging herself across a Maine field. To him she was a model of dignity who preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone. It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.

“Oftentimes people will like a picture I paint because it’s maybe the sun hitting on the side of a window and they can enjoy it purely for itself,” Wyeth once said. “It reminds them of some afternoon.

“But for me, behind that picture could be a night of moonlight when I’ve been in some house in Maine, a night of some terrible tension, or I had this strange mood. Maybe it was Halloween. It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side.”

This hefty 382-page book has plenty of recipes, but we like it best for the hundreds of glorious photos of Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, New York Times write Mark Bittman and Spanish actress Claudia Bassols.

The photos show an ultimate road trip between four friends who eat and laugh their way through the exquisite culinary of Spain — much of it cooked in rustic sheds and over open grills in the countryside.

We’ll send the winner the book AND the DVDs this foursome did about their trip for Public Television. To enter a random drawing for the book and DVDs, leave your comment on this post. Deadline to enter is Jan. 22, 2009. (Because of postage costs, we ship only to contestants in North America. Sorry Liechtenstein.)

Our Winner: Linda Eskin. Congratulations Linda!