By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Ten or 15 years ago I started a personal natural history calendar designed to put me more in tune with the garden’s natural cycles.

I did it because I was noticing odd coincidences that seemed worth recording. For example, after a couple of February days in the high 50’s or low 60’s, I always got my first mosquito bite of the season. Then, within 48 hours, I’d hear the first frogs of the year. Two weeks further on, I’d see my lawn starting to look shaggy, and it would remind me that new grass growth signaled the time to overseed bare spots in the lawn.

As the years passed, the list became more sophisticated (and more useful).

I now divide each month into three 10-day parts: early, mid, and late. And I subdivide it into flora and fauna. So if you look at my calendar for late February, you’ll see reports on first blooms of Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ (it’s 10 weeks late because it grows in the shade), Corylopsis spicata, Forsythia intermedia, Hamamelis mollis, the first daffodils, Indian plum, and too many more to mention. Along with this, I’ve recorded a huge number of bird sightings, mentions of river otters and coyotes I cross paths with, and first frog eggs in a nearby pond.

I’ve become better attuned to long cycles (years between events) too: things like tent caterpillar infestations on alders and scale explosions on dogwoods, both of which come every few years, and the corrective population booms of wasps and ichneumons that follow.

I do all this on a Filemaker Pro database, but it would be nearly as easy in a word processing file. It’s fast, and keeps me closer to my garden.