Icy winter winds and frosty mornings dragging you down? For gardeners, one sure way to banish the cold season blahs is to page through seed and plant catalogs. It's hard to be blue when you're dreaming of a rainbow of blooms, a patch of succulent veggies, a garden of fragrant herbs.

So, even though it's way too early to break out the shovels and the gardening gloves, it's the perfect time to relax in your most comfortable easy chair with a stack of garden catalogs. Which is why January's been proclaimed National Mailorder Gardening Month by the Mailorder Gardening Association.

If you're a regular mail-order customer, gardening catalogs have been showing up in your mailbox since December, some even earlier. If not, there's always the Web. The pages are a little harder to dogear, but they're just as colorful, informative and some sites will even help you lay out your springtime garden.

To get the most from gardening catalogs and Web sites this season, here's some advice from the Mailorder Gardening Association:

* Use garden catalogs as planning tools for your spring garden. Flip through a few catalogs to see what kinds of new plants and products are being offered this year.

* Have plenty of brightly colored sticky notes on hand. Mark the plants, seeds, pre-planned gardens, tools and garden accessories that you're interested in with them.

* Go back through the catalogs and review everything you've flagged with a sticky note. Make a list of all of the plants and products that you simply must have.

* Place your orders early. The most popular seeds, plants, and new products often sell out quickly. Seeds will usually be shipped early in the season to give you the option of starting them indoors. Plants will be shipped when it's safe to plant them outdoors based on your zip code.

* Keep a list of all the orders you've placed so you can track the deliveries as they come in.

* File the catalogs in a safe place so you can refer to them later, and you can easily contact each catalog company with questions about your purchases. Remember, too, that most garden catalogs and Web sites have helpful gardening experts that you can contact to get additional gardening information and advice.

For more information about mail order gardening -- including a list of mail order gardening catalogs and Web sites, a glossary of gardening terms, smart shopper tips, and information about the winners of the annual Green Thumb Awards -- visit the MGA's Web site at www.mailordergardening.com.