It’s August, and summer is very much still in full swing here in New York City. But despite the chirping birds and blazing sun and ice cream trucks on every corner, I can’t help but think about…January! Call me crazy, but I’m kind of excited for winter this year. That’s not to say that once the snow starts falling and my usually pleasant (if muggy) walk to work becomes a miserable, wet slog I won’t wish I were in a hammock on a tropical island somewhere; no, I’ll definitely be wishing that. Still, there is something quite pleasant about the first month of the year, and I’m not talking about resolutions. I’m talking about calendars.

This (well, next) year’s crop of Workman calendars is pretty epic. There are of course the old standbys, such as the 365 Cats and 365 Dogs Page-a-Day Calendars, two of our most popular titles. And there’s always space on the wall for the gorgeous 1,000 Places to See Before You Die Wall Calendar. But I’d like to take this time to introduce some titles you’ve never seen before. Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the New Workman Calendars for 2012!

LEGO: The Calendar
If you were ever a kid, you’ve probably played with LEGO bricks at some point in your life—if not every day for 15 years (and beyond). Now you can bring your obsession out into the open with LEGO: The Calendar, a year-long celebration of all things LEGO. Twelve images of spectacular LEGO constructions are accompanied by fun facts about LEGO history and lore. Plus, enter your own construction in the LEGO Calendar Contest and let your creation grace the walls of LEGO enthusiasts the world over!

Peel It. Design It. Birds in Flight and Tropical Paradise
In the category of Most Innovative Calendars I’d like to nominate the Peel It. Design It. series. Decorate your home or office space with beautiful bird- or tropical-themed wall art that also helps you keep track of the days. The decals will stick to your wall or any hard, clean surface, and they won’t leave a mark, so you can move them around during the year as your design sensibilities evolve.

Gallery Calendars: Birds and Flowers
Joining the line of beautiful Page-a-Day Gallery Calendars are two new nature-inspired titles: Birds and Flowers.  Thanks to the brilliant colors and exquisite detail of the exceptional photographs, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into a natural park with either one of these galleries on your desk.

Nudes Having Fun
You know Nuns Having Fun—now here’s Nudes Having Fun! That’s right: twelve (tasteful) black-and-white images of people having a good time without letting clothes get in the way. There’s a nude sing-along, naked mountain climbers, even a wedding in the buff. Cheeky (ha!) and adorable.

Daily Muse: Writer’s Diary
Everyone knows an aspiring writer (the novel’s almost done, I swear!), and even someone who’s quit his day job to hone his craft needs to keep track of his appointments. Give the budding novelist in your life the portable Writer’s Diary and watch him be encouraged and inspired by quotations from and images of his favorite authors.

Unlikely Friendships
And last but certainly not least, there’s the Unlikely Friendships calendar, based on the New York Times best-selling book by Jennifer S. Holland. Featuring twelve remarkable stories about inter-species camaraderie, this calendar is guaranteed to make you go “aww!” all year long.

Happy New Year!

I way a day camper, through and through, so it’s not a given that I would be nostalgic for the color wars and bed checks depicted in Laurie Susan Kahn’s Sleepaway.

Day camp had its own charms:  For a few summers, my mom worked in the building next door.  After years of jealousy of the kids with stay-at-home moms who could go home for lunch in elementary school, I felt special when my working mom picked me up fr0m camp and took me out to lunch.  Instead of our own camp songs, at day camp I learned all the words to the songs in Grease (the rite of every pre-teen girl–we didn’t figure out until years later how dirty those lyrics were).  We didn’t have a fire to tell ghost stories in front of, so we would try to sit as still as possible in the racquetball courts, hoping the motion sensors wouldn’t detect us and the lights would turn off.  My lanyards eventually rivaled those of even the most entrenched sleepaway camper–I could do the box, the barrel, the double box and barrel, and even the elusive triple box and barrel.

So no, I never went to sleepaway camp.  But I feel like I did.  I love any kids’ movie set at camp–remember the beginning of The Parent Trap, when Lindsay Lohan (or Hayley Mills, if you prefer the original) finds her long-lost twin at camp in Maine?  Last summer, my camp fix was ABC Family’s brilliant TV show Huge, set at a weight loss camp for teens.  And the This American Life episode on camp is one of the show’s best.  Camp is universal, even for people who never experienced it.  This is why I like Sleepaway so much–finally, I’m privy to the secret rituals of those sleepaway camp girls, with their s’mores, canoes, camp socials, and lifelong friendships.

The ABCs of summer may really be more like the BBQs and Ts, because that’s all you need on a hot day like today: your coolest, comfiest T-shirt and a delicious meal (carnivorous or otherwise) fresh off the grill. Rob, a Workman sales rep in the UK, and his daughter Flossie know the importance of those two hot-weather staples—and they even know how to put their own spin on the old classics.

While we here in the States were celebrating Independence Day, our friends across the pond were ringing in the summer at Grillstock, a celebration of all things barbecue. Flossie, 14, was game to help her dad sell some of Steven Raichlen‘s spectacular grilling books—that is until she saw the uniform. The Raichlen shirt was cool, with a hot slogan to match (“Hot enough for you?”), but it was also way too big. And did she really have to wear the same thing as her dad?!

Rob, flanked by BBQ books, models his Raichlen T-shirt—just right for a dad, but for a young T trendsetter? Not so much.

So like any fashion-forward T-shirt reclaimer, Flossie busted out her craft scissors and her copy of Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt and revamped the plain black T into a smokin’ fashion statement!

Flossie shows off her refashioning skillz.

We’ve never seen Generation T and The Barbecue! Bible shelved together, but thanks to Flossie and Rob, we can see how these two books make the perfect summer pair.

A special guest post from Barbara Flanagan, author of Flanagan’s Smart Home: The 98 Essentials for Starting Out, Starting Over, Scaling Back.

I can’t wait to get outside and mess up my backyard! Summer lets me turn my little yards—front and back, neat and not—into vegetal laboratories.

This year I’ll raise my annual tomato curtain—10’ x 20’—dotted by tiny heritage tomatoes of many colors. The curtain rod is invisible: a stainless cable stretched taut between two brick walls. After planting a tight row of tomatoes, I hang panels of 10-ft. high panels of plastic fencing (like stiff netting) stacked to the ground. When plants take off, I start my daily ritual: weave the shoots into the netting, harvest the new fruit, and snack while I chat on the phone. The tomato curtain expands through October, and yields a nice supply of indoor-ripening fruit right into December.
The front yard, a former flat lawn, is a now a slope of usable herbs planted ornamentally (17 years ago, and pre-fad). I chose ornery, quasi-invasive, flowering herbs like St. John’s wort, fern leaf tansy, and thyme. Each season, I watch them try to overtake each other, then replant the winners to rebalance. Each spring I plant seeds for nasturtium vines, and watch the edible flowers trail lightly over the front yard like lines butterflies. By September, the yard is a layered with herbal perennials holding herbal annuals aloft.

At dinnertime, I harvest mesclun and arugula growing in terracotta pots at the front door. As small hedges of sage and chives rise up, I move the pots to fill empty spots as I’m adding basil, parsley, cilantro , and rosemary seedlings—and some wildly colored Swiss Chard–to the mix.
This month I’m doing two new experiments. The first: figuring out an elegant composting ritual to replace my haphazard ways of amending soil. The second: organizing the stuff I bring back from kayaking and hiking trips: beach stones, bark, rust, driftwood, etc. Maybe I can get a building permit for constructing a grotto…

–Barbara Flanagan