It happened on April 1, but it was no April Fool’s joke. I opened the Sunday paper and began my usual early checking of the television listings. There, to my surprise and delight, was a regular listing for “Gardener’s Diary,” my very favorite garden-related program, and one that many of you also enjoy greatly. Furthermore, it was listed Monday through Friday, at the more civilized hour of 7 a.m.

“Gardener’s Diary” wandered around the early time schedule, sometimes daily, sometimes at intervals, and then last fall it suddenly disappeared. I wrote, e-mailed, and tried phoning, and couldn’t even find someone at their headquarters to respond. I knew, because the host, Erica Glasener, had told me, that they’d filmed 26 completely new segments in 2005 and early 2006. “But there’s a new head of management,” she deplored, “and I don’t know what he has in mind.”

I’ve checked the HGTV Web site, and the listings are there, identifying the programs. Last week I saw programs I’d seen before, but today, for the first time, there was one I was sure I had never seen, and hidden in the credits at the end was the date which affirmed 2005 — I can handle that much in Roman numerals.

So I’m thoroughly enjoying spending some time every weekday morning, going places I haven’t been, or maybe have and would like to go back, at least vicariously. Meeting individuals with ideas and commitments. Acquiring ideas that I might, or might not, want to use. Today the Atlanta person who was featured had carpeted his entire lawn with dwarf Mondo grass, one little clump at a time. And he didn’t have a small yard, either.

Can we count on HGTV to keep on showing “Gardener’s Diary?” You can never be sure, but usually they program in quarterly segments, so we ought to be safe for April, May and June, at the very least. Surely they’ll want to get their production costs back from those 26 new segments. If I do acquire an address and the name of a person who makes decisions, I’ll share it, so you can say “Thank you, and keep it going,” if you wish to.

Last week I noticed new white blossoms on a vine when I was walking back from the mailbox.

Looking closer, I realized what it was. “We’re having blackberry winter.” Why did it take me that long to catch on?

Weather is no exact science. Of course we never can count on weather — we often have spring in February, for instance. A couple of years ago we had no winter at all. But this freakish upside-down weather performance isn’t just limited to the Deep South. It’s all over the country.

For the first time ever, for instance, the Daffodil Weekend Festival in Gloucester, Va., was cancelled because of deep snow. The daffodil show went on, with 1,600 blooms, but all the festival events were just a memory and a hope for another season.

Sometimes I think I ought to be writing columns about important issues. Global warming, for one thing. But what would I say? It’s happening, of course, and I personally don’t know too much that we can do about it, beyond the usual answers. Cut down on pollution. Don’t poison the environment with dangerous chemicals. Recycle — I actually think my community is about to start a new and serious recycling program. But these individual efforts seem such a small thing, in the big picture.

There’s a French novel which appears regularly on advanced placement reading lists, Voltaire’s “Candide.” I haven’t read it in many years, and don’t plan to, because the title character wanders through the miserable fringe of the late 18th century, finding humans and events in direct opposition to the current philosophy that we live in the best of all possible worlds. At the end, when asked what he has learned, Candide says, “We must cultivate our gardens.”

Critics like to argue about the meaning of that statement (and about almost everything capable of more than one interpretation). But most ultimately agree that the character, and the author, mean that we must work at making our own slice of the world better than we found it.

So that’s the way I cope mentally with these scary future scenarios about our planet. We must just each do what we can, garden and live responsibly, and enjoy the good things in our lives and try to make them better.

And when we find a particular television program that inspires us, makes us happy, for goodness sake get up and put on the coffee pot and enjoy it, every morning. We must indeed cultivate the gardens of our minds also.