Looking for calendar software that allows notes to span years

Factual Questions
1

I want to keep track of stuff that happens on a yearly basis. For example, when the lilies in my yard bloom, what date the first snow falls, that kind of thing.

I want to be able to see these notes from year to year. For example, when I look at the May 2010 calendar, I want to see that I saw the first trout lilies bloom on May 13 2009, but in 2008 they didn’t show up until the 25th.

I can’t seem to find any software to do this. Ideally it would be online, but it doesn’t have to be. Don’t make me resort to using a gasp paper calendar.

2

I use DateBk5 from Pimlico Software on my Palm PDA. I can set an event to repeat every year. If I entered an event on May 13th that was labeled “first trout lilies bloom 2009” and marked it to repeat every year I would see the 2009 bloom date on May 13th in 2010, 2011 and forward.

I see on their web site they have a cross-platform calendar application. That’s all I know about it.

3

Outlook should work fine for this if you want a non-online solution.

For online solutions, I’d assume the calendar portions of email apps from companies like Microsoft or Google would also work.

4

None of these do what I want as far as I can tell. Am I missing something? How do you put a note (NOT an appointment) on my calendar that carries over from year to year?

I don’t want a recurring appointment or anything like that. Just some notes that I can view that stay there from year to year.

5

What’s wrong with just using an appointment object? What are you envisioning is the difference between between a note and an appointment?

6

I was just thinking kinda the same thing. A garden journal sort of calendar that lets you jot down quick gardening notes without wrestling with each entry like an important appointment. I like keeping track of when I first see certain birds too.

7

First off, it’s counter intuitive to have to say “At 1pm for 30 minutes I saw the first Marsh Marygolds of the spring.” The time of day and length have no meaning for this, and I’d rather skip the step of having to record them.

More importantly, appointments are a pain when they overlap. If I use my outlook calendar to record something at 9am on March 15, and I happen to have an appointment next year at 9am on March 15, then it yells at me that there’s a conflict.

I could probably get around that by just making a second outlook (or whatever) calendar, but honestly, I’d just rather find a calendar app that does what I want instead of trying to adapt one that doesn’t quite fit.

8

The way around that with Outlook or other calendaring programs is to make your “note” an all-day appointment. This is what things like birthdays, holidays, etc. are. That way you don’t have to indicate a specific time/duration. In Outlook the default setting for an all-day is “Free” so it shouldn’t notify you that there’s a conflict. (ALthough I don’t really see what the problem with that is …) The other option is to put items on the calendar that have a duration of zero minutes, and, again, mark the time as “Free” rather than the default of “Busy.”

9

Better, but would still like something that just allows me to add notes to a day, not shoehorn my notes into an event or appointment.

Anyone?

10

You might be better served by looking for something using the keyword “journal” rather than “calendar.” The only one I know off the top of my head is the one in Outlook, and that’s built around tracking time spent on activities so I know that wouldn’t suit your purposes. Still, the word “journal” is more suited to what you’re trying to do.

Another thought would be to just start a blog, which is after a a weB LOG, or diary. Something like blogspot.com. Entries are date/time stamped, you can attach keywords (flowers, tomatoes, rain, etc.) and thus later do searches.