Cold Climate Gardening

I mentioned the Drought Monitor website two years ago, when we were going through a drought. At least, we thought we were, but that Drought Monitor only said “abnormally dry.”

That’s the most disturbing thing about the map. You think you’ve got it bad, and then you see some other part of the country has it worse, much worse. I shudder to think what it looks like in those “exceptional” areas.
Check out the 6-week and 12-week animations at the bottom of the page, and watch the drought expand and contract. Drought conditions along …

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Most gardeners don’t start out as weather geeks, but I think most end up that way. The fate of one’s plants is just too tied up with the weather. Garden chores will be different depending on the weather. And while golfers and swimmers rejoice at yet another hot, sunny day, we gardeners know another sunny day is a dreadful forecast: WE NEED RAIN!! (You blithering idiots!)

Recently, Robin the Bumblebee was discussing weather instruments. I can easily understand someone spending over a thousand dollars on weather instruments. And unlike Robin, recording “precipitation, temperature, wind direction, humidity, air pressure and such” doesn’t sound like “geekery beyond what I can support or even humor.” No, it’s more like the ideal

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Instead of a single day of good fortune like yesterday’s auspicious 07/07/07, this has been a week of luck for one reason: rain. Although it can’t be discerned from the surrounding woods with their uncommon fullness bordering on rainforest-like lushness, this summer has been uncommonly dry. Late spring and summer started out so well it wasn’t conceivable that midseason has me contemplating water conservation and rationing. I’m thinking the “D” word but trying hard not to say it.

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I took this photo yesterday, a day ahead of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I knew that rain was predicted for Wednesday afternoon and throughout today, but late yesterday morning it was merely overcast and quite mild, and I thought, “Go looking for flowers now, or forget about it.”

So I went galomphing about in the nearly slushy snow, and took photos of snowdrops in various stages of bud. These were the closest to blooming.

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Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

I grew up during the Beatles era and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” has always been a fave in my top five. From the start, there was speculation that psychedelic drugs influenced John Lennon when he wrote the dreamy, trippy imagery into his song. But couldn’t he have been inspired by a morning such as this?

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Not the Valentines Day love-in I was expecting, this was a storm for the record books. Under a state of emergency all day and through the night, my county was closed down and everyone was told to stay off the roads. When it was over the snow totals came in. My little, almost unknown, town of Roseboom “won” the snow total race with an “official” 38 inches.

“Yeah, right,” I thought while looking out the window. Maybe if you were lucky to only have that much. Many of my neighbors and myself had more and it depended on which side of the street you were living. It is days later and I’m still trying to clear away some areas and, of course, the daily wind blow. And don’t even ask about getting my truck stuck.

But I was fully informed for a storm of this size because I have a secret weapon: weather radio.

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By 9 a.m. this morning about 8 inches of snow had fallen, and the weather service predicts

Snow will continue right into this evening… heavy at times.

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