Cold Climate Gardening

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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I wrote this essay several years ago after the winter of 1993-1994 and I dig it out to reread every winter in which I feel I’m suffering excessively. Of course, no matter how bad your winter is, someone else can top you, so I don’t promote this as the worst cabin fever anyone ever had, just the worst I ever had. Still, I bet I’ve got at least 80% of you beat.
Rundy and Talitha standing in our driveway March 1994. The arrows point to the top of the piles of shoveled snow, which rise above Rundy’s five-foot height. You can also see the edge of the porch roof on the left. (Click image for larger view.)
I suppose I should have been suspicious when we got a foot of snow on Halloween. But we live in a zone 4 climate, and flurries, even the occasional inch or two, are not uncommon for the end of October. Besides, it was really wet snow. Another couple degrees warmer and it would have been all rain. In a day or two it had melted–a fluke. But soon it snowed again. And again. The children thought it was wonderful. They sledded and built snowmen to their hearts’ content. But it got colder and colder. Unlike other years, the temperature didn’t rise above freezing, even during the day. The driveway never showed itself; the piles of shoveled snow on either side rose higher and higher. Eventually, the snow was just too high to be any fun. When it’s hip high on an adult, you can imagine where it comes up to on a third grader.

By December it was routinely below zero (F) at night. (That’s -18C.) In our old, under-insulated house, when it gets that cold, the windows frost over completely. In the whole house, there was only one window you could see out of, and it belonged to the kitchen door. But what was there to look at? Snow, and more snow. The sub-zero cold did have one advantage. There’s a certain macho pleasure in calling the office, “I’m going to be in late this morning. It got down to 37 below last night (that’s -38C) and I can’t get the car started yet.” But that gets old fast.

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