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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Editor’s note: This essay was adapted from This Week in Purdyville, Vol. 2, #30, originally written in August 1999 (when she was 14) for an audience of family and family friends.

One of our drought-time methods for using less of our well water is to cart it in from the spring in Lisle. The water isn’t tested for drinking, so we mostly use it for washing clothes. It’s pretty easy to see how washing clothes uses up so much water. A full load in the washing machine uses about 17 gallons just to fill up. It uses another 17 gallons for the rinse cycle. Twelve people need to do laundry each week. We try to limit it to one …

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Editor’s note: This essay was adapted from This Week in Purdyville, Vol. 2, #29, originally written in August 1999 for an audience of family and family friends.

The eastern seaboard of the United States has been stricken by a drought. As the dry and intermittently scorching weather continues to drag on, state after state declares drought warnings and drought emergencies.

The drought is affecting us. We are not the worst off, but neither are we the best. The grass has gone brown at Purdyville, but the leaves have not started to shrivel up on the trees, something that is happening in other places. Dry weather brings many problems. Some are mere annoyances, others have the potential for serious trouble. …

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I started this post quite a while ago and it’s taken me this long to finish it, partly because I lacked time, and partly due to technical difficulties–we’ve been having a lot of trouble with our internet connection.

The first weekend in April our area experienced the worst flooding in 70 years. It was a combination of a lot of rain falling on, and melting, a lot of snow, over earth that was still frozen and couldn’t absorb it. From April 4th until this evening (April 22) it didn’t rain at all. We’ve had one of the most glorious Aprils I can remember, with lots of sunshine and warmer than average daytime temps. (Still got in the 20s (F) most every night, though.) Glorious, but dangerous. Until the thunderstorm moved in, there was a heightened fire threat in effect. From sopping wet to flammable in two and a half weeks. Incredible. Yet how much you want to bet people complain about the rain that’s now falling?

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