winter

If you are the kind of gardener who snorts at books like The Garden in Winter or A Flower for Everyday: A Practical and Inspirational Guide to Year-Round Color in the Garden, have I got a book for you. Books on winter gardening aren't written for regions where daily routines include clearing snow and chiseling [...]

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, [...]

I don't have any bare ground for crocus to be poking up through--we have at least 18 inches of snow on the ground. Is it because the crocus are near the heated greenhouse that they are coming up? I hope some time this winter you and Judy both can tell us what size and type [...]

Ah, November. A little time to breathe and do something besides the hard physical work of gardening. Like, read seed catalogs and go slightly mad with imagining all the things I'll grow next year. And read gardening magazines--actually read them, not just flip through them and hope to remember them when there's more time. My [...]

Decoy weather--an apt term. Somehow, once October is over, it's hard to call it Indian Summer anymore. I have noticed around here that we consistently have one day in the first week of November that is warm and sunny. I always give the kids the day off from school then and have a general clean [...]

We are supposed to get our first snow of the season tonight and tomorrow morning with accumulations of an inch or more in the higher elevations, which is where I am. The first snow always evokes a lot of conflicting feelings in me. I have to face up to the fact that I am not [...]