This last week was a really hard week. Winters in Minnesota are so long that to get through them you create a psychological dependence on how the season should progress. January, particularly the end of January, is the coldest part of winter. As February moves along one expects the days to get noticeably warmer. When I say warmer I mean warmer for us, typically temperatures during the day fluctuating between 30 to 40F (-1 to 4C). This year, that is what January was like so you can imagine everyone expecting February to be the same or, dare we hope, even warmer. But February has been what January was supposed to be. This last week we had several nights in a row below zero (-17C) and today as I type this in the late afternoon, the temperature is -1F (-18C). The week ahead is forecast to be much like the week just past. Most of the people I know are walking around like zombies; we’ve mentally checked out. Our bodies might be here but our brains have flown off to warmer climes. When we manage to talk coherently, we speak mutually reassuring words about the weather getting warmer soon and encourage each other to hang in there.
In order to forestall complete psychological breakdown, Bookman and I went to the conservatory this morning and spent nearly two hours getting high off the smell of paperwhites and stargazer lilies, being mesmerized by the riot of colors the swarming and hungry koi made in the pond, and listening to the trickle of water while thawing out and imagining ourselves in a ferny glenn. Good for the eyes. Good for the heart. Good for the soul. Even if we had to walk back outside into the tundra afterward and were half-frozen by the time we made it to the car.Prior to visiting the conservatory we went out to breakfast at our favorite cafe and talked about chickens and garden plans and all kinds of other things while eating and drinking copious amounts of coffee. I’ve been doing research on chicken keeping and sharing it with Bookman. Currently his only concern is how much work it will be to take care of them. My chicken class is coming up on Saturday (28th) and I expect I will find out an answer to that question there.
I also got to babble on about things to plant, things I’d like to try, what we can possibly do with the space at the back
of the garden when we no longer have a garage and the huge concrete slab is gone. We talked about what we wanted from our garden. We talked about Amy Pond and the raccoon problem it creates and what we should do about it. And finally we talked about starting seeds. I discovered a few days ago that we need to start our onion seeds by March 1st. This week we will be making paper pots, locating our plastic seed trays to put the pots in, finding the leftover seed starting mix from last year and figuring out how much more we will need. And, by next weekend, be ready to plant some onion seeds.Then two weeks after that it will be time to start all the various kinds of peppers we got seeds for. Two weeks after that it will be tomato time.
The fact and activity of seed starting combined with today’s visit to the conservatory has done quite a lot to lift me out of the exhausted funk I had slipped into. I have things to do! There is a garden to prepare! And by the time the tomato seeds are stubby sprouts it will be April and the plant sale catalog will arrive and I can get lost in that for hours. Not to mention that as soon as the ground thaws in April there will be new beds to dig and existing beds to prepare for planting cool weather vegetables at the end of the month.
These are the things that get me through when winter is doing its worst. Oh and books. There are always books!
I don’t know how you guys do it. I know people think we are nuts down here to put up with the summer heat and humidity that we get…but. You folks are damned tough, both physically and mentally, to survive those long winters. Hang in there.
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Sam, LOL, we definitely think you are nuts enduring the summer heat like you do! We endure the cold and long winters by making jokes about it, by creating cold weather events (we have an annual winter carnival and metro-wide scavenger hunt in January), and by convincing ourselves that we are better than everyone else because we can endure it. I suspect, however, as you indicate, that everyone else simply thinks we are all crazy. 😀
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I do love weather and after all, I am a Meteorologist. lol
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Foghorn, you’re a meteorologist? Cool. Move to Minnesota and we can make you weather life interesting. Our meteorologists here are always talking about how difficult it is to forecast anything because the weather is so changeable and extreme 🙂
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A conservatory visit is a very good idea. It seems like forever since I’ve seen anything that isn’t black and white.
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Jeanne, exactly! I haven’t seen anything that’s not black and white or brown since the end of October so the conservatory fulfills warmth and color requirements. The flower garden is so bright and colorful this time of year it almost seems obscene!
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I know I complain about our Texas summers but I really don’t think I could live in such a cold climate. We had a week of gray skies a couple of weeks ago and I thought I was going crazy because even if it’s cold, we do have a lot of sun. Glad you guys were able to enjoy a visit to the conservatory – sounds wonderful and at least made you think were somewhere warmer for a while!
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Iliana, one of the pluses of winter is that the colder it is the sunnier it is so at least the skies have been bright blue and cloudless we just can’t spend much time outdoors enjoying it! It was a nice visit and it was getting so crowded when we left that I think half the Twin Cities had the same idea!
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That sounds like an excellent way to spend a Sunday! I can’t wait for spring gardening either, although I’m not as disciplined with seed-starting as you are. Our winter in East Tenn. hasn’t been awful, with this icy/snowy week excepted. But it was enough of a taste of winter for me!
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Laila, oh it is. It’s funny that even though they have beautiful gardens in the summer indoors and out, we ever go in the winter. That’s when we need it most! As for seed starting, I haven’t done it in ages because it is so much work, but this year I decided it was time to start doing it again in the interest of cost and more variety. I hope your ice and snow is soon a distant memory!
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No that there line towards the end about digging would make me want winter to last a little longer – though on reflection, perhaps not having to dig is not a big enough compensation for all that cold. Our summer continues to be wetter and milder than usual. Even our sugar is clumping for heaven’s sake. That never happens in dry old Canberra BUT it’s happening this year.
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whisperinggums, LOL, since Bookman and I have a “point and dig” arrangement, it is he who will be doing the digging and he claims to be looking forward to it. I would hate to disappoint him! Wow, that is damp if your sugar is clumping! Such a summer makes it hard to look forward to fall and winter because you feel a bit cheated. I hope there are some hot dry days before it’s all over!
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Thanks Stefanie …. yes, you understand perfectly. Autumn can have lovely warm days so I haven’t given up hope yet!
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I hear ya. I woke up to bitter cold this morning (with the windchill factor, -32C), only in this part of the world we’re resigned to February being deep winter; we have a couple more weeks before we can expect it to warm up. More books and board games for us! Stay warm.
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Isabella, it was pretty close to that here this morning too. We must both be stuck under the same weather pattern. Enjoy those books and board games, stay warm and hang in there!
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Its a bit wintry here just now but there is no comparison to Minnesota, I do hope it warms up fairly soon. Here it is ridiculous – someone I spoke to was pissed off that we had had some snow in the second week of January!
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Ian, thanks, though warming up will still be around freezing though it is amazing how nice that feels after a long string of arctic days! 🙂 Someone mad about snow in early January? Perhaps a move south would be in order.
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