Weathering Winter: A Gardener's Daybook (Bur Oak Book) - Softcover

In Winter, when the only things growing seem to be icicles and irritability, what pleasures exist for a gardener or for anyone who lives in a northern climate? In his distinctive daybook Weathering Winter, Carl Klaus reminds readers that the season of brown twigs and icy gales is just as much a part of the year as when tulips open, tomatoes thrive, and pumpkins color the brown earth. From the first cold snap of late December 1994 to the first outdoor planting of onion sets and radish seeds in mid-March 1995, Klaus kept track of snow falling, birds flocking, soups simmering, gardening catalogs arriving, buds swelling, and seed trays coming to life. Gardeners, lovers of the out-of-doors, and weather watchers will recognize themselves in the ways in which Klaus has come to terms with the harsh climate and chilly truths that winter embodies. His constant, careful checks on the temperature and on the geraniums overwintering in the attic, his contentment in the basil- and garlic-flavored tomato sauce he cooked up from last season's crops, and his walks with his wife in the bitter chill of starry January nights reflect the pull between indoors and out, the contrast between the beauty and the cruelty of the season.

It's going to be a long winter.

Like winter-wary squirrels, gardeners are busily collecting literary acorns and stockpiling them for the long winter months. Winter is serious business for gardeners, and the trick is always in the rationing--how can long-awaited books be rationed and savored to coincide with the first spring rains.

Add Carl Klaus' new book to your growing stack. In Weathering Winter, Klaus helps all who are close to the soil come to terms with the harsh weather and chilly truths that winter brings. No stranger to the dormant season, Klaus understands the gardener's disposition toward it when he says that winter is "The season from hell, where beneath the fires in dante's inferno, lies the ninth circle, the lowest level, the place of eternal freezing cold." This reviewer hears a solemn "amen" murmured through the chapped lips of sympathetic gardeners everywhere.

Written as a companion book to My Vegetable Love, last year's literary success, Weathering Winter focuses on "our daily adventures in living close to the land, close to the bone, and close to the dining room table." In "A season so apparently at odds with the very thought of gardening," Klaus convinces us that winter does, in fact, offer a growing season for gardeners, a personal growing season, and that life should not be placed "temporarily on hold until spring."

Weathering Winter is a gardener's daybook, beginning December 31 and ending March 15, covering all the dismal days of cold and ice from a gardener's perspective. Like spoonfuls of hot chicken soup, Klaus' book warms the spirit, but it also makes us realize that gardeners needn't see themselves as victims of the season. Klaus certainly doesn't. He's an active participant in it. Creating memories and savoring experiences with his wife, Kate, the author awakens us to many of the high pleasures of winter when we feel closest to home, hearth, and kitchen. And, like the author, we see ourselves over-wintering along with our gardens, popping up into the attic to keep a watchful eye on geraniums we've carefully tucked away, making tomato sauce from our basil and garlic harvest, and taking chilly walks on starry nights."