You know all those wonderful photos of beautiful gardens made even more beautiful by a fretwork of silver frost, or a blanket of white snow? That’s not my garden right now. We are in the midst of record-breaking cold, but here it has been a very dry cold, the worst kind for plants. Temperatures in the mid-teens (stop laughing, Chicago, New England and upstate New York friends!) and not even an insulating covering of snow. We’re doing the best we can with frost cloths, and I know my pathetic, drooping pansies and snapdragons will recover when it gets warmer again.

Thank you for reading my occasional garden posts; I will try to post more often in 2018, and not about the weather.