Our gardening news of the week is not of the outside garden. With outside temperatures in the -20 range (and -40 at a cousin’s Montana), be sure to wear your winter coat when outside.
From past experience outside wear has frequently turned to insulated brown workwear.
If you need it, there is a brand of workwear guaranteed to -50. It is designed for fulltime wear for working in frozen food warehouses. It works now too.
For the rest of us who would prefer something a bit dressier, this writer invested in snowmobile suits. One suit came in handy some years back when our church group decided to watch the St. Paul Winter Carnival parade in downtown St. Paul.
Our leader picked a nice point of observation - right next to the TV cameras and a McDonald’s shop. McDonalds did a nice business that day too. In our case when several of us got cold enough we would go into the McDonalds, one person would buy a pack of french fries and the rest of us would eat the fries slowly one at a time. That would take at least ten minutes for the whole pack.
The snowmobile suit did well too. My feet got cold. The movies I took still show off how cold it was. With weather this cold, our outside experiences are as limited as possible. Even going to church is most frequently in jeans. And sometimes even kids get an insulated coveralls to use as a playsuit.
Otherwise back inside the house, we hope no problems come up. Our Texas house weather has been down to 15 degrees putting a big load on the gas company and the furnaces. And our residence furnace here has been running continuously trying to keep up. We suspect fuel oil deliveries are busy too.
As for our house plants and gardens, they get our weekly waterings and the catalogues will be looked through when we have time. Until next week.
