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Luminescences

© Barbara M. Martin

The word "worm" has taken on a new meaning for me this year, as in "Ice Worm". Egads.

Let's be honest. Winter is not a hot gardening season. Standing around in snow gazing at wimpy little witchhazel blooms and waiting for the hellebores to wake up is not my idea of a good time. And although Ice Flowers are pretty, and this sheer Dragonfly Ice is fabulous I'd rather see the real things outside.

Unfortunately, the facts of snowbelt gardening life mean doses of "weather". The kind of weather when snowflakes form and when Roman Board Games come in handy to help pass the time, and the aftermath means we need to know about things like Garden Winter Damage, First Aid, and Repair and what to do if there is Ice on Your Pond because the heater quit working (or you didn't think you'd need one in the first place) and things are beginning to look like the proverbial Winter Lake or Ice Cave.

Apart from attending to mundane survival details during storms like this Canadian Ice Storm of 1998 and pondering gripping questions like Why the sky is blue and re-reading whodunits and the plant catalogs, things are pretty slow in winter. Some gardeners may lapse into distant Winter Dreams while others may travel vicariously in other ways.

Oddly enough, some folks (probably not gardeners!) don't think of ice and cold as bad things. Some people pay good money to experience the stuff up close and personal: take a look at modern day Rock and Ice and for more inspiration check out Norwegian Polar Heroes.

Inspired and ready to go but no ice close to home? Maybe you'll find something at Deep South Ice. If not there, then most likely further south with Ice Treasures of the Inca an interactive expedition from National Geographic.

There are also folks who spend a lot of cold hard cash (yours and mine!) at places like The National Snow and Ice Data Center where they keep track of events like the new Iceberg the Size of Delaware. Who knew!?!

Then, on another tack and even further from the beaten path, there are the people who are diligently Ice Fishing for Neutrinos. This, mind you, is the same group who apparently think 90% of the universe is invisible. I do not find this idea at all comforting so let's look at more traditional approaches to ice fishing.

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