Let it snow, because we can dig it

It’s snowing again.

I have an overwhelming urge to write about weird gardeners, or at least off-the-wall news as it relates to gardening. I’m pacing myself. It’s only November and the snow isn’t even ankle deep yet. But my editor is already nervously asking me how we could possibly write about gardening all winter. You can almost smell the anxiety wafting through the Internet and drifting down to frost his e-mails.

“So, ah, do you, ah, write these columns all winter?”

How do you explain your gardening perversities to a novice?

“All winter?” Five bucks says there are no Sunset or Fine Gardening magazines littering his bedside table.

Snow … yeah, this could relate to gardening. It’s mulch. Really.

Clients ask what I mulch with and, well, I’m a lazy person. Mulch? That’s more work and less fun in the garden. I just pile the snow on. Lots of snow. And now that I have this huge snow thrower. I can primp and fluff snow mulch where I want it. What few succulents I have left after last winter need a nice insulating blanket of snow on them or they’ll just be a memory come spring.

Snow also makes a nice cover for those voles who like to eat your bulbs, girdle young saplings and mow down your favorite perennials. It’s not too late to toss out some panty hose filled with mothballs. Cats are good for rodent control, but the mothballs discourage voles and cats from damaging your garden in the winter.

Another neat trick I learned from one of my clients to keep voles away from trees is to stomp the snow down around the base of trees to compact the snow. It’s too hard for voles to tunnel into and they’ll head out to the boonies to eat instead.

Shoveling snow works the same muscles you used to weed and rake with. And muscling a snow thrower around burns a few calories and gives your arms quite a workout.

Lots of people pull muscles, throw out their backs or worse, put a major strain on their hearts, lifting a heavy shovel full of snow. Stretch before you tackle the shoveling and take frequent breaks whether you’re shoveling or running a snow thrower.

Don’t let a little snow keep you out of your garden. Pathways can be cleared and lights planted to twine around trellises. If there’s enough snow you can have a sculpture party and make some snow folk to stand guard while the scarecrow is on vacation in Hawaii. When it gets colder you can try your hand at making ice sculptures or ice candles to decorate the empty garden beds. Willow gardener and ice sculptor Les Brake tells me there is a new book hot off the press if you need some inspiration to warm up your winter gardening skills.

Just back from giving a talk to the New Orleans Botanical Garden, where the locals seemed happy to kick back and listen to an Alaskan hillbilly gardener, Brake revels in winter gardening. Brake’s ice sculptures have turned up in many gardening magazines and included in Better Homes & Garden’s contributing Editor Suzy Bales’ new book, “The Garden in Winter.”

Bales’ book highlights the gems we can find in our gardens even in the snow. Seed heads and dried perennial stalks, shrubs, garden ornaments, trellises and arbors, pathways — all form the garden’s winter architecture draped with frost and snow.

Bales shows how to spend time in your garden appreciating the textures and shapes of the winter garden, and she inspires us to bring the garden indoors as well with wreaths, forced bulbs and decorations made with berries, seed pods and twigs — materials found in our winter gardens.

Brrrrr. I know. It’s raining and gray and blah outside, but that’s what garden books, houseplants and seed catalogs are for.

David Cheezum at Fireside Books says Bales’ new books are on their way and will be here in a couple of weeks. I think I’ll do a little winter gardening next to his fireplace and fertilize my brain with some of that “bad” bookstore coffee.

Snow? What snow?

If you’ve never seen Les Brake’s ice sculptures, you can get an instant fix with Jeff Schultz’s photos from Sunset magazine at www.schultzphoto.com/sunset.html.

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.