Weathering Winter: A Gardener’s Daybook

paper, 184 p., $9.95

Winter can be beloved or despised. It’s a time for reflections and planning, reading garden catalogs, planting seeds and caring for exotic indoor flowers and plants. This book is a diary of winter events and thoughts by the founding director of the University of Iowa’s Non-Fiction Writing Program. In it, author Carl H. Klaus chats about his daily experiences as the cold Midwestern winter moves from first snows to the awakening of spring. It is a very homey, nostalgic look at winter’s variables, ranging from bird feeding and watching to planning a new vegetable garden to caring for pets when ice and cold weather discourage long walks. Above all, Weathering Winter: A Gardener’s Daybook celebrates life.

— Elaine Juhl, volunteer and master gardener, Chicago Botanic Garden