I am old enough to have lived a history which includes remembering in a broader sense  personal experiences from varieties of  weather  and seasons over the years.

On two occasions around  World  War II time,  it snowed heavy wet stuff on my birthday of mid September, and  once later while watching a September Saturday  football game at old Memorial Stadium.

I like winter here in Gopherland, but it is so long.    I have long prayed for local ‘global warming’…..at least at the local level where I do my landscaping both as a career and as an artistic enslavement to the grounds where I live here in Minnetonka.    For the first thirty five years of my life there was usually still tons of  ice and snow covering the grounds  where I lived  then in St. Paul  throughout the month of April.     Snow usually dumped its first load well before Thanksgiving.

Horticultural zone five is in my view the ideal landscape gardening climate zone.   So many of the worlds most beautiful flowering woody plants tolerate zone five AND one can still plant a wider variety of coniferous evergreens as well.

Honest local weather gurus are forecasting a mini-cooling again of our regions over the next fifty to seventy years, since these minor swings of  our local war of comfort versus winter have a time frame all of their own.    Since in am already in my 80s I won’t have much to worry about.   So, by this article I merely want to record the following……

THAT THIS PAST 2015  GROWING SEASON IN OUR GREATER TWIN CITY, MINNESOTA AREA WAS THE BEST SEASON FOR CLIMATE FOR THE ART OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS!

There were no dust bowl storms in April or May…..no torrential rains or poundings of sleet, no floodings, no hail,   and only a day or two of temperatures of 90 degrees F, and then only for an hour or so each day.   Best of all, there was no drought especially  during the hottest weeks.    For more than two month the heavens gently, reliably  watered my grounds every second or third day, late evening or early morning,  as if my sprinkler system had managed the entire timing.

And one further, well received blessing. ….there has been NO FROST over my grounds yet.   Only one wussy hosta showed a hint of frost  perhaps one hour of  wandering 32 degrees to one leaf.