Quest for a "Sister Climate"

You know how some places have a "sister city"? My hometown had Ikeda, Japan as its sister city. Personally, I thought it was just a ploy to get more Japanese tourist dollars. Regardless, it is always interesting to find people with common interests, hobbies, or environments.

Garden bloggers are a peculiar type of person, but garden bloggers from cold northern climates are an even smaller group. I read the blog entitled "Cold Climate Gardening" regularly, but the collection of writers on that blog all live in the USA (and not Alaska). While they may have cold climates, few probably have severe winters like we do here. Then again, there are gardeners in the harsher climate of Yellowknife, NWT, but I haven't seen a garden blog from there yet. They could write about the polar bears trampling their gardens. (Believe it or not, we do occasionally have reindeer around here -- although in Canada we call them caribou).

Köppen Climate Map

Getting back to the point, there must be a "sister climate" somewhere in the world, as judged by an international climate map. I found the Köppen climate classification system, which identifies our climate as "Dfc"=Continental Subarctic or Boreal (Taiga). It is similar to that of northern Russia, northern Sweden, northern Finland, northern Norway, and Anchorage, Alaska. Actually, it includes much of Canada, excepting the west coast, the parts of the prairie provinces that grow stuff, and the southern bit of Ontario and Quebec.

Wanting to feel a kinship with somewhere a bit more foreign and exotic, I will claim Oulu, Finland as my "sister climate" city. I even found a garden blogger in Oulu on the Gardening blogs directory and guess what?!? All the plants on that website look eerily familiar. Quu in Finland, I don't know who you are or if you speak English, but I think we could be friends.