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.

How Hardy are Garden Blog Readers?

If you hadn't noticed, I have a geographical web counter on the right column of this blog. It is supposed to track the IP addresses of blog visitors and then indicate them as red dots on the world map. Of course, it isn't totally accurate, but it's interesting nonetheless. Actually, I would expect the dot for visits from my town of La Ronge to show up a little further north. This makes me wonder if my SaskTel internet connection makes it appear like I'm further south than I really am? I'm no technological expert, so this remains a mystery to me.

Anyhow, I don't know many people in the USA (or at least, the ones I know personally probably would not read my garden blog). Therefore, I have been considering the pattern of readers from the US. Those from the so-called Midwest states (look like mid-eastern states on a map to me, but what do I know?) and the Mid-Atlantic states seem to visit the most.

Interpretations:

1. These people are the most avid gardeners.
2. These people have better internet access than the rest of the Americans.
3. These folks are reading blogs about gardening while those on the west coast and Florida are actually outside gardening.
4. These people live in a generally cooler climate than the rest of the states (did you see that dot in Alaska?) and my blog is more applicable/interesting to them. See map of the USDA/USNA hardiness zones to compare:


5. Some quirk in the workings of Google directs these people to my blog more often
6. This simply reflects greater population density in these areas (see map).
7. I also researched other thematic maps of the US to compare the blog's readership against such things as the 2004 elections results, influenza rates, racial origin, gasoline prices, etc. Complex analysis of map data (i.e. comparing maps with my analytical eyeball, in more of a right than left-brain sort of way) shows that these factors are related to the readership of my blog: Scandinavian heritage and the location of monarch butterflies in the month of May.

Well, that was enough time wasted in the name of science for one day. Sometimes, the long hot bath at the end of the day gives time for reflection on these deep issues...while you work on getting the dirt out from under your fingernails...