Book Review: Gardening with your Head in the Clouds Gives practical Weather Advice for Landowners

By Douglas Quattrochi, Executive Director, MassLandlords

One among our MassLandlords team of speakers has published a worthwhile book of perhaps surprising relevance to landlords. Gardening with your Head in the Clouds by meteorologist Dr. Alicia Wasula is something I bought for myself and read start to finish. I found it to be a breath of fresh air and a needed escape from the tailspin that is my public policy day job.

I enjoyed this book!

This book has direct relevance to landlords. It’s our job to protect our residents from the elements. Do we even know what we’re up against? This book explains it. The gardening piece of it is interesting, but really, the gardening anecdotes are only interspersed as a narrative device to discuss weather and seasonal variation. The book is mostly about weather. You don’t have to pay much attention to the plants on your property to appreciate the book. It gives a concrete understanding about subject matter that we deal with daily.

For example, is lightning really such a risk? Yes! And this book explains exactly why we don’t expect it. We were advised by Dr. Wasula at a past event that we should have an app on our phones to send push notifications when lightning is inbound. This is highly relevant, as we’ve all had exterior jobs where we were trying to eke out every last minute. Now that I understand how clouds form, I understand why lightning push notifications are essential early warning before rain is even over the horizon.

Another thing the book covers that we’ve had a lot of this past winter is icing. The book provides a needed “winter precipitation 101.” It is very important to salt driveways, stairs and sidewalks before precipitation. This book explains which types of weather phenomena lead to the most dangerous slip-and-fall risk and why.

It’s an easy book to get through. It’s full of pictures, interjections and historical disaster stories set aside in colored boxes to hold your interest across longer passages.

Overall, this has been just a really charming book. With so much going on in the world, it’s relaxing – genuinely, you can feel the stress melt away – to explore the natural science of clouds and seasons in an eminently practical and congenial way. As stewards of the land and protectors against the elements, I recommend every landlord learn from Dr. Wasula and apply this knowledge in your business. Neither MassLandlords nor I received any compensation for this review or for book sales. The book is available from TBM Books and Amazon.