The daffodils are trying to bloom. The tulips are leafing out. The Bradford pear buds are swelling. The roses are leafing out and sending up new shoots. Spring is bustin’ out all over.
STOP IT!!! Winter is not over!!!!!
Granted, the Texas Panhandle is south of Canada, and south of a large swath of the United States. However, we are also at 3600′ above sea level, in a semi-arid climate, with nothing between us and Canada except an open gate in North Dakota. The Rocky Mountains channel cold air south, straight onto this part of Texas.
Arctic air flows down that strip where it says Great Plains.
See the fence? It ain’t cold-proof.
The past few weeks have been warm. As in 70s warm. And a little wet a few weeks ago, before the Gulf of Mexico was closed again and we started getting southwest winds. Now we are d-r-y and still warm. Very warm. Plants-love-it warm. And the roses have leafed out, the daffodils are trying to bloom, the Bradford pear trees are about to flower, the tulips have leafed out, and we are doomed.
Saturday night it got to 22F at the house, in town. That the plants could hack, because we’d watered two days before, and there was no wind. But I remember all too well what happened in April 2011. All was budding out, all was leafy, and then over two days the Panhandle had 50 MPH north winds, temps in the low 20s, and dewpoints below zero. That recipe makes plant jerky out of any vegetation, especially broad-leaved things. It looked as if the hawthorn tree might die because it dropped all its leaves, the pears staggered, four roses never recovered and died later that spring, and between the freeze in April and the ongoing drought, even the arid-tolerant native plants crumped and died.
I really, really do not want that to happen again. I fear it will.
Go back to sleep, dang it!!
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
“Spring is bustin’ out all over.”
Oh great, close enough to trigger an ear worm: now I have the music from Carousel running through my head. *sigh*
(♫ ♫ All the rams that chase ewe sheep
Are determined there’ll be new sheep,
And the ewe sheep aren’t even keepin’ score ♫♫)
Are the mesquite trees budding? If not, then those plants are doomed….. I’ve only seen the mesquite trees get caught twice in my life. Dad saw it a couple more times.
I haven’t been able to get out of town to check. I have a dreadful feeling that they have not.
I actually tend to hate the plants. Its the combination of allergies, for many years neglecting to get sufficient treatment, and feeling the world change once I do, or almost do. Fixing the world to one man’s idiosyncratic taste is a moron’s endeavor.
No buds on the Mesquite down here…
I’m definitely ready for winter to be over. It’s been raining like spring. If we’d had the equivalent to today’s rain in snow instead it would have been a darn blizzard.
Definitely springy where I am. No flowers yet but there are some buds on the trees.
We’re at 675 feet. So the only things we need to worry about are, amount of precipitation and wind gusts.