Spring Flush coming — not good news

This mild winter continues, but we are supposed to get “colder than normal” weather soon, according to accuweather.com.

The biggest problem of this is that I have noticed the trees on our property getting ready for Springtime flush. Growth is happening and buds are fattening on many of the trees. I up-close inspected the cherry-something-related tree behind our house on the way back from collecting eggs just a little bit ago. It has several lower branches that the buds are getting really big, and fuzzy looking on the edges, which means unfurling of the small leaf-like parts of the early buds that turn into several small white-ish blooms (clusters of several flowers, in other words) and they should, by standards of the last couple of years, be opening soon, based on the look of the branches.

That got me curious and I went back to the Weeping Willow tree and sure enough, it has flushes of green leaves coming out on the ends of most every branch already.

I then went out front and the Jap. Bloodgood Maple is getting bigger bud ends, and the Yosino Cherry Tree buds are quite large. These cherries went dorment early in the Autumn of 2005, so they are probably really wanting to get going, with this warm winter.

I also then checked the ground where the Peonies live and, drawing back the maple leaves covering the ground, right there above the soil were the beautiful red pointed peonie starters coming up already. 🙁

It’s too early for all of this. There has only been one icy storm this winter, and it was really before the beginning of “winter”, earlier than normal for us, but a “mild” one by all ice storm standards of the South. Most cold weather has been super short lived, not as cold as “normal” most days and nights at all, and the rain we have had is Spring-y, it’s usually warm-ish rain, and in amounts that say “It’s Spring Time!” But it’s not Spring Time, it’s still Winter. The Sun is still not out for that many hours a dayit’s just a bit over a month away from when official Winter began. The tree signs show that they have been coming out of dormant behavior for awhile already.

Lastly on this is allergies and it’s prime to say I’ve been having major issues all “winter long” and that’s due to the mildness of the season, and means something has been blooming or doing something. It’s not just that, but mold too most likely, for me. My old allergies tests, years ago, showed my prime allergy as “mold”. So it’s that with the wet season we are having,most likely and the warmth, as well as on top of that something blooming, some tree some where, making things really bad somedays, worse others, a bit better others, but never out of the itchyness of it all, really just so odd for Winter here in NorthEast-ish GA.

Well if accuweather has it right, the next 15-days will be hard on the plants out there, with lows below freezing many nights in a row, well below, in the 20’s.

Out in the world, when driving anywhere, one of the FIRST signs of spring is usually the red blush that comes over the tree areas to the right and left of the roads. Maples are all over here, and that is what is first, that red bloom they get, they actually do flower, if you didn’t know, little red things, not pretty as flowers go, but the trees get a ruddy look that is lovely in groups from a distance. I’ll look for this when we go out later this afternoon, to see if there are any hints of it at all. My maples aren’t the ones who do that sooner than other maples, the ones that are moreso the wild ones out there, unlike my varieties which are not wild.

So it goes that I am not happy that Spring is Springing already in real life. It’s not good if it gets freezing and colder, if tender growth is out already, which it is on some of our trees and plants, and close on others.