February Spring

Tomorrow should be a fine late Spring day, only it’s still Winter 😉 The Weeping Willow tree is greened out and getting it’s long lush look back, after dormancy for the “winter” ha ha. The few cold snap promises we’ve had haven’t done any damage to the trees that are waking up. Yes we’ve had low temps at night, but I guess not long enough to really harm anything thus far.

The Willow tree isn’t fully lush yet, only getting there. The tree right behind our house of which I do not know it’s name, it seems to be some sort of cherry tree … the bark is cherry tree looking and it gets berries after blossoming. It’s not a fruit tree for fruit, just ornamental flowering and bird food. It was planted some years ago as a bare root stick from the Arbor Day Foundation. There are a few more trees, only one like this one, it grew fast compared to the others and had a very nice shape, so we moved it closer to the house as an ornamental/shade tree. It grew nicely and continues to do so, and started putting out blossoms a couple of years ago, with last year having a lot all over the tree, and this year looks like they’ll be thicker in coverage. They buds have been getting bigger and bigger this whole last month or more, swelling immensley this past two week period. Today the first blossoms opened up and tomorrow more will, and the next day … and so on. The blossoms are clusters of little white flowers. It should be spectacular once the tree is more mature. (perhaps this year will be pretty near spectacular) I am just glad the mild winter didn’t trick the tree into not blossoming.

Our Yoshino Cherry trees are in the front of our property and they didn’t do well last Spring. They usually blossom so wonderfully, but no body in N. Georgia had nice blooming Yoshinos last year that we saw. It’s usually nearer to the end of March that they bloom, and I haven’t noticed any advanced performance in them, as I have in the trees in the backyard that I talked about above.

Then there are the apple trees in the far back, they usually blossom in April, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled out for early activity there.

Driving around it’s a visible fact in mid-February that many wild trees are actively growing, blooming, like Maples, with their brilliantly noticeable red blooms (Maple trees just look lushly red tipped from a distance, up close you can see the fringey tiny blossoms, nothing very pretty at all just nice color.) Whole areas appear to be blushing a deep crimson when the Maples wake up for the season. Our maples are later bloomers, so it’s the firsties that are doing it now. Other trees out there are active, like the ones that are causing the allergy folks to send reports of pollen counts already. It’s not like I’ve been allergy free all winter, or low allergy, no it’s been medium to pretty bad off and on, for some reason, something out there. Now it’s Spring allergies ramping up higher and I can feel it kicking in a new notch of service in me. In fact, here comes a sneeze now. Excuse me please! 🙁

It rained yesterday and last night, so it’s very wet out there. It’s so watery these past months that any little bit of rain makes muck all over. We had standing pools all day yesterday and in the backyard places that we had the hens in the past weeks make for dangerous slippage areas, they break up the earth so nicely, and the rain just turns it to muck and froth and deep goo … not poop, it’s just clay and dry grass mostly. Ick. What will more torrential Spring rains bring us this year? Time will tell.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to be partly sunny, up to 69 degrees F. in temperature. Whoo that’s warm, just the limit for myself’s top range of comfort. The following days will not get that warm “they” say, which will be good, just normal for this time of year. Then there’s another “higher temp” day, then normal again, then a couple of lower than normal temp days at the end of the 15-day outlook. Overall it’s been mild and the cold days just haven’t had much punch. It’s been a bit nippy inside at times, but we’ve had no trouble getting our whole house liveable with two portable space heaters, not even burning any wood at all. I need more kindling and starter pieces to get a fire going, and hubby just hasn’t prioritized it into happening, so we’ve gotten along with no fire. There are mornings that it’d be nice to have a fire, but legitamently it would be to hot on the main floor by mid-morning, as it’s gone. The last couple of days we’ve had the heaters off, it’s over 70 in the house right now where I am. Just a tad too warm. Cooler nights bring it down to just nice overnight and the temp rises again in the day.

If it’s nice enough out tomorrow I will try and get out with my camera and get a few snaps of what’s growing or blooming, and I’ll post whatever works out.

Things around here usually mellow out by our Normal Last Freeze date of March 15th. It’s still a tad cool until April though, and any gardening done must be protected since it isn’t unusual for a frosty night through March, but generally it’s just Southern Winter until closer to that mid-March last freeze date. We have had the itching to get out into the yard fever for weeks and weeks now, with true to life reasons being that grass is growing, and the soil isn’t very cold, and there is so much to do and I didn’t have a garden last year and am hungering for one this year! 🙂