Feels Like Spring . . .

It feels like Spring is here but beware of early signs.  I recall while living in Dayton, OH area, one Spring the temperature shot up 75 degrees F.  It was warm and bright out side.  The sap started up in the soft Maple trees.  Everything looked like it was going bloom or putting out new shoots here and there.

It lasted about a week or ten days or so.  It was great.  Then bang, the Arctic Express kicked in and the temperature dropped to close to zero degrees F.  I lost four soft Maple trees because the sap froze and killed them.  It was bitter cold out side.

In that region they say wait to plant seedlings in your garden until May 15th.  Me, a Southern boy, well that seemed late but I did what the locals said.  I did prepare the garden but did not plant anything.   And then just as May 15 rolled up I had to go out of town on a trip.  I was gone just a couple of days and was back on the 17th of May.  All my gardening buddies had planted their garden and were crying alligator tears.  They had a sever freeze the morning of May 16 and it killed off their new plantings.  Me, I did not have anything in the ground so I caught up with them immediately.

Well we are have a false Spring right now.  Been as high as 79 degrees and you can see the buds on the Peach trees swelling like they are going to bloom at any minute.  I hope not because we always get that late freeze here and one year it killed off all the new fruit.  So I sit and watch, and hoping we do not get that late season ice storm.

We have had a very mild winter here.  New York, Wisconsin, the Dakotas are all freezing and we are basking in the sun.  I know we are in for at least one more winter blast but sit back and enjoy the false Spring.  I have been fixing the lights we have out in the yard.

The lights are simple things with an LED bulb and a single AA rechargeable battery installed. The top of the light has a solar cell and light detector to turn the light on at night and off in the morning and lets the solar cell charge up the battery.  Works pretty good, they are getting better, brighter and have smaller solar cells.  The technology development is working.  But I had to get new batteries and charge them up and install them.  A lot of my old lights no longer work, so have been replacing them.

I know I will get to look out and seen maybe snow one more time this Spring.  I hope it is not an errant hale storm, tears up everything including our roof and at least one car so far.  But that is the Spring of North Central Texas.

So do not go plant anything - yet.