Global warming is messing with me

April here in Lincolnland has been a warm one, in fact apparently the warmest since records have been kept. The average temperature for the month was 6.2 degrees above normal, but it's hard to know what that means because while you can average the weather here in the great midwest, you never get average weather. It's either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too windy or deadly still, and then somebody averages these numbers, but the averages are not normal.
After you have taught plant taxonomy and plant identification for a number of years, experience tells you when, where, and what will be in bloom, but this year such a warm April has pushed the flowering season for many things so far forward that some of my favorite subjects to use as unknown specimens for students to identify have come and gone already. Finding enough good replacements is a pain, so now this climate change thing is getting personal. Unfortunately climate change is also going to get personal with agriculture, and we're all down stream in some sense.