I'm dreaming of spring bulbs for Christmas

It's 61 degrees outside after a morning of thunderstorms that dumped a couple of inches of rain on us. Not only isn't this going to be a white Christmas, but spring bulbs: scilla, snow drops, daffodils, and spring beauty shoots are appearing all over the place.  Helleborus niger flower buds are showing and Helleborus foetidus is flowering. TPP is surprised witchhazel isn't in flower.  For two people who grew up in the snowbelt this is pretty unusual, but it's unusually warm across the whole eastern half of North America.
The Phactors got an alumni newletter the other day from Oswego State on the east end of Lake Ontario, and it listed the 10 biggest snow accumulation school years and Mrs. Phactor was there for two of the top 10 '69-'70 and '70-'71.  Around 230" of snow each year.  In '66-'67 TPP witnessed their largest single event snowfall, 102" in 32 hours!!!  Hard to imagine isn't it?  But both of us grew up in places that got 100-150" of snow a year, so it wasn't that big of a deal.
But the Phactors have gotten older and softer, so not sure how to handle that much snow any more. Glugwine and a fire place sounds about right.  Mostly the spring plants will be OK especially if some snow finally provides some protection.
Oh, now the weather says expect winds up to 50 mph! At least the snow won't be drifting.

Stoopid plants! It's not spring yet!

Yesterday broke a 100+ year old weather record with a high of 63 F smashing the old record of 54 F.  A young foreign student staying with us left this morning to visit Chicago for a couple of days, and she will come away with the erroneous conclusion that Chicago a nice place in the winter!  Well, it's not Thunder Bay, but still, it's not Pensacola either.  Our continental climate produces big dramatic swings in weather; that's expected, but what is not expected is the first week of February to have highs in the 50s.  Plants do stoopid things when we get weather like this.  They don't have calendars, and having had a period of cold weather, their physiology is convinced that it's time for spring so atypically warm temperatures break their cold dormancy.  So bulbs will be popping up, indeed, snow drops are in flower, not that more snow and cold will do them any damage, but some of the Phactor's magnolias are pretty stoopid and the earliest flowering get fooled regularly.  Nothing can be done about it, but curse this miserable weather that all the non-plant mopes are chortling gleefully about.  It doesn't have to be bitter cold, just consistently cold.  Uh oh, maybe someone didn't make a proper sacrifice to the snow god.  Quick, let's freeze a Floridian before it's too late!

Just in time field work

At about 3 pm yesterday it occurred to the Phactor that should he want a collection of winter condition twigs for a lab exercise, it would be one hell of a lot smarter to collection them while a nice 50 degrees outside. That began a concerted two and a half hours of field work, only briefly interrupted by campus police wishing to know what was going on. Officer: What is going on here? Phactor: Collecting specimens for a lab. Officer: Do you have permission? Phactor: Permission? This campus is my classroom. Any other questions? By the time the collecting was done a huge plastic bag was quite awkwardly full and reasonably heavy, but enough diversity was collected, included at least 2 species in 4 or 5 genera, so that students will be able to observe, sort, and organize twig characters, all before they get any terminology, and then use this data for construction of a dichotomous key, and then finally to figure out the species and evaluate how successful their efforts were. And this morning, awakening to a cold, windy, white winter scene, well, actually awakening to a black paw on my cheek announcing that cat breakfast time was nigh, the Phactor was congratulating himself for his emergency field work. Those fingers work so much better when well above freezing. Yes, it's good to have one of life's little triumphs every now and then.

What if winter never comes?

For the 7th and 8th of January, this has been extremely mild weather this weekend. Gave us a chance to police the yard and pick up all the limbs deposited during a wind storm a week ago. A few buds on the witch hazel are showing color; snowdrops are poking up here and there. Of course winter still has plenty of time to show up, but to be a no show at this late date is very atypical. At this rate the Phactor will be rethinking some of those zone 6 plants he's been coveting. But because we had 2 weeks of modestly cold weather, and now much milder temperatures, some plants could get fooled. It will be interesting to see how long this trend lasts.