Sometime after the first frost, looking at my garden gives me ptsd. I try real hard to focus on my feet as I make my way to the greenhouse. I did happen to glance aimlessly to the side this afternoon and notice a few spring bulbs making their way through the dirt. That is a good sign being as I was sure the massive amounts of rain we received early on had the potential to rot them.

It's supposed to be warm this weekend so who knows. I might take a walk around the yard. I am definitely getting closer to and excited about dropping a few seed in the greenhouse.

Have had everything under covers etc for ages because of the previous threats of 15F weather. Took a look Sunday, and generally things are doing pretty well! Hoping for the best...

Got down to 18oF last night, but all looks well (or at least no worse). This warm spell this weekend seems like it might be dangerous, though...still a lot of cold weather in the future.

If we make it through February without a good snowstorm it will surprise me. It seems like it is going to be that kind of winter.

I am loving this weather! But I hope it doesn't last long enough to knock everything out of dormancy (only then to be followed by a nasty freeze!)

As an old lady, I remember March 1960. It snowed EVERY Wednesday of the month and over the entire eastern U.S. I lived in SC at the time, and we were not prepared for such huge amounts, plus it stayed so cold between snows that nothing melted. Food had to be airlifted to the Boone, NC, area and other places in the mountains. Exciting but scary.

So don't plant too early: "A swallow does not a summer make," according to Aesop's fable. The last frost date around here is April 15 although in 1986 we had one killing frost on May 1. Weather has been changing even before Mr. Gore pronounced it so.

^Yeah! Wasn't it only 2 years ago that we had that horrible April freeze? My yard suffered greatly that year!

As a second note to what ncrescue says above: daytime temperatures are just a part of the system as far as gardening goes. Plants are also paying attention to the amount of daylight. It doesn't do much good to plant early no matter what the temperatures are unless you are also going to string an extension cord and put lights over your baby plants to give them the long days they require to bloom. Its part of the whole mystery around the fact that you can plant tomatoes early and protect them or sow seeds the first week of May - but you'll be harvesting the best tasting tomatoes off of both plants at the same time! the early planted ones will have fruit that taste bland so you might as well plant thing at the proper times and not go by the daytime temperatures.

I'm afraid I have some damage this year myself. I do have some dead leaves on my Gardinia, and I know I have one palm that got pretty burned. I was out of town on a business trip with this last cold spell. I'm hoping my mulch piles helped protect some of my other young plants from last season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. On the looking forward to spring side, I did order all my summer veggie seeds tonight. Hopefully, I'm going to have one heck of a veggie garden this year!!!

I have seen it snow here in April so I am always nervous until we get well into May.