I have 5 large clumps of Pampas grass and at least one of them is already putting up a seed head. I had no idea that people grew Ironweed.

Yes, and the native plants seem more confused than the others. Our goldenrod is almost 6' tall but hasn't bloomed yet. Still, with it being that tall, I suspect it is ahead of itself and will bloom early. The native blackberries bloomed, fruited and finished up incredibly early. The sand plums (we have the ones that mature to yellow, not red) were ripe 4-6 weeks early, which I sort of did expect since they bloomed about a month early. The Texas Lantana has bloomed, set seed, and acts like it thinks its work is done. The native milkweeds in the fields have bloomed and gone to seed already, and we haven't even seen that many monarchs yet. The clasping-leaf coneflowers in the field that usually bloom in July-August are now blooming. The liatris aren't yet, but I need to look at them closely to see if they're getting ready to. The sumac looks like it is July or August already. The prickly pear cacti bloomed early. The rough-leaved dogwood bloomed early. I could go on and on.

My western ironweed hasn't bloomed yet, but it is close to blooming. I feel like I fell asleep in late April and woke up in late July. What's going to remain to bloom in the late summer and early autumn months? Even spring and summer wildflowers have been a bit ahead of themselves. So have many veggies and herbs. I have complained that my veggies have been running full speed ahead and I can't catch up for the last 2 or 3 months. Cool-season veggies finished up early, and all my onions were ready at virtually the same time. I grow a wide variety so they will mature more slowly over a period of a couple of months. Nope. About 2/3s were done all at the same time, and then the others that I should be harvesting in July are done now.

We were very warm very early down here, so everything started early. Then, we got a big cooldown and plentiful rain in May. That cool spell made cool-season wildflowers that already were finishing up put out big new flushes of blooms which now are roasting in the heat and won't last long. It is just bizarre.

It has affected animals too, by the way. The baby cottontails were really early this year, and we have had baby chicks being born here since early February, and just had 5 more hatch out over the weekend. Coyotes are out hunting in our front yard in the middle of the day (which might be related to all the cottontails and chicks, but why in the daylight hours and not at night?). I've never seen such strange behavior on the part of plants, animals and even insects. All the heat-loving insects arrived in March or April, so at this point, the spider mites have reached a population of about 3 billion mites per plant. The June bugs arrived in late January or early February, which I did think was a clue we were in for an odd year. I want a do-over with the proper weather and proper plant, animal and insect behavior because 2016 has been too strange.

The one that nearly knocked me over and I simply could not believe my eyes was the Indian Grass. At the History Center where they have planted large swaths of native prairie plants and grasses it was tall and fully blooming in May-----MAY!!! I only have 2 plants but they are sending up stalks, a bit later than those but still its strange. I do a lot of planting with fall and winter interest in mind. Fall is my favorite season especially because of the prairie grasses, most especially the little bluestem, but this is way too early. The late summer/fall afternoon rays of sunlight are missing if you know what I mean-- the light is all wrong.

That is interesting about the animals. It really didn't seem like a strange year for weather to me, not all that strange anyway. My Lantana Horrida's and Camara's are going to seed and greened up really early this year too. The unknown orange one I have was the earliest of all of them and it started blooming about the time it typically starts putting out leaves this year. Its a wide, low growing type that doesn't put out a lot of seed but the ones it puts out come true to color and form. I got the cutting from a plant on Paseo up the street. It never stops blooming all season and I love it.

Silver Ironweed is a gorgeous plant, silver foliage topped with purple. I grow a lot of plants that aren't really typical garden plants and have to jump through hoops to find some of them. I wish the nursery's around here catered more toward natives. We have some really nice ones in Oklahoma.

Oh, I just thought of another one. My perennial Snakeweed is blooming. It usually blooms at the same time as the Rabbit Bush. Fall color stuff. Really I wonder too.....what will it be like come fall? What will be left?

I'm seeing grasses all over town in full bloom...and my liatris pycnostachys will be in bloom in a week or two. The salvia azurea opened last week.

All my plants seem to be on schedule. Nothing unusually early. I have seen lots of baby bunnies but that's about it. I don't know what fall will bring if the fall bloomers are already blooming??. Keep us posted texasranger2.

Dang. I missed our field trip to the History Center in May because I had to work on a project. Wish I could have seen the plants and grasses in bloom. I do have some Little Bluestem planted in a fence row (by our rural "hell strip") that has been gone to seed for a couple of weeks.

I was just looking at my lantana last week and thinking, "This stuff is really blooming and really soon it's going to go to seed. Then what'll I have flowering?" I also thought about how many plantings I have from one small Wal-Mart purchase shortly after we moved here and how I hoped it would grow. Those suckers are everywhere now. This morning, I noticed they were developing seed/drupe.

Oddly, crepe myrtles seem to be slightly delayed, but they'll probably be right on time.

Sandplum, the History Center was a disappointment this year. In the beginning it was well kept and nicely planted but now there are a lot of empty spots and weeds are really creeping in among some of the grasses. Originally they had a large rock hill covered in native grasses that glowed in late afternoon sun. For some reason I cannot even begin to fathom, they killed the grasses. I was actually angry when I saw it because it had served as such an inspiration to me on my own landscape. Still, on the bright side, there are many native plants, shrubs and trees and I stop by periodically to see whats blooming. They did have some really nice large specimens of Baptista that had lots of huge seedpods.

Here's some pictures I shot a couple years ago.

The rock hill in fall, late afternoon sun before they scalped it. This doesn't do it justice but you get the idea.