Yes. I just went out and smelled it in the rain. Kinda sweet. I love Utah!

Quercus michauxii sapling.

20 degree windshield middle of the day, middle of April.

Bill, usually I strike gold this time of year picking up the early stock. Nurseries are barren! Instead I had a transplant fail.

Hard to imagine our average last frost is only 4 weeks away.

We've missed 3 major storms that went south of us over the last few weeks but still have plenty of snow and cold around here. I'm supposed to go to a Twins game in Mpls. tomorrow but it's not looking good. Mpls. is supposed to get 6"-12" today & tonight. The new outdoor stadium is not working as expected. :-)

Last year, I was digging trees in my yard that settled, that was by the end of March! Hard to believe.

We had the coldest March for 20-30 years, but after that it turned around completely and it's really nice outside now. 60F daytime and no frost to be seen. Trees should start to leaf out any day now.

I wonder where April will fall in the record books.

It will normalize somewhat over the next couple weeks but as of now its the coldest April since record keeping over 100 years ago.

Interesting hairmetal, certainly oaks around here are doing nothing yet. Forsythia & daffodils are blooming tho. About 1.5" cold rain overnite here.

I feel like we had the worst winter snowstorm in a few years yesterday!

after watching the news with people dealing with tornadoes, mudslides and wildfires I actually felt grateful for this minor inconvenience.

definitely no buds to report yet. In fact I haven't seen any spring bulbs popping up yet!

A few from around my yard:

Cercis canadensis. Third year from seed.

Metasequoia. It lost its leader last summer, it just randomly died back. There is a live bud right where I cut it, I’m guessing it might’ve been a cicada because there was a slit in it that looked like an oviposit.

Quercus x bebbiana

Quercus x schuettei

Acer buergerianum.

Quercus x sternbergii, which doesn’t like to make a terminal bud for some reason.

Thanks hair. Dark gray skies, barely above freezing & a few snow showers here right now.....

Only 38 here.

Hair, something I've done before is let the redbud flowers just begin to open, pick some & sprinkle on a salad. They taste like peas. Of course you'd prb'ly want to use some other redbud.....

Won't be long now.

Temps are rising and glaciers receding. :-) At least it will be more bearable with temps above freezing, night and day. Still snow on the ground but amazing how fast it disappears once the sun starts peaking out. I noticed water soaking into the ground as the snow melts so not much frost and not very deep.

I can finally see the light!

in the meantime there is more snow on the ground after 3 days in April than any point this whole winter!

whaas,

We dodged the bullet again today, thank goodness. The snow went south of us for the 5th time now.

I looked at my eastern hemlock and it looks a little beat up. There's a few branch tips at the top of the tree and some scattered needles that have went brown. Some only half the needle at the tip with the rest of the needle toward the stem still green.

It's been a true Z3 winter this year, extreme cold with snow, extreme cold with little snow, even some extreme winds and loooong. But I don't think the tree is badly damaged, only time will tell for sure. If it fails, at least I'll know it's not a tree for around here.

Yesterday:

Not too bad! hemlocks have always been a struggle for me. I only got a few dwarfs to thrive and certainly threw a few out.

weather forecast looks fantastic for us as well next week!

Thanks for that info! I won't feel too bad now if I can't make them work. When you say 'struggle' do you mean winter damage? Or is something else the problem?

I think its a combo of winter wind & sandy/loam alkaline soil. I must admit I never tried the species just many cultivars with white and yellow tissues. But had issues with green as well.

Looks like the starving, dying songbirds are praising the upcoming weather as well.

This was before the dumping we had last night too!

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2018/04/17/robins-purple-martins-and-other-birds-peril-weekend-snowstorm/524898002/

Thanks!

Our birds came early too but haven't had to deal with new snow. We saw a robin back on March 15th but only the one. Birds usually know when it's time but maybe sometimes it just takes them by surprise. Every so often a severe storm will kill flocks of birds, or so I've heard.

Today the snow has almost disappeared except the big piles. I saw several White (Tundra?) Swans in the lake by Brainerd today, the Canadian geese are everywhere and a pair of Trumpeter Swans flew over the highway in front of me on my way home. Spring has sprung. :-)

Rhododendron King George is considered a tree when mature. Here's one of mine with a friend for scale. I've been pruning it to show it as a tree rather than a large bush. The smaller rhododendrons are branches that have rooted. I may be able to transplant a few. The trees behind it are Cercidiphyllum magnificum. They need to be thinned. (Katsura)

Today

Last April was very warm. This one...not so much. Same tree, same date, one year apart.

Same thing here, hair. I keep looking at pics from this time last year (mostly looking at pics of my children) and I'm like " wow look how pretty xxxx tree looks!" Then I go out in the yard to see it in person and it is at least 2 weeks behind the pic >=(

My Q. michauxii sapling (grown from the county champion tree in Columbia, MD) looks like this now.

I can't even tell how far behind we are. My maple just bloomed yesterday and Saucer Mags are looking like they are want to start blooming. They might escape the threat of frost altogether! I can't say I've seen Forsythia blooming yet. I think I saw some tulips coming up.

People are saying its May next week but outside says otherwise.

My swamp whites are actually BEHIND yours, hair! Wow...

We’re looking at several days in the 80s next week, after a halfway decent rain tomorrow morning. I think we will see a lot of advancement in the next 7 to 10 days.

With the exception of maybe a tiny bit tonight it hasn't rained this month!

1.3" in snow precip. Odd thing is that NOAA reports almost 4" of precip.

We might get some of those low 70s next week. Things should get a little boost at that point.

Rhubarb's up! :0)

Couple snow flurries on the Garrett Co (west MD) highway cam today. Stuff is getting going here tho. Color hue of redbuds finally showing. Saw a few serviceberries blooming too.

Illinois is way ahead of me here in west MD......

Quercus michauxii. F***ING DEER! Useless giant rats.

Things are chugging along pretty well here. It’s 92° right now. Of course, a deer just denuded everything four feet or lower in my front yard.

92 is too hot. Especially for early may. geez

Fort McNair doing its thing

Flowers are about 80% open

Crabapple, buckeye, chokecherry with new leaves. Weeping silver birch, mountain ash, bigtooth maple and red oak very close. norther pin oak and bur oak not close. Sienna glen maple 90 % dead

My bur oak has a little swelling of the buds. White birch buds beginning to open, soft maples, leaves starting to open. Lindens and Ash, showing nothing at all so far. Poplar leaves opening. Conifer buds swelling. June berries blooming. Pussy willows about done. :-) Rain predicted Tuesday. A good soaker would change everything.

Having a bad deer-time, hair.... Take 1 egg per gallon water, mix well & pour in a pump-sprayer and spray all the green foliage. Works for me, but rain washes it off....

Things are still far behind here. Saucer Magnolia and even forsythias are blooming. I have open exposed land with Sandy loam soil so it warms up quicker than a lot of areas.

pink flair cherry and autumn splendor buckeye

Maryland drenched w/rain recently -- but May is the wettest month, at least here in west MD. This is the latest weekly rainfall -- rain moving east-southeast along nearly stationary front:

Three trees that are the latest to leaf out/show signs of life here are lindens, honey locust and Kentucky coffee tree. Everything else has swelling buds or is leafed out including ashes and burr oak.

Beng, May is second-wettest here. July beats it by about 0.2”. We have managed to not get a direct hit by any of the rounds of storms this week, and are at barely 1.5” so far this month (almost all has fallen since Saturday), but more to come.

Everything is looking good here considering the late start. With snow melt and 0.6" rain last week, most all buds have leafed out. But, it's getting dry fast with the arrival of hot windy and sunny weather. I've already watered some of my moisture loving trees like balsam fir, white birch and some spruce that were transplanted last year.

Friday is our next chance of rain although a renegade thunderstorm could happen anytime the weather gets hot.