My physostegia virginiana is a month early as well. Spring was early here so they're off schedule? The heat & drought have caused the landscape to resemble August in northern Virginia.

I'm rather enjoying the earliness of some things. My ageratum, I never get to see until September. Blooming nonstop since May(?) Early, whatever time it started. Same with my 'Heavenly Blue' MG. Never get to see them until the season is almost completely done. I'll take it. Wait, those are annuals. Hm, the perennials, same season length, just earlier. Columbines and Rose campion come to mind.

I was hugely flummoxed by early dahlias. Not only was I surprised to see bloom after a long and cold, wet spring, I had always believed that daylight (or darkness, to be pedantic) was the main trigger for flowering growth...but it would seem that plants are as confused as people are, regarding the rapid climatic changes currently upon us. I am looking at tomatoes which are just on the turn to ripening...and never, in my life, have I eaten a red tomato before the third week of July, no matter what variety...so who knows anymore? Not me, that's for sure.

Well, I guess it's everywhere. Everything is so strange. Everywhere.

Yes, indeed, Marie. I've watched this part of WV change from a cold zone 5A in the 1950s to mostly zone 7A. We used to have summers that never needed air conditioning, rarely getting above 85, with frost coming around Sept 15 and taking us into long, beautiful fall weather followed by real winter, lots of snow with nighttime temperatures well below zero and daytime temps often not getting out of the teens.

Now summers are increasingly in the high 80s/low 90s and much more humid and we often don't get frost at all with summer level heat hanging on until we finally get a hard freeze sometime in Nov. Pretty much no snow at all in winter and it's rare for even nighttime temperatures to get into the teens.

It's just awful.

Oh, I meant 1970s--not 1950s. I wasn't in WV in the 1950s, though from what I've heard from old timers, it was even colder then.

Yes, same, lobelia cardinalis trying to bloom (got some first year seedlings that are even trying), new england asters some are blooming some are not, physostegia virginica in bloom or spiking.

Hard to know what we'll have left for the late summer/early fall bloom. Of course, the grasses will still look good.

I scrutinized my asters and mums yesterday and they don't look precocious.

Noticed today the first blue puff of Conoclinium coelestinum (false ageratum)...yep, at least a month earlier than normal.

The catalpa worms have appeared... I don't expect to see them before August. It's gonna be tough for those trees to be stripped so early.

I feel like the garden is rushing to bloom before it gets any hotter. the late summer garden might be a sad one this year.

Catalpa, here quickly puts on new leaves after a big feast.

As to general consensus, I think we (naturalist types) are starting to preach adaptation of plants from a zone farther S & W (as adaptation to climate warming and drying). So, you're not alone in your ideas.

Ah, yes, rouge. And not just our patience.

Ill be camping in your garden, Rouge, while we look for property to buy!

If you come north of the border Marie, for sure you are welcome to visit 🙂

Sigh. Is there no where on the internet that I can go without talk of politics?

I say it was a wee bit subtle.