Patience tressa. I know what you are going through because I am also. I think we tend to forget our friends back east who go through this every year. We are just lucky in that sense.
Most are saying March 15th and I am already in the starting gate chomping at the bit.

Here is a link that might be useful: My pond

Well, I already started! There is just so much to prune away before adding any new plants in would seem approprite. My plants are already showing signs of new growth. I need to pace myself because I can only compost so much of the prunings and have a limited amount of green waste cans.

We were the hottest spot IN THE NATION yesturday - the San Diego Wild Animal Park ( Located in Escondido) at 91 degrees!

Winter is done here. We moved right back into summer! No rain expected in the next week.

I've started to prune the Salvias, Roses and less tender plants... as you can see I live in the foothills outside of Fresno, zone 9. If you have plants like Pepper trees, Bouganvilla, Brugmansia, Manzanitas, etc. you'll need to wait a good long while to see what condition they're in and where live, new growth will appear.
If you live in an area that is warm during the day but still has nights below 32º then you must wait until the nights are consistently warmer.

How long do we have to wait for there to be a real winter!!?? i am sick of waiting for rain, it rained a little one time in January and that was it. Yes, the plants look horrible due to those few days of 32 degree weather, but heck, its never cloudy and it never rains. And the last 2 days have been about 89 degrees, i had to turn on my sprinklers once again... please FEBRUARY, dont let me down, let there be winter!

I finished pruning my bougainvillea over the weekend. I had started before the freeze -- it's a big one, ladder and saw required. (This year was the major pruning, I'll get away with lighter trims now for a few years.) I used to wait until the end of February, but often by then I would be cutting off new growth, so now I start in January.

Yes it's warm right now, but I remember last year we had a nice stretch like this in February followed by a very cold snap in March. So although I'm tidying up a bit, I'm not getting suckered into planting anything tender until late March at the earliest.

Heh, heh, skrip, be careful what you wish for....

Like Westelle, I've been pruning back roses, salvias and other hardy plants. Some of the deciduous early summer blooming perennials are beginning new growth, so i've been cutting them back. The Clematis buds are swelling and breaking already, so I started working on them. That took a whole day.
Haven't touched the Brugs, Banana, Heliconia or Iochroma yet. I'll wait til they show signs of growth in March or April.
We're supposed to get rain from Wed-Sun, so I've been planting a few things...mostly natives. They'll benefit from the soaking. I'm gonna try to get a few Clematis from last fall's buying spree planted too.

wanda

With the forecasted rains to hit today through at least Monday, I was worried about pruning my Salvias. I'd read somewhere that, due to their hollow stems, rain could get in there and cause rot. Did I read that wrong or...?

Otherwise, today I'm going to town on everything else that was frost-damaged (i.e., Cape honeysuckle, Lantana, chocolate mint Pelargonium, lemon verbena, Australian tree fern, butterfly bush...). :D

Brenda

I pruned my roses before the freeze. The citrus are burned but I will wait til the wether warms a little more. Some tropicals (Iochroma) have already releafed and I removed the damaged branches. The bougainvilleas are fust starting to show some swelling buds.

For all the tropicals that Wanda mentions, it doesn't hurt them to cut off the obviously dead foliage on things like bananas, Heliconias, Brugmansias, etc. The burnt foliage is not going to protect them from any further damage, and why keep looking at it!

For tender woody plants such as Iochroma, Tibouchina, Brugmansia, etc., it is also possible to cut back to live wood after doing the fingernail test to test for green cambium. For people that really got hit hard and had freeze damage of these plants down to the base of the shrub, it may ultimately be necessary to prune them way, way back, but this is the part that is harder to tell at this stage. In my opinion, it may be painful to have to cut back the plants to the ground, but new growth may well be better if this is done. In my own garden, I have already cut back Brugmansia 3 to 4 inches beyond frozen tips, and if we have more freezing weather after this warm up, new growth may well get frozen again without protection, but all the dead leaves left on would not have given it any additional protection anyway.

With some plants that are particularly prone to fungal infections when rains follow freezes, such as many palms, it is also a good idea to cut back to live growth to prevent spread of infection. It may also pay to cut back trees and shrubs with sun sensitive bark now to allow regrowth before the sun gets stronger, and I would suggest this for things like lemons and oranges. In any case, it will save these plants from expending alot of energy trying to regrow on freeze damaged portions of the plants, and reduce fungal infections as well. If we do get more freezes ahead, these plants should be covered if possible, because new soft growth is the most sensitive to freezing again. I would hold off on totally giving up on frozen large plants that are capable of regrowing from the roots, until late summer, as it can take into August or September for some things to regrow. Also, it doesn't make sense to fertilize anything tender until the frost season is past.