Sorry to hear that. The last 2 or 3 years we've had almost summer like winters only to be slammed by several hard frosts in spring. Nothing was blooming when it should have and everything was blooming when it shouldn't only to be killed off by freezing temps. This year has been a beautiful normal spring for the most part and I'm so thankful. Lord willing you'll have a beautiful summer with lots of flowers!

Weather is always so unpredictable. We just had yet another round of thunderstorms and flooding. I live in terror of everything looking good and a late frost mid-April, which has happened here before.

I hope the frost doesn't kill all the fruit tree blossoms. Maybe some tight buds will survive. Strawberries are pretty hardy aren't they? Ours have green leaves all winter.

Nell

We didn't get the heavy frost, although it was close to 32 degrees. Tuesday is supposed to be 23. Monday morning is supposed to be below freezing, too. I'm sick of this. I'll settle for lows in the low 40's. Just enough of the freezes.

Sorry about the frosts. This week we had a huge hailstorm, three inches of snow, and then another powdering this morning. I want spring! Winter does not seem to want to let go!
CMK

yeah, I hear you! We have a Winter Weather Advisory for Sat PM through Sun PM. Calling for 4-6 inches of snow and wind too! Enough already! I want to get out in the gardens and start spring clean up, but don't want to uncover yet with this weather.

The weatherman is promising us a couple of nice days next week, monday 59, tuesday 64, wednesday 60, then the temp drops again. I say promises, promises, promises LOL. I remember waking up to over a foot of snow April 17th last year.
I'm planning to spend these 3 days in the garden, making hay while the sun shines. 'IF' this comes about it will be the first real inkling we've had spring is here.

Annette

Cold Front moving down into Oklahoma.
Hard Freeze Warning!

Monday night: 30 degrees...warming back up into the high 50s Tuesday day.

Tuesday night:
20+ degrees...warming back up into the mid 60s.

Then after killing everything and ruing this year's fruit crop...again...it will be nice the rest of the week.

SWELL.

~Annie

I can handle steady cold from October through Mid May as long as it stays cold all that time with no warm up teases to me or the plants, trees or shrubs, for all the reasons listed by all of you above. The grass seed I planted is coming up in places and all the hollyhock seeds are becoming seedlings now so it just figures that we are about to be hit with our SECOND BLIZZARD THIS WEEK !! Freezing rain first, of course. Then snow in excess of 14" and just for good measure Mother Nature is planning sustained winds at 35-45 mph and gusts to 60 mph! We spent four hours tonight bedding and feeding cattle, feeding horses, putting the plow on one of the tractors, laying in more dry straw for the chickens etc. etc. etc. One thing about it though, this snow is the best source of nitrogen and moisture on earth for the fields and the winter wheat is growing gangbusters between melt downs! Stay warm everyone, and throw those leaves back on the beds!

MeMo

My plants and trees would need tents to protect them because of their size. Leaf mulch will probably be enough to save the larkspurs and tiny seedlings, perhaps, but the hollyhocks are already 2-3 ft. tall. The roses are fully leafed out and several have buds beginning to show color. The spring-blooming roses will not rebloom until next year and the fruit on my trees will likely not survive those temps. I will put plastic pots and buckets over the cabbages and parsley and over the smaller Asiatic lilies, but my tiger Lilies are too big for that. Maybe a sheet will help, if I shove sticks into the ground to keep form tents. I have Bellflowers up 4 inches tall. The dayliles and irises will freeze burn. The daylilies may bounce back, but if the irises get burned too badly, that will ruin them for this year, I am afraid. I am going to drape a sheet over the sweet peas. My little Purple Sand Cherry is blooming and the Brown Turkey fig has leaf buds. The cannas will come back up. I have hostas almost to full size now and my poor Peonies are 3 feet tall and budding. New leaves on the maples and willows and everything else. Will it kill back the Lilies of the Valley? Probably unless I can cover those as well. The Cheddar Pinks have buds and ready to open any day. The Black and Blue salvias and other perennial salvias are up and a good 8 inches tall or taller. I can put pillow cases over some things and anchor them with rocks. Maybe I have enough straw to cover all of those. I can cover the smaller things with leaves and straw and hope for the best. It is a lot of work. I don't know if I can get it all done. The Lady Banks is covered in buds with some blooms open and the Redbud trees in full bloom still. The Lilacs are all fulled budded with the buds on the topmost branches opened halfway and beautiful. The most flowers they've had in years. It just makes me sick. I can't cover them.
I'll have to work fast and furious because I won't be able to cover them until it cools down and then during the day on Sunday. Sunday night I will have to do a repeat. I am not sure I am up to it, to tell you the truth!
I walked around out in the yard today, admiring the beauty it has attained this year and rather proud of all my accomplishments in spite of my infirmities. I have done a lot of revamping beds and adding new ones, plus weeding like I haven't done in several years and planting new things. Finally starting to look more like I like I dreamed it could look. I thought how I wished that my camera weren't dead so that I could have taken some pictures of it. It is sad to think how much of it will be spoiled by this late hard freeze.
The late freezes are not so uncommon in Okie-in fact, they are very common. Winter warm or even hot days are not uncommon either, but one or two days, not two weeks or longer!The winter warms-ups every winter and early spring in the past several years have been getting longer and longer, and warmer and warmer. THAT is the problem. It warms the soil enough that the plants & trees respond as if it were spring.
Hopefully it won't do as much damage as I fear.
All I can do will be done and that's all I can do.
Que sera, sera.

~Annie

Annie is right; it is not the cold snaps, but the out-of-season warm weather that causes things to be 2-3 weeks advanced........then the freezes. We had the same thing in 2007.

I just read my garden club newsletter and it seems I'm not the only one who has noticed we are slowly losing what we once called spring, the last few springs have been terrible. Over 60's have been talking about the winter we've just had, none have seen one in their lifetime to equal it. If this is the way it's going to be in the future it's going to be a whole new ball game as to the way we garden and what we can grow here.

Annette

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.
It is sad that Nature will play such tricks with us poor mortals.
Nathaniel Hawthorn

We are supposed to get 20-degree temps Tues. night and near freezing Wed. night too. I'm so disappointed, I have hostas up, hydrangeas leafing out, azaleas with huge buds, etc. I'll probably cover up some of my favorites, but won't be able to do them all ~sigh~ I agree with you, springtime in recent years is different than it used to be. Not because we get freezes in April, but because of the unseasonably warm temps which fool the plants into sprouting early.
Vicki

I just came in from watering. Ugh. What a dry spring. If his follows the pattern of the past four years, we will have a cool, wet summer...no okra...no tomatoes...or darn few.
I hope not.

I found several irises with bloom buds about to open. I found the June Peach is covered in little peaches, some already showing red color. I don't know if I can cover it with a bed sheet or not, but am going to try.

Everything looks so terrific...so full of promise. (sigh)
Like you Vicki, I will just have to choose a few of my favorites to cover. I think I better make a list of the most important ones...the ones that won't bloom again until next year...and cover them. Too many to try covering them all.

The one thing that will help is that the cold temps (here) will not get down below freezing until almost dawn (so they are saying), and then day temps will bounce back up to warm, spring temps during the day, both days. That being the case, things might not get too damaged.
I am hopeful.

Well, gotta go get my shower. We have a gig tonight and I HAVE to LOOK my BEST!
Later...
~Annie

Funky Spring weather here. It's been a good week, a couple of days in the double digits - that in the 50's in the US. The peepers were peeping. 6C today, but a cold wind. Mossies have woken up - downside of living in a cedar bog. The kicker is, it's Snowing!!!! Argghhh!!!

Nancy.