Yes, lol, warm weather has arrived. Been here for the last three to four weeks. Temps from 80 to 95F. It's not even summer yet! This weekend said to be 100! So this means summer temps to be around 110F. Most plants love it in the shade. Cactus can tolerate full sun. My problem is that I like to water them to cool them off. K

Spring is getting closer and closer. Will be 74 tomorrow! It does not mean we are out of the woods yet, though "green stuff" is getting bigger and richer. Every day there is something new poking thru the soil, and I feel like a kid discovering a new treat. Daffs are gorgeous, hyacinths, crocuses, freshness, birds, - I love it all! Possibility and promise of spring is in everything. Of course there is also a possibility of hard frost till April 15th (like last year). Being an optimist as I am, I choose to enjoy this moment.

Moni, It sounds like y'all had such a lovely day. Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice here in Love County, and then I think the rest of the week our weather will go downhill a little more every day. Jay, I am so ready, too. A dry, fairly warm February would be a good indicator for me of an early spring, so that's what I'm hoping for. We haven't had an early spring here (early enough I could transplant tomatoes early instead of on-time or late) since 2005 or 2006. I wonder where the geese went? We have had oodles more birds show up here in the last week, but not a whole lot of geese. There are so many deer coming here to feed at night, that our property is a mass of tracks from every direction. The big deer keep pushing the small ones away from the food at night, so one little one comes to eat every morning or afternoon when no other deer are here. I put out some deer corn, sunflower seeds and henscratch for him and he must stand in the woods and wait for me because by the time I get back to the house, he's already out behind the barn eating. He has me very well-trained. I hate to see a deer eating plants in my yard during the growing season, but in the winter, I can't stand to see them skinny and starving so I feed them. The doves have eaten so much during the spell of cold weather we just had with 3" of ice/snow that they look obese. I told them I'm cutting back their rations this week while the weather is somewhat nicer. Dawn

Good morning Dawn, Doesn't the cooler weather feel nice this morning. I know what you mean about it being hard to hold back on planting warm season items this early in the year. These days, most of the lower temps seem mild like they would be perfect for such plantings, and the higher end temps that are happening every now and then, seem to remind of the potential for the 95 degree F. and above temps to easily return too early. It was only almost four spring times ago, when I planted 13 Loblolly trees and 12 Foster #4 Holly along the back farmer's fenceline of a vacant residential lot we had recently purchased back then. I did this planting in 85 degree temps. But for the first two days of the very next week the daily high temps rose to 102 degrees F. Even though I transported water to the then newly planted trees almost daily at that time, many of them still died. Events like that heightens my awareness of the need for getting the spring plantings in the ground soon enough for them to establish a good root system. With temps like we have been seeing this week, planting bare root and warm season items seem perfect right now. Still, it is all too easy to remember last spring's second week in April, days of overnight freezes when during one of those days the temps dropping to 27 degrees F. In the last few years it seems the Northeast OK weather patterns have generally set up in a manner, which makes Spring time planting much less preferable than early Fall planting times. Fall is also most likely a much safer planting time for trees and shrubs in southern OK, Especially if the spring season has advanced so fast, and is giving indications that the Summer heat up is not too far away. At least that is what I think of when reading the reports on the items your area is already seeing leafed out and blooming. Of course you indicated your area is in a lower microclimate, so your fast heat up extreme potentials might be a lot less problematic compared to the frosts, which can so easily settle into such low elevated mircroclimate areas. My Arborvitae 'Emerald' which is suffering was planted late last spring, at the same time another one was planted on the opposite end of my front yard. That other one has grown twice as fast and currently is very green. The soil in the northwest corner of our lot, where the A E is suffering, has less deep soil moisture; so when the tree stresses from too dry of soil, it has a tougher time handling wind stressers. Both these evergreen trees receive full midday and afternoon Sun. but I think the one growing on the Southwest corner might also get some morning shade, whereas the one on the other end of our lot does not. Shrub roses and some Tea roses I planted, at the same time, just South of the suffering A E died very quickly. Where as the same kind of roses I planted just south of the other A E, which is doing well, have survived and are establishing nicely. I started a slow sprinkler for my suffering A E and Paperbark Maple, and when looking at the ground was surprised to see that the soil appeared to still have some moisture. So I am not really certain why in that corner of the yard every thing I have planted there seems to have such a hard time surviving. Maybe it is a simple matter of my needing to be more timely when I water that area, or maybe there are other subsurface factors, which I am not aware of, at play in this area of the yard,