Not necessarly. Thought my Spring had arrive one April. 5 in So. Calif. and went on to my convention without a worry, well it hailed on April 6 and ruined every plant that I had left uncovered. It is not over until it is over. Listen to the weather news every night. It different iin every zone location also different every year. We have had a very rough Winter, nothing was the same as in the past years. We all got caught w/unexpected weather this past year. The plants also.

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

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,

Oh, I meant that he is a garden widower. lol. You got the general drift of my message anyhow. Today's new discovery? Ticks. I'm not happy about that. There was a bad wildfire at the very farthest northwest corner of our county today. I think that in all, about 12-15 VFDs from 3 different counties responded. We are so far south that we weren't paged to go out, and I was relieved about that, because I didn't want to leave my garden. Fire danger remains high for the next few days, so y'all watch out, and report smoke and flames to 9-1-1. I'm keeping my fingers crossed I'll get to stay in the garden tomorrow and Wednesday, but y'all know I'll go if we get paged out to anything major. Our skies still are full of smoke due to all the ranchers burning off their pastures. I'll be glad when we green up enough that the prescribed burning ends because my eyes get very irritated from constant smoke exposure. stockergal, That's a lot of loads to move by hand. Why not make it easy on yourself and use some of that equipment?? I do like to do things by hand too, though, and I leave the usage of all the mechanical equipment to Tim and Chris as much as possible. I hope that line of storms misses y'all. It would be hard to work outdoors tomorrow if you get too much rain tonight. One current issue, at least in our county, is that fire brush trucks are getting stuck in the mud while attempting to fight wildland fires, and that can be dangerous (if fire is moving towards them) and it also ties up equipment which means there's fewer brush rigs stopping the fire. I heard at least 4 trucks get stuck in the mud at today's fire. Some kind rancher came out with his tractor and pulled those fire trucks out of the mud. Carol, Some days I just skip eating or drinking if it means I have to walk up to the house from the garden. Isn't that awful? It catches up with me at the end of the day when I finally go into the house and am as hungry as a bear. I do start out the day with a 32 oz. bottle of water that I carry out to the garden with me, so I generally drink enough that I don't get dehydrated. I'm glad I'm not the only one who slacks off on housework and cooking during planting season. I looked at my kitchen floor today, thought about the rain in the forecast, and decided to wait and mop the floor tomorrow. Why mop it today if we are going to wake up with fresh mud tomorrow? I'm just being efficient, you know. I try not to do this, but I find myself resenting anything that takes me out of the garden on a day I am planting something. It doesn't hurt so much to leave if I'm just weeding and mulching or whatever, but I hate to stop planting. It is an obsession. The whole time I am away from the garden, I am thinking about all the planting I could be getting done if I was home. Is that a sickness? If it is, I don't want to be cured. Dawn