I live in Orange County. Infrequently we will get some frosts that brown the fronds of tree ferns and turn non-hardy aloes into mush. But I don't recall my Grewias showing any damage at all.

Thank you all! My cookies are Swedish, too, colleenoz! All the cookies I make for Christmas are either Swedish or Danish, handed down from my Danish grandmother (who married a Swede). Your recipe is probably just like mine. With equal amounts finely ground nuts and flour, they break apart in your mouth in a flurry of tender texture and flavor. For the first time ever, we had problems with the recipe, which is why they didn’t all get baked. We didn’t know whether to blame the new oven (which was a problem for pretty much everything) or a difference in the dough. I think maybe both. Instead of the normal 20 minutes at 350 to get slightly brown on the bottom, they took 40 minutes plus. Then, they shattered when trying to roll them in powdered sugar. I’m not good at analyzing a problem and knowing how to fix it. We used to buy the pecans pre-ground. The nut store we bought them at went out of business. We bought a 3 lb bag of whole pecans and ground them ourselves in the food processor. Last year went fine. This year the dough seemed too moist. We had a problem even forming the balls, then they shattered as I wrote above. I was in the process of adding more flour to compensate, and doing test bakes, when I decided it was time to pull the plug and stop baking. I think the pecans must have been very fresh, and were too moist. We ground them a couple of days ahead and I should have turned them and let them dry a bit, instead of covering the bowl. I noticed the ground pecans were moist, but I didn’t do anything with the knowledge. The pecan meal I used to buy pre-ground was much drier. Either that or leave out the 3 T of water the recipe calls for.

Gary, glad to hear you came through in good shape. It may be a cold winter, given that we haven't seen February yet! I clearly need to invest in new thermometers, if only so I know how my 'fridge and freezer are doing. Even though the thermometers are inaccurate, I think I can estimate that the temperature under the haphazardly tarped tangerine was only 1-2 degrees warmer at best. I think one big advantage of tarps is they hold in the humidity and that helps keep the tree warm because of the release of heat from the moisture as it freezes...like misting a citrus grove. I do my best to try to flare the tarp out over the ground below the tree and weigh it down with lumber or bricks. Sometimes I wonder if my efforts are futile though on really windy nights and for trees that are just too big to seal up good....like the tangerine. I'll see if I can photograph the tangerine branches that were outside the tarp and compare with those that were covered. Even though there were LOTS of openings, the tarped parts of the tree looked significantly healthier yesterday. I also have a blood orange I essentially only was able to shield the north side....will be interesting to see how it looks in a few days.

Yeah, that's okay.