Mother Nature is messing with us again

She fooled the imports, now she’s messin’ with the natives. Shown above are white oak, miners lettuce, and stinging nettles. Normally they wait for springtime before they appear with new foliage. Right now we are exactly one day into winter!

The flowering quince and lemon tree aren’t native, so they can be fooled into thinking that when there’s abundant rain and sunlight and warm weather it’s time to put out new leaves and maybe even flowers.

Before the recent week-long rain siege came to California, we were finishing up a wood-splitting marathon down the road a ways. I noticed new leaves sprouting on a huge old white oak tree; it was a major abundance of leaves, too.

Are we going to get the usual frosty mornings this winter? We’ve had just one morning that iced up a bowl of water. Apple trees require a period of very cold weather in order to produce fruit. Luckily we don’t have apple trees, so take that Mother Nature!