We’ve hit another mild spell in the weather. It was in the high 50′s to low 60′s on Monday (I say today, since I’ve yet to fall asleep ) Tomorrow (really “Today” Tuesday) it’s supposed to reach 63 degrees F. The low overnight tonigh should be down to 38, and that is so much nicer than 32 or thereabouts. It will be similar to this through Thursday, then back in the 40′s for highs, which if sunny out, are mild enough generally, in the back yard especially, where we get full sun all day. Our property is diagonally positioned so the sun rises at our back (when looking out the back door) left corner of the property (we have a straight-lined rectangular property.)

Our trees are all still too young to give any shade that amounts to much of anything. (We planted them in the front and back in Spring 2002) Our property was treeless, minus the one “weed tree” (what I called it before I knew what it was) that is on our SW property line at the point that our backyard fence meets the back of the front yard just behind the garage. It looked like an overgrown weird tree. I saw no glory in it that first year, then the second year as well. The third year we had a landscape designer come out to survey the property and draw up a plan. He asked some questions about it’s habits (that weedy tree) and he said it was a honey locust … that it had little white flowers in the Spring and a high fragrance … right? We said “No”. So well it was a Locust tree of some kind, but not a honey. So we thought.

After that, that tree grew more and more and finally turned into a lovely mid to late afternoon shade tree. Giving shade at the front West corner of the backyard. That hot sun plus that tree at least give a small space for the children to play in on afternoons.

We were in official drought the whole time we lived here, until 2003. In early 2003 we had enough rain. That weed tree BLOSSOMED! Whoa! It was the smell that made me notice it, never had it blossomed in our time living there. Tell tale things I’d learned before that blossom time were met with actual visual truth during the summer. The blossoms fertilized, green leather strips of seed pods were being formed and grew to long lengths. Autumn brought change to leaves, and the leaves all fell, and the seed pods began to dry out.

We had found traces of old seed pods in the yard the previous years, old ones from before we saw the house first in September of 1997. The mystery was solved, this tree DID produce them. It was a hard few years of drought. So the good rain we finally got gave good results. Enough good life to make a joyful blossoming tree. We had super thick pods on it this Autumn, and a few windy days blew them all off minus a few. Believe me, a decent blossom makes for massive pods which if not disposed of will be everywhere thickly for a long time.

It’s a tree I can appreciate, it grows fairly fast. And does give great shade, though it’s not a straight up and down tree, it usually has a few “trees” that sort of grow together in a clump, in it’s natural setting. It, of course, has thorns, big thorns. But it’s a great shader.

We planted 3 apple trees in March of 1998, and moved them Spring of 2003 before they started to blossom. We also planted several maple trees, Autumn Flame, October Glory, and Japanese Bloodgood. We had some sticks that we planted from “Arbor Day Foundation” (I call them sticks, they look like that, bare root sticks) Well one of them, only one, began to grow very well in 2002 so we moved it to nearer to the house, not knowing what it was, since I lost all ID of the seedlings. Well, all those are suppose to flower, but not so far. This tree is is incredible though, it was many inches shorter than me in Spring 2003 and is taller than me by several inches now. It has thorns too. It’s a nice thick, full tree.

We also now have two Paperbark Maples and a Weeping Willow. I checked several of these trees today, and the buds are getting rather prominent. We still have half of January, all of February, and half of March to get through before it’s nominally safe for the trees to start blooming. But there is no controling nature. So many mild spells are hopefully not going to spoil a beautiful spring KABOOM bloom this year.

I enjoy the temps warming though. This month is going fast, it’s the 13th already, and since it’s been rather sunny and not so bitter it seems like Spring is truly around the corner, but it’s really way to early even so. I’m still looking for nasty weather in the forcasts. I just checked and we have some below freezing temperature forcast for over a week away, no snow or anything though.

That’s what things are like mid-January. Just really odd.