I can recall motorcycling in south Texas and loving the scents of spring there. You are way ahead of us this year. Feb here was deep freeze.
I’ve definitely noticed some sweet aromas in the air for the past few weeks. I think it has been oak pollen. Last month the mountain laurel was fragrant (it’s always described as smelling like artificial grape flavor). On Saturday after a brief and, thankfully, not-too-damaging hail storm, the air was positively tangy. I think it was bruised cedar, rosemary and Mexican oregano. The cedar is invasive all over our land, and the herbs are huge shrubs in our landscaping. It was a beautiful smell in the post-storm air.
We certainly didn’t have the cold February you had, but it means that we won’t have any peaches or cherries this year. Three days of freeze in March froze our small fruits, and I was even worried about whether there was too much leaf damage on the peach. It seems to have recovered nicely. (We only had a few peaches last year and no cherries because of squirrels, but this year there are none left to try to protect.)
Last year I really did not understand that despite the early and late frost dates there isn’t a nice, long growing season in this part of Texas. It’s simply too hot in summer, and plants hunker down for self-preservation and nothing more. It’s apparently two shortish growing seasons in spring and fall. I’m doing my best to get my plants growing and producing sooner rather than later because the days are heating up, though the nights can still be cool on occasion, and it goes against all my previous gardening experience to rush to get plants in the ground.
My six-year-old daughter is really delighting in the buds, blossoms, and tiny fruits she finds. She delighted me the other night by seeing that a cucumber tendril had wound itself tight around the wire and exclaiming, “Mommy, the cucumber’s tendrils are getting more muscles every day!”
She’s also very proud of “her” baby tomatoes and peppers.
Part of moving our garden area this year involved relocating our blueberries. We put them in an unused bed in our backyard that had unfortunately started growing a lush crop of poison hemlock earlier this spring. Moving the plants wasn’t too hard, but we also needed to disassemble and reassemble “the cube” my husband had built last year. He added a door last weekend, and now the bird netting is up, but I have easy access to the plants to water and to harvest in a month or two. (Let’s just hope the squirrels aren’t voracious enough to chew their way inside.)
I know it’s starting to warm up in other areas of the country now, too. I’m looking forward to seeing what other folks are up to this year.