Please, somebody explain this to me. I’m confused, the camellias are confused. The redbuds and dogwoods are totally out of whack. I’m hoping that things settle down and return to normal sooner than later, but I’m not taking any bets.

It’s hot out there! At least for March, it is. Temperatures were oddly warm through the winter, but March is past odd, way past. There’ve been warm spells in March before, lots of them, but for a few days at a stretch, not for three weeks. Next week’s forecast is for cold weather, only ten degrees above the normal high.

‘Winter’s Interlude’ camellia (above) is supposed to flower sometime in November, but it rarely does in my garden. In most years freezing temperatures in January kill the flower buds so I don’t get any blooms at all, but this year there were a few flowers consistently through the warm days in January, which was nice, but the blooms were quickly damaged by cold night time temperatures. The flowers stopped by mid February when there was a stretch of nearly average winter cold, and I figured that’s the end, the flower buds will be damaged.

Wrong again. Today ‘Winter’s Interlude’ is in full bloom, the best I’ve ever seen it, and only five months late. By comparison the April blooming hybrids are right on time, though they’re several weeks earlier than normal.

A few buds on ‘April Dawn’ (above) were ready to open at the start of March, but they were brown around the edges from frost and the blooms that opened were contorted and damaged. Thankfully, they faded quickly, but as warm temperatures arrived all of the April series hybrids (‘April Snow’, below) have flowered splendidly.

There’s so much blooming in the garden now that it’s a challenge to write about them before they fade. But, I’ll be back in a few days with more,  lots more!