I was thinking last night how impatient I am for mother nature to hurry up and give us weather warm enough to get outside and dig in the dirt. I don’t know why I am more impatient this year except for the fact that this winter has been more strange than usual.

In my neck of the woods, northwest alabama zone 7, we enjoy moderate winter weather most of the time. The average daytime high in the winter months is in the 50’s with nightime temperatures in the 30’s. Very cold (to us southerners) temperatures never last longer than a few days. This winter seems to have been a bounce of extremes. We have had many days with well above average temperatures only to drop well below average a few days later.

Just this last weekend, Saturday temperatures were around 70 only to have the temperature drop to 21 overnight Monday night. The frost Tuesday morning caused my daffodils to look like they had their heads bowed. I sometimes wonder how any plants survive the extremes of weather we have in the south.