Michael, Have you had a chance to see if wildflowers are also blooming early? I used to be able to check a website aimed at people wanting to photograph California wildflowers. The data was emailed in by many observers and collated by a woman who stopped doing it a couple of years ago as some people who were using her site were damaging the plants. Diane Whitehead Victoria, British Columbia, Canada On 2014-02-05, at 10:26 AM, Michael Mace wrote: > I don't know if the cause is the dry weather we've had for much of the > winter, or the milder average temps (other than a nasty freeze at the end of > last year), or something else. But definitely stuff is blooming early. >