Every spring in North Texas is different, and this one was one of the oddest I’ve seen since 1982. Last year, we practically didn’t have a winter, so the local peach and pear trees were in full bloom nearly a month before normal. The year before that, the weeklong killing freeze in February stunted a lot of plants that might have been ready for the usual March botanical explosion, and before that, everything had to deal with the repercussions of the deepest snowfall seen here in recorded history. This spring, not only was everything dealing with the ongoing drought (in which we’re still trapped, even with yesterday’s wildly anticipated rainfall), but we’d fluctuate wildly between high and low temperatures. Normally, I can put the winter coat into storage around the beginning of March and give up on light jackets by April. This year, I had the coat out to deal with near-freezing temperatures all the way up until the first week of May.
Because of that, the annual wildflower season lacks a bit. The bluebonnets simply failed, with the exception of a few in hollows protected from our mid-March freezes. Everything else…well, it’s time to let the photos do the talking.
