I'm having deja vú. January 2013 is remarkably similar to January 2012 in its unusual warmth and precocious garden growth. While snowdrops (Galanthus elwesii) are often in bloom in January (when there is no snow to obscure them), the witch hazel is not supposed to be blooming until late February at the earliest.
I cannot recall ever experiencing two warm winters in a row, and I have lived in Northern Illinois all my life. The mercury rises and falls like the wildest roller coaster at Six Flags. It's troubling.
On the brighter side, the amaryllis (Hippeastrum hybrid) is finally blooming for the first time since January 2010 (I bought it in the autumn of 2009). For the past two years it's done nothing but send up leaves. This year it has deigned to grace my family room with two blooms.
I have no clue why.
Unnervingly, Squirrelhaven has managed to have something in bloom outdoors every month of the year for more than the past 12 months, achieving the goal set by Elizabeth Lawrence, heroine of Garden Bloggers' Bloom day hostess Carol of May Dreams Gardens. Happy New Year and welcome to the new world order.
I haven't posted in over a month (even though I had two plants in bloom in the garden on December 15) because life got crazy in December with getting ready for Christmas, filing my nominating petition for library trustee (my current term is up in April), a trip to Mexico with 23 members of my family, and then a frenzy of photo editing. I need a vacation.