No Winter in San Diego

It's been yet another odd winter here in San Diego. Typically winter is barely a season in San Diego, though noticeably colder and damper than the other nine months of the year (aka summer), it's still punctuated by warm spells, Santa Ana winds from the North and East, and general mild, warm days. This winter started out promising with an almost record rainfall in December, 3 inches, but since the rains of December, it has been bone dry. January should have been the wettest month of the year, but we received barely a trace of rainfall and since the beginning of the year we've had multiple stretches of days over 80 degrees. The cold unsettled weather pattern that ushers in storms has abandoned the area for high pressure and unseasonable warmth.

"Uh so what?" you may be thinking, "I'm freezing my (inset body part here) off". Well aside from the aesthetic implications that I like winter, being chilly, having to wear the occasional jacket. Our heat waves last year during February, March, and April, affected the yields of some of my blueberry bushes and citrus trees. Both of these were fooled by the early heat and flowered and budded only to be smacked back down with a cold frost. It looks like the same thing is gonna happen again this year.

Already my early peach and pear trees, and blueberries are leafing out and flowering. This may prove to be a non-event if the remainder of the winter is mild, but on average, we're still due for several nights of frost before our official "Spring" season arrives. Hopefully it'll turn out OK, but the risk of losing another years worth of fruit and berry crops has me fretting.....

Being warm during winter may sound like an ungrateful thought, bordering on treasonous to folks who may be cold and snowbound, but I feel that people need cold and rain as much as a garden does. It's part of the seasonal rhythm of life. It's an odd "out of body" feeling to walk outside and be greeted with 85 degrees in February. It leaves you with the seasonal equivalent of taking an afternoon weekend nap, sleeping too long and momentarily feeling disoriented as you wake up and struggle to place what time of day it is.