Winter 2010/11 so far so good...I did some gardening today

Tony left the page for December on the weather pad so I could look back two almost two months easily. We haven't had any real cold days; we've had lows in the mid teens Fahrenheit half a dozen times with two more forecast this weekend. On the upside we haven't had any single digits or negative numbers. On the high side there haven't been any days in the 50's or 60's. I expect both of these factor into the perfect health of the Oleander in the bottom picture. The leaves are perfect; there are no signs of stress. I know it's not even February yet, but the ground has been frozen off and on for at least a month. I will continue to monitor it.

Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena', the middle picture, has just barely begun to unfurl its petals. It's a bit late in the season for that, no doubt attributable to the same weather pattern. Cold but not too cold, and if it were any warmer, they'd have opened wide these past two warm days.

It's been kind of a funny weak weaherwise; we had aminor snow/icestorm Monday night, it stayed near freezing all day Tuesday, but yesterday and today were both over 45F. I worked outside some. This afternoon I cut back Climbing Hydrangea and pulled Ivy. It was great; the ability to function outisde mid-winter is one of the good aspects of Washington weather.Unfortunately now that I'm sitting down inside where it's warm, my back is tightening up and my legs ache. I guess there are advantages to summer.