Its been so warm lately one of the bushes in the back yard has 2 or 3 flower buds that have bloomed.
This is going to be a super crappy year for bearing plants like grapes, apple trees, pear trees, peach trees, nut trees, sugar maple trees and even pine trees that make pine cones. These plants need to have at least 250 to 300 cumulative hours (preferably 400 or more) of below freezing temperatures during the time that they are dormant (when the leaves are off) to encourage the plant to convert the starches stored in their roots from the summer growing season into sugars that are sent up into the plant in spring. What's going to happen is the plants will bloom their flowers but they won't make as much pollen as usual (which is good for allergy sufferers) but the fruits they make will be less than normal, smaller and not as sweet and juicy, maple sap for maple syurp will have a more bitter earthy flavor than usual, pine trees won't have many pine cones, oak trees won't have many acorns, there will be less (helicopters) from the maple trees. Most vegatables won't be affected beacause they are anual plants in that they die every year after the first cold spell and need to be re-grown every year from seed.
This will also be a very good year for nusance insects. There may be epic numbers of mosquitoes, and other insects like grubs and chinch bugs (that attack your lawn) gypsy moth and japanese beetles (that eat the leaves from trees and shrubs) The same long term sub freezing temperatures that are benificial to plants are detrimental to insect populations becasue poorly sheltered eggs are frozen through and "sterilized" helping to curb the insect populations. We haven't had this long term freeze yet which leads me to wonder if I should be stocking up on OFF.