While the Miller Homestead does focus on vegetable farming, we do have a few aesthetic plants in the garden. We have two lilacs and what I believe to be an ornamental crabapple.
As you may be able to see, the crabapple is flowering pretty well and one of the lilacs has just begun flowering. The other lilac (not pictured) will probably start flowering next week. That is certainly quite a bit earlier in the year than normal. We've had a very warm and dry March and April so far. I've actually had to water my garden 3 times already!
In Rochester, the Lilac Festival is kind of a big deal. It turns out that we have the largest collection of Lilacs in the world, and its only a 5-10 minute walk from my house. Anyway, the festival is scheduled to run May 14th-23rd, which is normally about the peak flowering time for the Lilacs. This year, I'm pretty sure that most of the Lilacs will be done flowering by that time.
I also recently saw a special bulletin from the national weather service saying that they were starting frost warnings 3 weeks earlier than usual because crops like fruit trees and grapevines were well ahead of schedule.
In case people didn't realize plants were way ahead of schedule, the local paper had a front page article a couple weeks ago telling people to restrain themselves and not plant vegetables or flowers too early. So far people who did plant early have probably been doing pretty well. There has not been a frost yet in the month of April at my house. I'm itching to plant more stuff and start transplanting things early, but I'm going to stick to my planting schedule. Historically, there is still a greater than 50% chance that there will be at least one frost after April 20th in Rochester.
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