Out My Back Door Today!

I was drawn to my back patio just a little while ago by a sweet fragrance and a flutter of activity.  I had opened the French door to our patio to check what the outside temperature was like. I have three loquat trees that have been ready to bloom for a few weeks. They are starting to open now and the fragrance has drawn butterflies and bees galore. The aroma is much like frangiapani or a sweet jasmine. 

 Yes, I am writing this in December and my Christmas tree is up inside. My husband has "enrobed" the house in icicle lights and I'm playing Christmas music nonstop. But....it's like spring outside. The weather has settled into a nice pattern of days in the mid 70's, it is foggy in the mornings and sunny the rest of the day. The closest I will get to a white Christmas is a bubble bath!

We will eventually have a cold night or two or maybe even three! (Just enough to nip the flowers in the bud and kill off the heat loving greenery.) There has been snow here, by the way! There was actually a BIG snow here in Pleasanton in the 1980's just after my parents retired here. It was such an unusual thing, my daddy can tell you the exact date and time that it happened! So, every year I keep my fingers crossed that we might have a fluke like that again and I'll wake up to a white world,  have a fire in the fireplace and sip hot cocoa that will warm me up instead of make me sweat! 
I have lived where it snowed. Here is our home in 2004, several years before we moved back to Texas. Snow is very romantic as long as the power stays on and you don't have to drive in it!

 
If you live where it snows and gets really cold, I both envy you and feel sorry for you! I just wish I could switch it on like I do the air conditioner! Then, when the snow gets dirty and slushy and my feet are frozen, I can turn springtime  back on!