My friends and family back home in California are talking about the first spring bulbs that are starting to bloom, and here in Idaho's Treasure Valley one of my neighbors told me last night that she saw hyacinth foliage starting to push up through the soil. I checked my bulb beds and there's nothing yet. Still, she thinks we might have an early spring this year, and in talking with local gardeners it seems as if the Treasure Valley is warming up from a USDA Zone 5 to a USDA Zone 7.
Then last night I opened the current edition of Organic Gardening magazine and saw a blurb on Project BudBurst in which we can be citizen-scientists and help track these things! It looks pretty cool, they want people to report to the website when they see the first flower or first first leaf emerge of many different kinds of plants. Of course they want to know where people saw the plant (latitude/longitude) and a description of the site (exposure, slope, etc.). Soon they'll have live mapping for tracking particular species and people will be able to load up photos. It looks pretty cool! If this interests you then please check out the website.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/citizen_science/budburst/index.html
It seems to be specific to the US so if you live elsewhere the please see if there's a similar program in your country or region.
