It's the dead of winter, and one of my plum trees is blossoming.

Granted, it's the one by the garage, which gets a lot of reflected heat. And I do live in California, which has milder winters than some places. But I'm only an hour from Lake Tahoe — it's not like Santa Barbara or anything. We have real snow here, and cold rain, and it's usually hovering around 40 degrees from right-before-Christmas to just-after-Easter, with a mild week sometime in late February to remind us that we're heartily sick of winter and it isn't over yet. This, however is ridiculous. The temperature at my house has been 70 degrees for five days in a row, and we're in our the third week of balmy weather. In daylight, that is. After dark, it plummets back down to the low 30's and everything is covered with frost in the morning.

I'm so confused. I love the mildness, but it seems ominous, as if global warming is here in force and will only get worse. I go for walks, but at this time of year I've got lots of desk work to do, and teaching, and I always seem to be inside looking out at sunny skies, feeling deprived. And then it goes on and on! In spite of myself, I'm starting to think it might stay that way. But this really isn't spring yet — it's going to snow again, and rain, and we'll have to get used to it all over again — it's going to be awful. I'm not just confused, I'm incredibly cranky. My whole system has been thrown off. I had to hunt for t-shirts in a box of summer clothes in the garage. My wool jacket's too scratchy. Anything could happen — the sun could rise at 2 a.m. or set at noon and it wouldn't surprise me. And I'm not the only one. All over town, people are disoriented and grouchy.

My friend Julia says this is because humans are so much like bears. You wouldn't wake a bear up in the middle of winter, hibernating in her warm den, belly full from October, and expect to be greeted with anything but snarls. And after the snarls, she'd probably just eat you, and then go back to sleep. That's how I feel. It's almost more than I can stand to be nice to my nearest and dearest. They're so irritating! And I'm ravenous in a way I wasn't last week. Those nourishing soups I made and froze to last through winter seem like stupid food and I want to eat steak and crack crab legs in my teeth instead. I think bare trees look idiotic in hot weather, all the bulbs are poking their heads out of the ground too soon, and everything is wrong.

And here's my favorite tree, the one with the old-fashioned little yellow plums that make wonderful jam. It's not going to bear any fruit if those blossoms aren't pollinated.

Oh, hell. I'm going back to bed. Wake me at the end of March.