Despite swaths of Washington recently getting pummeled by heavy snow, I’m convinced either Mother Nature has hopped on a freighter heading to parts unknown or is holed up somewhere gorging on brownies spiked with wacky weed and way too much sugar.

I suspect this because some of our plant friends — and a few enemies! – haven’t gotten the memo that it’s cold outside and time to start slowing down for the winter. In short, things out of doors are getting out of whack.

I don’t think it’s just me who’s seeing this. Though I spend a lot of time with my hands in the earth and my knees in the mud, close to the goings on of many common perennials and shrubs, I can’t possibly be the only gardener who’s noticed a few shenanigans taking place in the plant kingdom that are beginning to creep us all out.

Here’s what I’ve noticed just in the past week: my dianthus has a big red bud on it, I just hacked back some enormous Himalayan blackberry canes sporting  one open blossom and a cluster of waiting- to-open flower buds and a group of grape hyacinths with flower spikes fully emerged and valiantly trying to turn from mauve to deep purple. Did I mention the forsythia blooming and the rhodies with a red flower here or a pink flower there?

And don’t get me started on the daffodils. Remember how so many of them popped up early last year? They’ve outdone themselves this time around.  In October I was raking up Japanese maple leaves and trying to dodge the many dozens of daffodil foliage tips already springing forth. Now some of them, along with a few tulips, are four or five inches up and I’m wondering if a deep cold snap will roll around and nix everything until the spring of 2017.

Is this the new normal? Or have I just not been paying close enough attention to the revolution going on around me where the plants have decided to tell the seasons when they want to bloom and not the other way around.?

Whatever the reason, it’s all in the hands of something bigger and more powerful than me and I’m just going to have to go along for the ride.

So, while I wait for Hershey’s Kisses to start growing on trees and turtles to rain from the sky, I’m going to try to count on the plants we should expect to see in the winter months. Here are a few to check out for color during winter.

There are winter blooming Oregon grapes. Look for Mahonia x media.Daphnes will not only produce lovely flower clusters in mid-winter, but they’re also quite fragrant. The same goes for Sarcocooca, or sweet box. Mine are covered with tiny white flowers right along side of their deep black berries from last year.

The Pieris aren’t blooming yet, but they should be covered in buds all winter long, just waiting for spring to open them. And the Kaffir lilies, Schizostylis coccinea, started blooming in the fall and should still be flowering for some time yet. You can depend on hellebores this time of year too, as well as winter blooming camellias (Camelia sasanqua.)

Soon you can expect to also see Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) and witch hazel (Hamamelis species) and our native Indian plum (Oemleria crasiformis.) And here’s one I’m just learning about that I think would be worth checking out: Grevillea victoriae.

The turtles I might take a pass on, but I’m still waiting for those Hershey’s kisses.