Almonds in August?

Over the past couple of days the almonds on one of our trees have been opening and I have started to pick them.  It's a tiny tree, more of a bush than a tree, about 1.5 metres max, but is absolutely laden with almonds.  We don't remember ever having almonds ready to pick quite so early - sometimes there's a tree with almonds that start to split  in  early September but August?? 

Once upon a time this particular bush-tree was a proper tree, tall and leggy, but totally unproductive and prone to greenfly and nasty sticky stuff all summer.  So late one autumn a few years ago, it was cut down to the base, and a very large base it was.  Took ages to cut through it, even longer to cut the trunk into chunks and longer still to log the chunks.  But it made wonderful firewood!  The next year nothing much happened apart from some new growth but this year all that new growth flowered beautifully and each flower made an almond and now we are picking them. 

The end result from today's picking was one bucket of almonds and two buckets of husks, the husks will be dried and kept for the wood burner.  When the almonds have dried out and have been shelled, the shells also go in the wood burner.

Outside now there is thunder rumbling away down south and lightning flashing - lighting up the garden.  Not enough clouds for rain and nothing is forecast but we quite often get this happening in late summer.  Maybe a build up of pressure?  Rain would be quite nice, not had any since the first week in June when there were a couple of showers.