Here comes the sun

The sun is almost startling when it comes out late in the day, so golden and strong on my anniversary flowers.

These spectacularly dirty windows were also startling, illuminated by the setting sun.  We've been living under a scrum of grey clouds for weeks. Spring cleaning is a housewife ritual for the simple reason we can finally see the dirt.

There's an old saying: Three snows after the forsythia bloom." That doesn't really apply in western Washington, where it never snows in March.  Although "never say never" about the weather anymore.

I went on a real tear outside Saturday.  While not exactly warm, it wasn't raining, and I have a winter's worth of pent-up garden energy.  I'm trying to make our yard nicer looking, and at the same time, less work.  It's tough, because beautiful flower beds are as high maintenance as you can get. The typical suburban yard is just grass and shrubs for a reason.  But I have so many decades of work and money invested, I can't just rip them out.  I'll leave that to someone else when I'm gone.

I am nipping back some borders though, where nothing grows well. Quality versus quantity. OK, this doesn't look like much now, but check back in June after it fills in with sedums, daisies and iris.

I was in a ruthless mood, as sometimes happens in the spring, so I sawed down two six-foot evergreens (one dead, one dying) that I'd planted right in front of this quite nice star azalea.  What was I thinking?  They started out as those $5 Trader Joe miniature Christmas trees. Good grief. It's a dank little corner of the yard, shaded by the holly tree.  The azalea can have center stage now and I'll transplant ferns for ground cover. 

Oh, yes. Mr Ratty was on my to-do list this weekend. I went to McLendon's Hardware Store down in White Center, sometimes unkindly referred to as "Rat Center." They had a vast selection of rodent poisons and traps, from "humane" (what do you do with a pissed-off live rat?) to totally sadistic (take THAT.)

We are not dirty people. It is not our fault. Although our composting laws don't help, with yard waste bins full of rotting food. Seattle is infested with rats, always has been, like London before the plague.  I was recently at Tully's Coffee on Alki Beach, and saw a big one sitting right on the front doorstep.

Anyway, as for our squatter, I went Lucretia Borgia, and dropped a special "breakfast bar" under the floor boards of the old garage, where no decent mammal would ever go.