Leap year

There's an old adage that in the first year your plants sleep, the second they creep, and the third year they leap. For some of the plants I first established at the house, this should be their leap year. Our weather has been lovely this week--cold but clear, which means perfect for weeding.

I have never been so happy to weed! It was so nice to be in the yard again, muttering to myself and saying hello to the plants that are starting to poke out of the ground. We have lots of bulbs now starting to show, and the flowering currants and elderberry bushes are budding.

The winter-blooming daphne is *this close* to erupting in blooms and the stonecrop is forming rosettes--hooray!

I spent all day removing popweed (Cardamine hirsuta, street name: Jumping Jesus) and Herb Robert (Geranium Robertianum, street name: Stinky Bob). I also put down Sluggo, the only insecticide I'll use. I had a moment of panic where I wondered if I was weeding all the forget-me-not that I sowed last fall. That's the problem with wild flowers--how do you know what's a good seedling and what's an invasive weed?


Remember when my aging next door neighbor thought I wanted her Doug Fir removed? She called a surveyor and had him mark her property lines, so I couldn't "take over her yard" like she claims I'd like to do. I carefully pruned only the roses on my side of the surveyor's white post. After I pruned them hard last year and didn't kill them, I became emboldened and pruned them even harder this time. I might actually remember to fertilize them this year but I'm not holding my breath.

I also did silly things like crumpling leaves that had accumulated under the shrubs by hand. Last fall I put uncomposted leaves on the beds, which is generally not advisable. In the wild, leaf mulch breaks down quickly because animals walk on it. In our urban and suburban yards, it just sits there and attracts slugs. But: if you put out a bird feeder nature does what it would do in the wild. To wit:

What used to be three inches of leaves now looks like this

So next fall I'm going to put out fresh leaves and a million bird feeders and I will sit back and know that I'm feeding the wildlife AND my plants.My transformation into That Crazy Bird Lady will be complete. I can't wait.

Also, remember my bird bath that I spent $5 on and drove all the way to a trailer park in Cornelius, which took two and a half hours during rush hour, and then I had to patch it with Liquid Nails so it would not leak? It holds water! So my cheap scavenging on craigslist, while dangerous and unattractive, totally works.

The nerve of the nature!

Squirrels are such assholes.

Worth every penny.

Watching squirrels try to break into the new bird feeder is endlessly entertaining. They try so hard.

Oh hey, what's that?

Let's get a little closer . . .

I think I could reach if I just . . .

. . . streeeeeetttttttchhh . . . .

Damn it. Regroup!

We're also getting birds at the feeder, which is really exciting. In other unexpected birding news, dumping uncomposted leaves all over these beds has resulted in the birds foraging here like CRAZY. I've never seen so many feeding in the yard before. They have zero interest in my native plants; it turns out they just want store-bought birdseed and the bugs hiding under non-native tree leaves. Go figure.

I still can't identify any of them, either. Greg will ask, "What's that one?" and I'll reply, "A cute little brown one."

My room got shocked

Have you heard about this product that eliminates mold, mildew, and odors? It's called Room Shocker or roomSHOCKER, depending on what part of their website you're visiting. Something similar was apparently used in houses that were flooded during Hurricane Katrina to eliminate mold. I read about it some time ago on Apartment Therapy, bought some on Amazon, then forgot about it.

Photo yanked from Apartment Therapy

I've been having really bad allergies ever since Greg moved in; I wake up in the morning, start sneezing, keep sneezing, and then sneeze some more. My friend Erin cheerfully informed me recently, "You probably have mold!" Then my parents came to visit and my father, whose super sense of smell I inherited, started sniffing around my basement. Does it always smell like mildew down here? Before Greg moved in, I always left the door to the basement shut. Ever since he moved in we leave it open. I don't know why we do that, but I'm thinking that maybe an allergen from down there is wafting into the rest of the house.

So yeah, I gave Room Shocker a shot. It's pretty easy to use. You open up what looks like a frappucchio container, read the instructions that are by turns breezy, then terrifying. "Room Shocker is all natural and cannot hurt you. Fill the container with warm water to the line indicated on the cup. DO NOT FILL WATER BEYOND THIS LINE. DO NOT TOUCH THE PACKET. LEAVE THE ROOM IMMEDIATELY. There's no need to leave the house, if you don't wish, as Room Shocker is completely harmless!"

I filled my cup, ran out of the basement, then left for work. But first I started second-guessing that I pushed the packet down far enough, so I went back into the basement to find a cup full of noxious yellow liquid that made my eyes burn. Whew, I did it right.

Seven hours later I returned home to find that you could smell the chlorine from outside the house. I can't imagine trying to stay inside the house all day. I decided to open some windows, leave again, and buy a bird feeder. I had a gift card from when I got my backyard habitat certification.

They were all sold out of the Squirrel Buster 3000

The Backyard Bird Shop is so. much. fun. They're so excited that you're getting your first bird feeder! They're so knowledgeable! My salesperson was A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E. I love that stores like this thrive in Portland.

So far my allergies aren't any better which means that it didn't work, or I don't have mold and I'm allergic to something else, or I'm allergic to Greg. So now is the time for all the worriers to come out of the woodwork and warn me that I have black mold and that I'm going to die. Or that chlorine causes cancer and I'm gonna die. Because I don't worry about that stuff enough as it is.