The worst part of spring

Well, it's here. The worst part of spring has arrived. No, not the rain - that never left. And not the allergies - there are pills for that. The worst part of spring is the reemergence of bugs.

First, at dinnertime, I discovered a spider hanging from the ceiling in the living room. Fortunately it was small and easily dispatched with a tissue. Next, as I was supervising the bunnies during their time out this evening, I noticed a moth outside on my window. This was particularly disheartening as I hate moths perhaps more than any other bug both for their ability to fly and their propensity for disappearing, putting you on edge for hours or days and then reappearing the minute you finally drop your guard. But the last straw, the one that prompted this post, was the discovery five minutes ago - most unpleasant - of a huge, ugly (is there any other kind) beetle creeping it's way up the door frame at the entrance to the kitchen. Indoors, I should clarify.

As much as I did not want to have to deal with it, I could hardly leave it until morning when someone else might be able to get rid of it - it has been my experience that bugs almost never stay put for long and even the slowest moving insects can cover considerable ground if left unguarded for long. Then you have to search the entire house until you find it or risk the chance that it could crawl into your room at night and creep with it's gross little legs all over you. (Or, at least, that is what I always fear will happen.) But back to the task at hand. As soon as I cleared Kita and Maggie out of the immediate area (lest the bug should decide to jump from the door frame - an inanimate object able to withstand disinfecting agents - to one of the animals, which are considerably harder to disinfect) I armed myself with paper towels and set about dispatching the beetle. I used two paper towels, folded into fourths, so that I would have a thick enough wad of material between my hand and the bug that I would not be able to feel (that was the hope, anyway) the crunch that beetles tend to make when they are squashed. I always find that particularly nauseating.

So as much as I dislike the months of cold, wet weather that comes with living in this part of the country, I will admit that it seems a more than fair trade if it means that I don't have to see hide nor hair (well, you know what I mean) of bugs during the winter. And here's something I've always wondered: why couldn't bugs look like little bunnies, say, with wings or antennae rather than the way they do? I'm convinced that, were they to look more like bunnies, a vastly smaller number of them would find themselves on the wrong side of flyswatters, tissues, and shoes. Don't you think?

It's official... spring is here

Spring is here. Okay, not technically, but for all intents and purposes it's spring. How do I know this? Because a few weeks ago I heard from the peacock for the first time, and just a couple of nights ago as I was falling asleep I heard the Great Horned owl that lives in the woods near our house.

The peacock, I should mention, is not ours. It lives on a small farm on the hill across from us, with the owl's woods in between us. In the fall and winter it tends to stick closer to home, but in the spring and summer it goes on walkabout looking for other peacocks. Unfortunately, we are rather low on peacocks in this area but that doesn't stop it from wandering. We even got a visit from it two springs ago - it came to the Unfarm in the evening and stayed all the next day before moving on again. I think the chickens attracted it in the first place, but weren't enough of an enticement for it to stay for any length of time. (The chickens, for their part, didn't quite know what to do with this GIANT bird in their yard, so they did their best to ignore it. It wasn't easy - he was quite a spectacle.)

The garden is also showing signs of life again: we have three crocuses (the last hold outs in the battle against the animals) that are up and blooming, a great many scilla have started re-emerging, and the daylilies are now a few inches tall. Oh, and the primroses - the primroses are making their come back.

That is how I know it's spring. This is not to say that the weather will be all blue skies and sunshine from now on - far from it, as we still have about three months left of the rainy season. These last few sunny days are simply a fluke, designed by the Pacific Northwest weather gods to torment those of us who choose to live here: they give us just enough good weather to send us into a sun induced euphoria, only to swamp us in again with clouds and rain from one end of the horizon to the other. But I've seen this trick before so I know to enjoy the sun but expect the rain, at least until June.

I suppose it is somewhat of a blessing then, that I am currently taking statistics and accounting - the homework keeps me occupied when I might otherwise be tempted to work in the garden. The amount of clay in our soil is good for the plants, but it means that the ground can't be worked until it has been sunny and warm for a couple of weeks at least, once the winter has ended. Until then, I get to spend my days learning about conditional probabilities and writing up financial statements. Does life get any better? (I certainly hope so.)