Effulgent

[madrobins]

The garden has gone mad. I'm not the gardening sort--my contribution to the landscaping in the back yard is to take a clipper to the lemon tree and lop off the most aggressive branches. Spouse is Mr. Weeder: he'll go out there and fill the entire composing bin with clippings and weeds. But what with one thing and another, and perhaps something else after that, we haven't gone into the yard much except to grill dinner or do laundry (the washing machine and dryer are, thanks to the previous owner, in the back yard). As a result of our shameless negligence, and this year's significant rains, the lemon tree is particularly aggressive, lilies I didn't even know we had have sprung up so thickly that YG can't get into the playhouse (another remnant of the previous owner) without assistance; the birds of paradise and calla lilies are vying for space with some heavily flowered shrub along the right-hand wall, and the gladioli I thought Spouse had accidentally uprooted last year prove to be tenacious of life. Then there's a bunch of random greenery that's swarming up and over the pavement. It's a jungle out there.

Okay, we've been busy. But we have to get out there and prune a little, or we may lose the sunroom. And if the sunroom goes, can the kitchen be far behind?