Floating along

We are still plagued with fruit flies, and the fly strips have been useful, but I read about a more "natural" method of controlling them: Sundews, carnivorous plants with leaves bedizened by many little beads of nectar that shine and sparkle and supposedly attract fruit flies to fatal contact. We marched down to the Indoor Sun Shoppe, which used to be a small store front crowded with exotic plants and grow lights down in the University District. In our early years here, I often stopped in the Sun Shoppe in the bleak midwinter to soak up an instant tropical vacation feeling. The store is now down in the Fremont area, not far from the Ship Canal, and is much larger and even more crammed with plants and accessories, such as a device one can use to clone plants, and all manner of lighting systems to treat S.A.D., or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is an intense bummer condition people up here in the Pacific Northwest can develop in the long gray Not Summer months. I picked out a couple of adorable sundews, and we carefully ferried them home in a big paper bag.
Passing Lake Union on our way home, we spied the silhouettes of a group of what I think of as the Ultimate Croquet crowd up on the big hill at Gas Works Park. We've seen people playing this way before, with wickets going up and down the side of the steep kite flying hill. There were a few teams representing, and when croquet balls got "sent" at the final wicket, croquet mallets got tossed in anguish.
Out on and above the lake all kinds of crafts skimmed, flew and floated. A pseudo pirate ship motored along, with oddly-shaped small sails up for show, and at one point, let go a fake cannon blast, complete with smoke. Undoubtedly thrilling for the nearby small boats.
The sundews were installed on the requisite window sills, and I do hope they will put a dent in the fly swarms.