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Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kickoff to outdoor living in Seattle — the first long weekend when friends and family gather on decks for barbecues, cocktails and relaxed evenings under the trees. But spring’s cool, wet weather combined with warming late-May days also brings a surge in insect activity. Ants, mosquitoes, wasps, carpenter bees,…

May in Snoqualmie brings blooming gardens, warmer days and more time spent outdoors — and with that comes the start of the peak tick season. Nestled in the forested foothills of the Cascades, many Snoqualmie properties border woods, trails and riparian corridors that provide ideal habitat for ticks and the wildlife that carry them. Homeowners…

Lake Forest Park’s cool, damp climate and dense, leafy yards make it a pleasant place to garden — and an ideal habitat for slugs. These slow-moving mollusks thrive in the shaded, moist microclimates created by native shrubs, mulch, and nighttime irrigation common here. In spring and fall, when temperatures are mild and rain is frequent,…

If you live in Everett and have spent a minute more than usual looking at your lawn this month, you’re not alone. Homeowners across town are picking up the phone about strange ridges, raised tunnels and small volcano-like mounds of soil cropping up in yards and parks — the telltale signatures of mole activity. What…

May is the month when Pacific Northwest yards wake up: warming days, budding shrubs, and a surge in insect activity that, for many Edmonds waterfront homeowners, means more spiders and wasps around porches, eaves and docks. Waterfront properties have a particular combination of factors that intensify this seasonal trend—moisture-loving vegetation, sheltered nooks in pilings and…

Every May, many Lynnwood apartment buildings see a sudden uptick in ant activity: kitchen counters threaded with tiny workers, lines of ants marching along windowsills and baseboards, and the occasional swarm of winged insects near stairwells and lighting fixtures. For tenants and property managers alike, these annual invasions feel predictable and puzzling—why does this particular…

Shoreline neighborhoods — with their boardwalks, beach cottages, docks and dense edge vegetation — often feel like a summer idyll, but every May many coastal communities notice a predictable nuisance: an uptick in wasp nest-building. Unlike the sudden swarms people associate with late-summer yellowjacket raids, these May nests are the product of solitary queens emerging…

May marks the start of the mosquito season in Federal Way. Our mild, wet Pacific Northwest springs mean standing water from winter rains and slow-draining yards can persist into late spring—exactly the conditions mosquitoes need to breed. As daytime temperatures stabilize above the mid-50s and nights stay relatively warm, mosquito eggs laid the previous season…

May marks the turning point in Auburn’s gardening calendar: soil is warming, seedlings are pushing up through the beds, and with that burst of growth comes an equally vigorous surge of pests. Weather over the winter and spring—mild or harsh, wet or dry—shapes which pests are most active and how quickly populations build. That means…

Across Kent this spring many warehouse operators, logistics managers and local residents have noticed a sharp uptick in rodent activity around industrial estates and storage facilities. What looks like a seasonal nuisance is the intersection of several factors: biology (rats and mice breed rapidly in warmer months), recent weather patterns (milder winters and wetter seasons…