Dilema Dilema!

One of the MANY things I love about living in WA is that it's a rain forest here. No really, it is. They get that much precipitation. So everything green practically grows all by itself, which is good news for a girl like me who doesn't know yet how good a gardener she is.

The house that Art and I live in has many beautiful plants already growing and flourishing. The most prevalent being rhododendron bushes. They practically surround his house. And they are LARGE (which isn't exactly surprising, considering the aforementioned rain and also lack of freezing in the winter).

These plants are SO large that they cover almost all of our windows. I can hardly see out my kitchen window (it doesn't help that I'm short). I can see out our living room windows, but the view is mostly trees. I can't actually see our front yard, or the street, if I'm sitting down on the couch (which faces the windows, and is where we spend a lot of time).

So I did some research on these plants. Knowing already that they bloom in May, I tried to figure out when the best time is to trim them. Apparently, I missed my chance. I'm supposed to trim them RIGHT after they finish blooming. If I wait any longer, they will already have formed buds for next years blooms. Which they have.

But I'm afraid that if I wait to trim until next year, they will be even taller, and will overtake the front of our house completely. On the other hand, the blooms are so big and beautiful, if I trim them now, I will have to wait almost 2 years to see them bloom again. It would be a disgrace to have these big beautiful plants in my yard, knowing that they're supposed to have flowers on them, but they don't.

It's like peer pressure all over again! Practically every house on every block has rhododendron bushes. When I visited last May, I saw neon pink blooms, bright red blooms, peachy-orange blooms, and many shades of purple.

Ours look like this:


I want to have blooms, but I don't want them to look as though I don't care about my yard.

I'm so torn!!