By Maryanna Gabriel
Somehow, not sure how I got here, I have found myself relaxing. I've heard this happens on holidays and it is unclear how it has crept on me. Maybe it is the rain. Except for the killer slugs.
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| Very sly slugs they are. |
Very sly slugs they are. All over everything, even plants I thought were fine. Turns out they camouflage into a pale colour so they blend into the green. These are so small they are hard to see. The eye is trained for the black ones, you see, who are larger and have been in steady migration from a ditch outside the garden beyond the gate.
Fie upon ye.
I had a feeling... I went out armed with crushed eggshells in search of the one precious red strawberry I
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| Eggshells as weaponry. |
had recently espied. I was just in time. Saved the strawberry, you will be happy to know, and surrounded the others with crushed shell and bits of straw, the thesis being, this hurts their little slimy selves and so move on.
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| Saving the crop. |
The truth is, it is the moving on part that is the worry, and when I saw the troop on the march from the garden gate, I upped my ante. Armed with plastic containers from the bin, I made little green houses over the more precious plants.
Then that night a wind blew. Gone was a delphinium. A rare squash. And the potato plants were covered with their puffy black bodies. So Hitchcock.
May showers have killed the April flowers. Goodness knows, I am all in a tizzy. It is slug patrol for me morning and night.