Fun in the overcast: Five things I learned in the garden this morning

1) "Leave them alone and they will come home" really works.  Particularly with gastropods.  Unfortunately, "home is where the heart is" and slugs just love my daylilies; snails are mad about my kale.

2) A slug is quite reminiscent of a leech - particularly when observed on one's bare calf.

3) Slugs and snails are bipartisan and apparently not racist.  They climb on each other's back with no regard for size, color, shell or lack thereof and form a great pile, then sit back and let the big grandmother (granddaddy?) climb up over the top of the slug holding chamber (it's a technical term).  I dare say our congress is good at the sitting back and letting the big guy do the work.  As to the rest, perhaps they could take note here.

4) The only humanitarian thing for me to do (for myself - if it were for the little mollusks, would it not be gastropoditarian?) is get a bigger, deeper slug holding chamber - with a lid.  Why, you ask? Because every time I return from a trip to the slug relocation location I tell myself "why not just squish the next one and get on to the next garden task?" but just as I think that my eye zones in on a little baby snail - or slug - and I think "why you?"

5) My gastropod eradication assistant, aka Yogi, my cat, is not as sweet and innocent and clumsy as he seems.  The third time I keeled over backwards and barely avoided landing on my ass this morning, something jarred loose in my memory banks and I thought of a video I saw on the innerweb of cats deliberately tripping up their comrades - knocking them off ladders, pushing them into tubs of water... you get the picture.  Ok, Yogi, I'm onto you now!

Bonus insight:  As it turns out, whilst gathering daylily seeds, it is not a good idear when one's hands are full to hang a pod from one's teeth to keep it separate from the others.  Why, yes, this did dawn on me as I pried a reluctant slug from atop a pod this morning.... ewwwww....

k then.


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