I was pretty happy picking up the kids from school today... I got to spend some time at the garden snacking on peas while onlookers gawked at my garden. I noticed a mistake i made. I randomly threw in some red spinach that some kind gardener had left some seeds in the seed bank. It was clearly a plant that went to seed. Incredible idea... let a plant go to seed and then collect the seeds and then share with a community. Not really the Monsanto model... but anyway the other day when i was filling my potato boxes with soil i was just grabbing random scoops from the garden, and i kind of forgot about the red spinach. It happens... we now have some red spinach in the garden and some in the potato box. Nothing a little transplanting and replanting can't fix.
Then at school i was talking garden with my buddy... lets change his name to Ramsey... yes we will go with that... you see this story may take a few unfortunate turns and we don't want to incriminate anybody. Well Ramsey was concerned about holes in his plant leaves thinking there might be some kind of moth attacking... i assured him it was slugs and we could go and catch the bastards tonight at the stroke of midnight... and he was Game.
It was going to be Ramsey's first late night slug killing frenzy, and i wanted to make sure it left an impression on him so i spent the afternoon and evening collecting slugs and snails to plant in his garden just before our arrival. I figured that since we were going there anyway the best thing i could do as a mentor was make it a big eye popping event.
The good news is that a quick trip into a pacific Northwest forest can yield a large supply of really large slugs in short order... the bad news is that those slugs can do a lot of damage in no time. Obviously i had to ring his garden in baking soda so that the slugs didn't escape into other plots and run amok savaging other gardens... like mine. As a result Ramsey's garden did have the distinct look of a crime scene, and he reacted accordingly going bananas right off the bat... he was darting around like a squirrel fresh out of a cage mumbling and shrieking. I figured this was good, i was doing him a favor pointing out, in a exaggerated manor, the dangers of late night gardening neglect... then i remembered that cigar i found on the sidewalk... it was large and perhaps locally rolled, so i suggested that Ramsey light it and get some good hauls and he could use the cherry to singe those slugs into remission... a bit of a crazy idea of course but since he was in a bit of a state it seemed rational to him.
He was hauling and hacking and stomping, so i went over to my garden and found numerous small slugs and bumped them off accordingly. It was kind of peaceful with a half orange moon on the horizon... i was snacking on peas, doing a little weeding and finding the odd slug. It wasn't as peaceful in Ramsey's plot... i think i heard vomiting and disorientated gibberish and some of the local porch lights were coming on. I went back to see our friend and things had definitely gone pear shaped... i figured, well a good strong first impression had been made so lets bump those slugs off and enjoy the moon. From the look on Ramsey's face i began to wonder if that was a blunt and not a cigar as he was looking a little sloppy and he had noticed the thick baking soda boarder around his garden and come to the conclusion that his garden was in fact a giant slug nest and that perhaps if he dug down below he might find the mother cave. As a pure scientist i was pretty sure there was no slug nest under his garden, but then again as a pure scientist one does need to prove or disprove each hypothesis so i got him a shovel. His excavation was going well, and me being a good friend, made sure all of the slugs were disposed of... and i found a snail. I thought it might be kind of funny to kind of slip it on his sweaty neck and then point at him in horror and yell "one is attacking you"... unfortunately he fainted into the pit he had dug which worked out well as a police car pulled up.
i had to kind of bury him a bit and come up with a story about these rabble rousing teenagers who were causing trouble but then darted into the woods of Mt. Tabor ... good thinking on my behalf i thought, and i had to get Ramsey out of there. Luckily there was a wheelbarrow that i could use to get our good friend home... but i couldn't take the main roads... it would look awkward me rolling a grown man home through the common pedestrian streets... the only way was up the mountain and down the south side. Clearly a Herculean effort on my part, but what are good friends for. We had to elude the law and get things right. Halfway up the mountain we cut through a little used path far away from the road... this would do quite well i thought, and then i heard an owl... sounded like a barred owl... i hadn't seen one of those in a while so obviously it was worth a quick check... i couldn't find the owl and silly Ramsey decided to go for a little joy ride down the hill. Fortunately for him, he ran into a blackberry bush which arrested his decent into the reservoir. I get it, you get a sense of invincibility after a slug domination so you try something crazy... it happens to the best of us.
The truth is there was only one slug in the whole garden, and i felt defeated so i made up this story to give it a little juice. The last thing we want to do is bore our readers right? But there is a clinical score here. This is a new garden and the slug population has yet to really build up... but now that there is food it will. I think the site of this community garden has long been a city tree farm, not king hell territory for slugs, but with all the new lettuce and such there a single slug can lay 500 eggs per season. So if there are even 20 slugs in the garden it could be ten thousand slugs next year... there was once a band from Vancouver called "the Son's of Freedom" and they had an album called "Never Retreat, Never Apologize". I think we have to keep this in mind with our slug diligence.
The real comedy occurred when we got back to Ramsey's house and there were like 30 slugs in his personal garden. It was like that book the alchemist where a man goes on a hunt for the truth and it was right under the tree he started from.
Nobody was harmed in this story.
Then at school i was talking garden with my buddy... lets change his name to Ramsey... yes we will go with that... you see this story may take a few unfortunate turns and we don't want to incriminate anybody. Well Ramsey was concerned about holes in his plant leaves thinking there might be some kind of moth attacking... i assured him it was slugs and we could go and catch the bastards tonight at the stroke of midnight... and he was Game.
It was going to be Ramsey's first late night slug killing frenzy, and i wanted to make sure it left an impression on him so i spent the afternoon and evening collecting slugs and snails to plant in his garden just before our arrival. I figured that since we were going there anyway the best thing i could do as a mentor was make it a big eye popping event.
The good news is that a quick trip into a pacific Northwest forest can yield a large supply of really large slugs in short order... the bad news is that those slugs can do a lot of damage in no time. Obviously i had to ring his garden in baking soda so that the slugs didn't escape into other plots and run amok savaging other gardens... like mine. As a result Ramsey's garden did have the distinct look of a crime scene, and he reacted accordingly going bananas right off the bat... he was darting around like a squirrel fresh out of a cage mumbling and shrieking. I figured this was good, i was doing him a favor pointing out, in a exaggerated manor, the dangers of late night gardening neglect... then i remembered that cigar i found on the sidewalk... it was large and perhaps locally rolled, so i suggested that Ramsey light it and get some good hauls and he could use the cherry to singe those slugs into remission... a bit of a crazy idea of course but since he was in a bit of a state it seemed rational to him.
He was hauling and hacking and stomping, so i went over to my garden and found numerous small slugs and bumped them off accordingly. It was kind of peaceful with a half orange moon on the horizon... i was snacking on peas, doing a little weeding and finding the odd slug. It wasn't as peaceful in Ramsey's plot... i think i heard vomiting and disorientated gibberish and some of the local porch lights were coming on. I went back to see our friend and things had definitely gone pear shaped... i figured, well a good strong first impression had been made so lets bump those slugs off and enjoy the moon. From the look on Ramsey's face i began to wonder if that was a blunt and not a cigar as he was looking a little sloppy and he had noticed the thick baking soda boarder around his garden and come to the conclusion that his garden was in fact a giant slug nest and that perhaps if he dug down below he might find the mother cave. As a pure scientist i was pretty sure there was no slug nest under his garden, but then again as a pure scientist one does need to prove or disprove each hypothesis so i got him a shovel. His excavation was going well, and me being a good friend, made sure all of the slugs were disposed of... and i found a snail. I thought it might be kind of funny to kind of slip it on his sweaty neck and then point at him in horror and yell "one is attacking you"... unfortunately he fainted into the pit he had dug which worked out well as a police car pulled up.
i had to kind of bury him a bit and come up with a story about these rabble rousing teenagers who were causing trouble but then darted into the woods of Mt. Tabor ... good thinking on my behalf i thought, and i had to get Ramsey out of there. Luckily there was a wheelbarrow that i could use to get our good friend home... but i couldn't take the main roads... it would look awkward me rolling a grown man home through the common pedestrian streets... the only way was up the mountain and down the south side. Clearly a Herculean effort on my part, but what are good friends for. We had to elude the law and get things right. Halfway up the mountain we cut through a little used path far away from the road... this would do quite well i thought, and then i heard an owl... sounded like a barred owl... i hadn't seen one of those in a while so obviously it was worth a quick check... i couldn't find the owl and silly Ramsey decided to go for a little joy ride down the hill. Fortunately for him, he ran into a blackberry bush which arrested his decent into the reservoir. I get it, you get a sense of invincibility after a slug domination so you try something crazy... it happens to the best of us.
The truth is there was only one slug in the whole garden, and i felt defeated so i made up this story to give it a little juice. The last thing we want to do is bore our readers right? But there is a clinical score here. This is a new garden and the slug population has yet to really build up... but now that there is food it will. I think the site of this community garden has long been a city tree farm, not king hell territory for slugs, but with all the new lettuce and such there a single slug can lay 500 eggs per season. So if there are even 20 slugs in the garden it could be ten thousand slugs next year... there was once a band from Vancouver called "the Son's of Freedom" and they had an album called "Never Retreat, Never Apologize". I think we have to keep this in mind with our slug diligence.
The real comedy occurred when we got back to Ramsey's house and there were like 30 slugs in his personal garden. It was like that book the alchemist where a man goes on a hunt for the truth and it was right under the tree he started from.
Nobody was harmed in this story.
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