Death and Destruction
in the Garden
I love my
English Garden. It has numerous plants
in it I haven’t even identified yet and they delight me when they suddenly
bloom at odd times during the year.
Also, I have spent a good deal of time in the garden putting in new
plants and working on the old ones and doing general gardening type things,
EXCEPT the weed pulling and cutting grass and raking leaves which I hate and
for which we have a gardener. Love my
gardener too as he lets me know which plants are weeds and should be removed or
when to put in bulbs of one kind or another.
That said, be advised that I have a very dark brown thumb, almost black,
in that in other locations we have lived, my garden has never prospered or done
well and I am very good at killing things, like the very plants that are now
blooming voraciously. Now that this dark
secret about me is out in the open, my English garden seems to forgive my dark
brown thumb and things grow in spite of it so another reason to love it.
Last week I
found some dahlias on sale at the local nursery and couldn’t resist getting a 6
pack and sticking them wherever I could find an empty spot. They were doing quite well last week in their
new homes. However, this week, it looks
as if war has been declared on them.
Every blossom was gone and every leaf eaten clean away. I have a green stick with smaller green
sticks sprouting out of in in each place where previously there was a nice dahlia
blossom. And the destruction did not
appear to be limited to the one species.
Some of my lilies looked to have some munch marks on them and the potato
vine. As I walker further around my
house, I could see the hop plant had a few signs of destruction too. Some killers stalk my garden.
I have the
means and technology and money to spring for the best to get rid of these monsters of death. Normally, I like to live and let live but
when it comes to my garden, I am going to blast away the slugs and snails that
come to feast on my hard work. It’s not
easy keeping things alive with a dark brown thumb and I don’t need the help to
kill something. I’m sure that the slugs
and snails have a purpose but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. So out comes the slug killer and I sprinkled
it around my plants yesterday while evilly thinking of death to the guerrillas.
YUCK. I am the dispenser of death to these slugs but
I don’t want to see it. I am faint of
heart when it comes to the actual visual effect. I want to kill in the darkness and have them
tidily slither away to die in a dark corner and fertilize my garden. So I was less than delighted when I came home
from dropping my husband off at work and found two huge banana slugs (not sure
what they are called here but they are big and evil looking and nasty looking
and BIG and slimy and nasty) that had crawled out of the garden and onto the brick
wall, probably hoping to evade death and destruction by escaping the pellets of
poison. It was too late for them though
and they were busy releasing their slime on my brick wall as they crawled to
their death. It is their death curse to
release as much slime as possible. Ugh. Several of their smaller cousins were there
too. Take that to me they seemed to be
saying! Kill us but we will slime to the
final end! I managed to scoop them all
onto a paper and stomped them to ensure their immediate death. I didn’t want them to suffer long agonizing
death throes. I am not a monster after
all.
The deed is
done. I put out more slug killer in case
I missed a spot. But now my brick wall
is slimed and I have no clue how to get it off of the bricks. The slime seems almost permanently adhered to
the bricks and it’s thick and gooey and just all around ugly. I am not touching it at all. This is England, after all. It will rain a lot this week or next and
hopefully Mother Nature will forgive me for slaying some of her noxious creatures
and clean my brick wall for me.
The war
continues I know. Some will escape and
come back for the next round of munching on my precious plants. The scents must call to them and they
probably come marching up from the golf course and the woods to the lure of my
plants. I’ll get them though. I’ll get them.
