Wednesday April 15, 2020

Covid-19 may have us sheltered in place but that doesn’t stop the spring garden growth spurt that is going on. It’s GARDEN SEASON and I love to dig in the dirt. Today I set a goal to completely weed one of our large garden beds. I’m always excited to see what plants survived the winter and what holes I need to fill. Because one of the absolute joys of gardening is buying more plants.

While I was busy separating the weeds from the budding perennials (meaning my face was close to the ground — like doing surgery in some cases) I noticed that we had been invaded. Since Baxter plays a lot of ball in our backyard we don’t use slug bait or pesticides in our yard. We are also environmentally conscious but that’s a whole different conversation. There were and probably still are snails everywhere! Snails! All ages of snails happily munching on my plants kinda snails. Not in the least bit afraid of being found out by the humans who reside here. And today, for whatever reason, the snails were out in full force, not tucked inside their shells, but their heads and necks extended as they slowly cruised around my garden like their own personal buffet.

So time for true confessions. Although I’m normally a fairly calm and easy to get along with kinda gal, today I declared war. By the time I reached my goal and weeded the garden bed, I totally lost count of how many snails I captured and exercised capital punishment on. It actually grosses me out but somebody had to win. I needed to take a stand. I protected my precious garden plants from the initial invasion. Here on out, it’s us against the snails!

Side note: It suddenly occurred to me around lunch time what is significant about today’s date. It’s normally income tax day but due to Covid-19 the deadline for returns has been pushed back to July 15. Usually the April 15 date is blazed into my brain. It’s almost like the days of the week. It’s all becoming a blurrrrr.