Ah, England ,
that land which is kept forever green by a never-ending supply of rain. The
green, when you look closely, consists mainly of weeds.
Turns out I was right to scoff at the experts when they forecast
a year-long drought; I mean, have the people who say this sort of thing ever
been to the UK ?
If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s that whatever the weather, it won’t
be what you want.
The lack of sunshine has stalled my climbing beans, whilst
the squashes (courgette, pumpkin and butternut squash) are all just sitting
sulking instead of romping away like usual. One cucumber has managed to survive but again isn't doing much. My tomato house is up, assisted with four stakes, some bamboo canes, zip-ties, string and several bricks to stop it flying away in the constant, unseasonal gale-force winds.
Meanwhile, the damp conditions have brought my strawberries,
raspberries and onions on well, but very slowly, so they are under constant
attack from snails and slugs. Snails are more evident and I have caught a
number of them committing suicide by crawling over the top of my strawberry
netting and getting stuck. Unfortunately the weed-control fabric that keeps the
plants from being over-run is also the ideal hidey-hole for invertebrates.
Last week, my gardening friend and colleague Derek recounted
how he had visited his plot on a damp evening and been greeted by a huge army
of marauding slugs. He bravely slaughtered as many of them as possible until he
found himself, like the soldiers in the movie Aliens, out of ammo and still surrounded by a rising tide of slime.
I can empathise with the sinking sensation of doom, having fought similar battles
with other pests but I was feeling quite pleased that I haven’t seen that many
slugs this year. Unfortunately, I must have thought that a bit too loudly
because karma overheard and my last trip to the plot was accompanied by a light
rain shower and a gastropod plague of biblical proportions. I thought the
strawberries were bad, with both slugs and snails queuing up to munch the
ripest fruit, until I saw the onions and garlic, each plant wilting under the
weight of three or four slugs each. Some just a few millimetres in size, some
huge.
So, with the same feeling of being surrounded by an enemy
horde, I was forced to make a stand and despatch as many of the offending
creatures as I could get hold of. I would like to say to any Buddhists reading
that it’s not something I greatly enjoyed doing and I feel sure that if I’m
ever brought to account by a higher power for the number of living things I have
destroyed, the foreman of the jury is very likely to be a slug or snail.
Unfortunately despite my attempt at slug genocide I fear I
have only stemmed the first wave, and I felt the sensation of doom rise up in
me too.
On the plot, no-one can hear you scream.
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