Feeling sluggish…
I didn’t realize, when I planned this lovely flower bed o’ mine, that I was going to have to deal with garden pests. Oh, they’re just your garden variety (ha, ha) garden pests, but I am not a girl who likes to deal with such things. I don’t do bugs. I was happy to plant the majority of the flowers by the end of May for precisely that reason. The most I had to worry about was the occasional worm I happened to dig up (which, yeah for the worms! That means my soil isn’t *too* bad after all!). But now… now there are slugs. And they’re everywhere! I mean, I knew they loved hostas, and I have loverly hostas, but I didn’t know they also loved daylilies and heucheras! And mushrooms!! I have mushrooms sprouting daily, which is apparently okay since they help break down the mulch into stuff the soil can actually use. But when I went outside to check on things the other night, one of the poor fungi was being attacked by not one, not two, but THREE slugs. Ewwwww.
So, I came home the other night with slug bait. Not the bad kind, but rather the kind that won’t kill any birds that happen to eat the dying slugs, or any animals that might accidentally ingest it. I have lots of wildlife (e.g. bunnies) in my yard, and I’d feel terribly guilty if, in my quest to rid myself of mollusks-without-shells, I happened to kill some innocent furries. Now, I have yet to actually put out the slug bait, and I’m not sure if I should. I came home Friday evening to a veritable flock of birds in my flower bed, and I believe they were feasting on slugs and bugs and other creepy things! Do I put out the bait anyway, or do I rely on my bird friends to take care of the problem? It’s quite a dilemma, I tell you.
In other gardening news (is this all I can talk about anymore? Apparently, yes.)… I’m excited to try a new (to me) technique for a no-till flower bed. I have a space on the east side of my house that I’ve always wanted to plant, and I’m going to try (sort of) lasagna gardening. Sounds tasty, right? You basically layer cardboard and organic materials over the area you want to eventually plant, water it very well, and wait for it to break down. I’ll be working on it over the summer… I’m thinking this will allow me to finally do something with the contents of the bunnies’ litter boxes. I feel so guilty every time I clean litter boxes, because I normally just throw everything away. I don’t think the neighborhood association would be very keen on composting; everyone around here just seems kind of uptight, and the possibility that it might smell makes me think it wouldn’t go over very well. I’ve just never been able to figure out how to get started, and rabbit poo, disentegrated wood pellets, and old hay just aren’t enough to get a good compost bin going… as a single girl, I don’t have much kitchen waste to throw onto the heap, and I have a mulching lawnmower so I don’t have to bag or rake the grass. But I’m willing to give it a try; I’m going to try to find a local compost co-op or something so I’m not wasting so much. I’m also going to look into installing a rain barrel. I’m not sure how I would water plants with it, but it would sure help with the water bill, and since reading about them I feel guilty just letting the rain water go. As if the ground around here needs more saturation. Look at me, goin’ green and everything! Er, trying to, anyway.
Photo by bizrytr, via Creative Commons
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