Emma and I spent a lovely couple hours working in the garden yesterday. I got all the dead flowerheads clipped off the lavender, daisy, and oregano plants, pulled out the dead petunias, and chopped the Dusty Miller and Russian Sage back basically to the ground. The Dusty Miller was frost-damaged and looked straggly, and the Russian Sage was wildly out of control. Both have lots of new shoots showing, so I think they'll come through fine and be lovely and bushy this summer. There was a ginormous peppermint plant that I cut off every stem taller than one inch. It looks to be taking over the corner of the garden by the deck, and maybe this will slow it down. (Yeah, right. I'll probably have to dig out the whole thing and put it in a pot to contain it. Even that may not work. It is deliciously fragrant, though.) I also pulled about 10 bucketloads of weeds from the paths and beds, though that was just the tip of the iceburg. The garden looks so much better now, with the plants trimmed. There are LOTS of slugs, though, and they are chomping the pansies we planted a week or so ago. I may invest in another cheap window box and replant them in that to get away from the slugs. Nothing else seems affected. I found at least four different kinds of lavender, so it will be really pretty to see them start to bloom.
While I was working, Emma mostly played. She used the trowel to transfer walkway gravel to a 4" pot, then dumped it out and started again. That lasted about 45 minutes. For a while, she helped with the weeding, but lost interest in that fairly quickly. Then she discovered the slugs. Slugs are fun, slugs are slimy, slugs are the coolest thing ever. They are fun to pick up and bring over to put in a pile by Mommy. Especially fun was the 6" banana slug she found under a lavender plant. She carried it around for a good five minutes before we let it go in the woods, unharmed. A girl after my own heart.
4 comments:
That's a brave girl you got there, playing with slugs. Good for her!
oh god. of course i am trying not to be a squeamish fart, but i must admit i suspect these overly large slugs are some kind of alien goo to be avoided at all costs.
yech.
whoa. I was envying your weather 'till I saw the size of your slugs. Never mind.
Steph
(yarn harlot)
That is one ugly slug. i have mint too and it's taking over a p;ot in my side yard which is alright it's a pretty plant and smells good. But the intresting thing is it's growing under our chimmney bump out. the chimmney is attached to the house but does not go all the way to the ground. So there's about 6 inchs of space between the ground and chimmney. the mint is growing under the chimmney. Now that's what I call a tough plant. It'll grow in bad soil with no sunlight.
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