![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This morning I spent a couple of hours on the allotment while the weather was fairly decent. Lots of the seedlings had got to the stage of needing to be potted on so did a fair bit of that, providing new homes for sprouts, broccoli, snapdragons, calendulas (now on their second pots), mesembryanthemums and lavatera.
Some of the sprout seedlings were showing signs of having been nibbled. I think I apprehended the culprit :-
It was ejected into the compost heap where it can be actually useful.
The transplanted rhubarb seems to have barely noticed that it's been moved and is growing well. It isn't quite as big as its siblings at the original rhubarb patch, but that seems about right to me.
Some of the apple trees have started to open their leaf buds, which is a great relief to me, as I was worried that my cack-handed pruning might have killed them.
This afternoon I started preliminary work on the Great House Tidying and Junk Clearance Project, also known as the Reclamation of the Spare Room. I have yet to find any dinosaurs, but it's early days still.
Some of the sprout seedlings were showing signs of having been nibbled. I think I apprehended the culprit :-
It was ejected into the compost heap where it can be actually useful.
The transplanted rhubarb seems to have barely noticed that it's been moved and is growing well. It isn't quite as big as its siblings at the original rhubarb patch, but that seems about right to me.
Some of the apple trees have started to open their leaf buds, which is a great relief to me, as I was worried that my cack-handed pruning might have killed them.
This afternoon I started preliminary work on the Great House Tidying and Junk Clearance Project, also known as the Reclamation of the Spare Room. I have yet to find any dinosaurs, but it's early days still.
okay
I didn't have the heart to kill him, after that, so I thought exile to the compost heap was fair :-)
I say s/he because, as you probably know, snails are hermaphrodite. They mutually shoot each other with little darts full of sperm. I love it when creatures have weirder sex than anything humans could invent! And it's all going on in your compost bin.
Indeed - sort of simultaneously more simple and more complicated than humans :-)
Slugs apparently hang from leaves in order to carry out this procedure, which is even more weird :-)
There was a mousie living in there at one time, although I've not seen him or her for a while. Rob named it "Fledermaus" because it once practically flew out of the heap while we were in the process of turning it :-)
I suppose I should disapprove of meeces on the allotment, but this one seemed happy enough in the compost and I didn't notice any teeny toothmarks on my veg, so I carefully didn't mention it to anyone who might have complained :-)
Really? Wow this just gets weirder. Swinging from the chandelier is one thing, I do it regularly, but from leaves? What happens on breezy days?
'Darling, did the leaf move for you?'
'Yes darling I'm all a-tremble. You missed me again and my fertile period has just ended.'
'Oh well, you skewered me good and proper. You'll make a great dad.'
'I can't promise hands-on but I have this attractive slimy monopod foot. I'm sure that will do for nappy changing.'
I was remembering only partly correctly - it's only some species of slug which do that, apparently. But as proof, I proffer this page which has what I can only describe as slug porn... (http://members.optushome.com.au/awnelson/davidavid/slug/) :-)
{gigglesnort!] Brilliant! :-)
" Oh I did this fantastic photoshoot of a pair of slugs mating while hanging from a big string of slime! it was brilliant1"
[Other person backs away slowly, not making eye contacy...]
You won't find dinosaurs in the spare room you silly girl, whatever can you be thinking of? They died out long before the house was built, so you'd have seen or heard them coming in. If I were you though, I'd be keeping a sharp look out for Lord Lucan and/or Shergar...
Well, that, and I couldn't remember their common name at the time I posted (Livingstone daisies I presume :-)).
Awwww! :-( I was hoping for a cute ickle brontosaurus wot I could keep as a pet. I would hug him and squeeze him and call him George :-)
That said, I know slugs are bad, and suppose snails are just slugs with houses.
Alas, no :-( Snails are indeed slugs that have had the decency to grow a shell by which the gardener can grip them as s/he hurls them over the fence :-)
Some of them have very pretty shells, but all the little gits eat plants, I'm afraid. In the compost heap this is good, as they help break stuff down into compost. I approve of this. In my greenhouse, not so much...
Ladybirds are good, and eat greenfly. Wasps too, although they become a nuisance later in the season when they get drunk on windfall fruit (seriously - the stuff ferments on the ground and sends the wasps loopy).