Flowers are Pretty

I had an interesting day yesterday. Well, interesting is an overstatement, it actually ranged somewhere between amusing and appalling. Let's start with interesting.

I love gardening. Our house, however, takes up most of our huge 5,000 sq ft yard, and leaves very little place to actually plant things. In addition, where that little piece of useable space is mostly shaded and the drainage sucks, so whatever I plant just dies, but I persist. Even my back lawn is completely dead right now. It's a sad little patch of brown and grey with a few tiny islands of green grass fighting for life. Hmm... Maybe it's me, but we'll come back to that.

I went to Home Depot to buy my gardening supplies. I bought (and loaded in the car myself!) a huge 50lb bag of potting soil, some pretty flowers, lawn seed, and organic fertilizer. Yes, organic... Don't judge me please. I am not a hippy, I don't wear hemp dresses, birkenstocks and am allergic to patchouli oil, but I like organic things. Who knows why.

I pierced the bag of soil with my little soil scoop and threw it in my pots and watered it. I had some river rocks laying by one container, which got some water on them and were glistening. After some deliberation, I decided to remove those and make my back patio nice and uncluttered. I bent down to pick up the rocks. I picked one, then next one... Then I noticed a particularly shiny medium sized rock and thought that it was aesthetically pleasing. I reached for it and picked it up and jumped with terror. It felt firm, but with some give, springy and very, very slimy. I threw it on the ground and by then it stopped the charade and showed it's true face. It was an ugly giant slug! I ran into the house to scrub my hands. Then I thought, "Should I kill the slug? Is it too ugly to live?" The decision has been made. I grabbed my container of iodized salt, I am not sure of iodine significance in terms of slug murder, but I grabbed it anyway.

When I got to the back yard, the slug has crawled about half a foot away! That's extremely fast for a slug. He was a champion. But I showed no mercy. I poured my iodized salt over it and turned away to avoid watching it die. And so it did. It died a silent death. I felt bad afterwards: guilty and even a little sad. I got over it. Now I look at every little rock with suspicion. Oh well, maybe I will get over that too some day.