From Pretty to Gross in Just One Post

I debated about posting this but I'm doing it in the interest of public service. So bear with me.

Last year, I wanted hosta plants for the border around the back patio. Then I found out how much they cost, multiplied that by how many I'd need, and went for coleuses instead, a kind of cheap woman's hosta.

They grew a lot bigger than this as the summer went on and looked great, such pretty colors, but there was a problem. The older leaves all developed large holes in them which I eventually realized were mini slug banquet sites. Those gross little slime trailers are pretty prevalent here. Luckily, they don't seem to care for most of what I plant, but those coleuses must have been the slug equivalent of Rachael Ray's "yummo" (which, come to think of it, is probably "yummo." But I digress.)

This year, Mom decided to dig out some hostas she no longer needed/wanted and donate them to the cause. Combined with a few strays I found around the property, I have the beginnings of my hosta moat.

I hope to fill in between with more hostas. We'll see what happens during my upcoming annual garden center tour (binge) with Mom.

But in the meantime, wouldn't you know it, the shameless buggers were back again? Three inches of mulch were not enough to stop these soulless primordials. I started noticing holes last weekend and realized time had come for action. Attacking annuals is one thing, but back off of my perennials already.

So E implemented my plan:

"What is it?" and "Ew" or a combination are acceptable questions/statements.

It is beer in an improvised dish cut from the bottom of a plastic gallon jug. It took E's last two bottles to fill the dishes we had set around for each plant, but he enjoys an epic struggle and was willing to sacrifice for the cause.

So why beer? Slugs apparently love the stuff (one of the many differences between myself and a slug) to the point that they will happily slide into a dish of the stuff and drown themselves. Like so:

Nine of his/her/its barely brained kinfolk were found in this dish alongside this specimen. That was the highest count, but slime sacks were found in the other dishes too.

I hope to be able to get rid of these dishes in a little while because, frankly, beer saucers in my yard gross me out. But I do like the simplicity of this solution, the lack spread-around chemicals, and not having to buy yet another specialty slug-be-gone type garden product.

On to less nauseating subjects:

ACTION SHOT! It's like you're there, no?

E has a new toy.

Actually, we both do, but he was the first to use it.

As often happens in the spring, the distance between "Oh look, the leaves are coming out!" and "Head for the hills, Mother Nature is taking back what's hers!" can be measured by one good rainstorm. We recently realized our burning bushes in front of the house were considering forming towers, and, in general, spring was busting out a bit too much. All over. So after some consideration and debate as to whether we were buying tools unnecessarily (we have an old school pair of hedge trimmers donated by Mom last year), we picked up an electric hedge trimmer, encouraged by a $20 rebate.

E's first words upon using it? "It's like cutting through butter!" No regrets there. We'll still have lots of uses for the shears, but there's no comparison for larger scale jobs, and no way we could do such a neat and tidy job by hand. Well, at least not with our hands.

E did a great job taming our burning bushes into charmingly flickering flames, and seems to be looking for the next shrub to crew cut. As long as he doesn't take it to any of the neighborhood pets, we should be good.