There Will Be Slugs
Our front lawn persists in being a battlefield. First there was the city of Mountain View planting two trees in our yard that we are now required to water and care for (at our expense, in a drought-plagued area where water is expensive, even as we receive Mountain View flyers telling us to conserve water), trees that will ultimately blot out the sun from our backyard garden. Then there was the SWAT team trudging back and forth through our yard, glaring at us for daring to peek as they traumatized (wrong-headedly ) our quiet neighbors (I still see them in their dark uniforms with kevlar vests, knee pads and equipment belts, hair shorn shorter than crewcut, and strapped to their thighs these oversized guns resembling the symbol pi, only with snout and balls).
Now it’s the slugs and snails.
We thought we’d plant moss roses as a border. They’re drought-resistant and make a good cover. But the very next morning we found that a good number of them had been munched to the ground. So began our nightly flashlight expeditions, hauling along a bucket of soapy water. The worst area owes to a ground-hugging evergreen bush. It’s not that big — maybe the size of BP’s CEO (without his ego). But at night it looks like an insanely-decorated Christmas tree, so heavily laden with snails and slugs that one must take pause and step back, blinded by the spectacle. We (actually I — Lori would only hold the flashlight) have plucked hundreds of snails and slugs from that bush night after night, and finally, just possibly, we are beginning to make a dent. Or perhaps the weather has been drier, or the snails and slugs have finished their heavy feeding and breeding for a spell. But there is hope — hope that the surviving moss roses will make it.
Unless another SWAT team comes trudging through with their cold uncaring boots.
