Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails

One of the troubles of gardening is that we acquire responsibilities.  That'll be The Royal We. I am but a spectator when it comes to matters horticultural. Spike does all the work.

The - perhaps - inevitable has befallen some of the seedlings planted during the last couple of days.  Slugs and snails!  Late November / early December is thunderstorm season, as news reports will have it.  We've had four giant storms in the last couple of weeks; another localised one today over our suburb.  Sydney has had some monster-size events over the same period.

This morning we had lost the heads of a couple of sweet pea plants that Spike bedded in a pot the other day and a few of the sunflower seedlings she planted out yesterday.  It was, therefore, a determined woman that attacked - which is neither the wrong nor too strong a word to use - the gardening tasks upon our return from a visit to Bunnings.  The growing area is being liberally carpeted with sugar cane and pea straw mulches.  Severed plastic bottles are being rammed into the ground around each seedling as protection.  And for maybe half an hour after this afternoon's storm with its heavy rain Spike wandered around the garden like a heat seeking missile spotting snails that made the mistake to surface from their clammy dens in search of food - Spike's seedling sunflowers, sweet peas, beans and peas.  The offending beasts have been expelled from the garden but with less grace and ceremony than Adam and Eve when they were cast out from Eden.

Garden snail defecating, apparently

We recognise, of course, that the struggle against the garden's seemingly never-ending supply of terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs is a gargantuan endeavour - not to say futile.  But Spike is a determined woman and, despite the almost overwhelming odds arising from the innumerable hordes of slowly moving, slithering creatures that surround us and our would-be flowers and veg, I would not bet against her.