Finding Himself a Slithering

I would be ashamed to admit to the nature of the cruelty and vengeance I have sought to reap upon my fellow slugs, we gastropod molluscs we, as we have slithered and slipped our way around the common ground that is our allotment. In a quest to find my inner slug I have tried to accept the gaping holes, missing edges and glistening fatiscence incurred by my mucoid fellows and recognize it as a mark of wholesome coexistence. I have failed. Just the other night I was to be found 'f''-ing and blinding in the relative seclusion and retreat of our (lost) plot. It might have appeared that I was ranting bile and invective, pouring purple putrid prose over a bare patch of ground. I was actually venting my frustration at a slug that had chosen to go further than a hole or two and instead eat the whole ........ purple sprouting broccoli plant in that instance. You might have left some for me you snot trailing blob of ******* putrescent cabbage you. I should not have let it get away for it seems the message got out on all the slug ridden vines that our more easy pickings were to be had. His bark is worse than his toothless bite was the slithered word on the tomato vine. This Sunday evening just gone I was in awe of the proliferation of slugs emerging in or from the rain sodden twilight. They were everywhere in abundance, crawling up vines, over bushes, on the trees, paths, raised beds; in all a truly horrifying spectacle. Realizing shouting at slugs is not an adequate deterrent I went about the slimy throng with a pair of ....  I stopped at one of the compost bays for it is there the slug's appetites maybe redemptive.

A new Buckfast colony

Red ants in pheromonal conference

         
Achocha winding and binding skyward in the ants nest that is the polytunnel

Songs of cucmbers

Tomatoes swelling and waiting for the ripening sunshine