Day 103 - April 17th

Day 3 of "enemies of the lawn". There are actually three enemies visible in this photograph.

The first and obvious one is what wikipedia calls a "gastropod mollusk". Commonly known as slugs. These are little ones that were astoundingly easy to find. I wanted to find one of the big 5-7" banana slugs, but I've done a fairly good job lately of...extermination. These suckers are the reason we have yet to grow some types of vegetables. Little carrot babies come poking out of the ground - next day are gone.

The second one is just visible in the background - it's some weed that pops up everywhere with a little white flower on top. Fortunately, they have very shallow roots and pull up easily but they are prolific.

The third is a more insidious one and threatens about $15,000 in landscaping. And there's nothing I can do about it. Weather. Those gastropods are sitting on top of one of my concrete retaining wall blocks. I have a LOT of those in my yard because of the way I've done things. And they are falling slowly apart. Funny how concrete the Romans put down is still there, but concrete blocks barely three years old is fraying at the edges. Eventually, it will all be piles of gravel as the whatevers in the blocks break down. Some have lost a centimeter already off their corners.

Oh, you know how a lot of videos or pictures say "no animals were harmed in the making of this picture" or something similar. I cannot say the same about today's picture. Slugs rarely, if ever, survive an encounter with me. :)