2 - Slugs

 Having practically melted myself, and losing half of my cottage plants to the cruel sun, made me reflect on the wisdom of sticking to my favourites. It also made me order an electric dropdown sunshade, almost crippling myself by the cost. But hey, I can make it whizz down from inside the flat, nifty! 

I dug up the sad remnants of the plants that didn't survive the summer sun and high winds on the balcony, and got ready for Winter by planting loads of bulbs in the newly empty planters. And then I started to research. Do you? Or are you the type of gardener that plonks in plants anyhow and anywhere? I used to be the type of gardener that falls in love with highly unsuitable plants and then repents at leisure (with people too, now that I think of it. Well, at least I am consistent). But no more! Nope! From then on, only plants suited to my pseudo clifftop garden (think galeforce winds, lashing rain, scorching sun) would be welcome.

My reading pointed me to Mediterranean plants. So by April I got me a Canna edulis, a blood red one. And a Convolvulus cneorum. The Papaver somniferum looked promising. Roses, both a tea rose hybrid and floribunda, 'cause the old rose had lived. A Tagetes spatula, couldn't hurt. And then I lost my head and also got some Nigella damascena,  Dianthus chinensis, a Buddleia davidii and a Runner Bean. Why? See above:...falls in love with...etcetera.  

Remember I had planted bulbs in November? I had bought bio soil for that, as is my habit. One morning in April, the rising sun was just reflected by the window of the flat opposite, I noticed some strange cut up shoelace type things on my windows. My newly rescued dog Puck and I went to investigate. Puck was the first to suss out the things weren't edible, I just stared in disbelief.  Baby Slugs? How? I garden three floors up! Surely they hadn't climbed the wall en masse, like slimy demented mountaineers? No. They had not, they had travelled very comfortably with the expensive organic soil in the bags. I found slug embryos in every planter I had. I plucked them from the windows, dug them from the soil, picked them from my plants, shook them out of my shoes and battled them for the rest of that year.

 So I started to feed the birds, hoping they would use the slugs as dessert. Like Puck, they thought slugs beneath them, and went for the sunflower seeds instead. I tried beer traps, then thought better of that and drank the beer myself before my darling doggie could develop an alcohol habit. In the end, I gave up and lived with slugs.

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 When you are interested in my art, you can take a look at Instagram, @grashoffr and there's also an Insta page for my balcony garden there @songsmith2962 where you'll find lots of photos, both old and recent, of my garden.