Light on a killer

At 10.30 after the pub I put on a 70 lumens head torch and went out into the garden.

First I quickly and accurately cut a wide variety of slugs in two just behind their heads. If I do that every night my tender young borage and poached egg plants may grow up to attract pollinators, and my parsley, cabbage, lettuce and strawberries may grow up to feed me. Slug pellets poison way more wildlife than the slugs they’re intended for and shouldn’t ever be used. But I can’t be having the slugs, and I can’t see the difference between killing them like this and killing them in any other way (even the harmless-seeming ones or the more removed ones like beer traps. I’ve tried to repel them but the barrier method (copper coil) doesn’t seem to fully work. Reading that last sentence back it sounds a bit dodgy.

I’m very touched to find what I think is a common frog on a strawberry leaf. When I gently touch it, its skin is cool and moist. It doesn’t let me kiss it so for now I just have the one boyfriend. I don’t know where it will find water – maybe there is still a pond nearby after all. I just reported it on iSpot. Barkingside is suburban.

In the light of my head torch the air is teeming with pollen grains, more than I realised there could be without me noticing them in my nose and throat. Apparently this is only medium levels. Or maybe it’s just my garden?

I move seedlings onto a table in the greenhouse for the night where the slugs won’t get them. There is no cat crap on the lawn because I strimmed it down enough to use my Bosch push mower (zero electricity, even does stripes). The lawn is soft and green. There are black slugs on it. I don’t know what these ones do – I don’t see them on my plants.

A pipe in the eaves spouts water down the wall of the house. Matt comes back, listens to a pipe in the hot water tank cupboard, then puts on the head torch and goes up a ladder to the loft where I have never been because it is very dark, dirty, spidery and gendered. I waggle pipes, and he turns one off.

The spouting stops and yippee – I don’t have to have a shower.