After a fairly productive “tidy and mulch” morning, the forecast rain arrived to scupper my afternoon plans. Luckily I had contingencies. And conveniently they were all greenhouse based. I say “based” because it did involve going into the deluge, but not for long and intermittently. Today was the day I had ear-marked for clearing out the feral tomato plants. Nipping out side shoots had been abandoned weeks ago. They had been “expressing” themselves freely ever since. I could see from the outside the soup of squashed fruit, mouldy leaves and lurking molluscs squashed against the glass. Not a job for the faint-hearted. So, with a wheelbarrow parked at chucking distance outside, I cruelly attacked the optimistic top growth. When it was piled high I pushed it up to the compost bin. This took several trips. The best green tomatoes were laid out on the shelving to ripen. We live in hope. Then the growbags were loaded and pushed up the hill to be stored until a piece of free ground needs a little improvement. Then on to scraping up the gunk and detritus left behind, all the while throwing the resident population of slugs and snails over the hedge into the field beyond. Luckily for this little newt I was wearing my specs and he didn’t partake in the flying lessons. I tucked him in a cosy corner where hopefully he will be safe until the spring.
Flying Lessons
Off The Edge Gardening 
Wow …. love the little critter
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There was another one too, with an orange stripe down his back, but it was out of focus. 🙂
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You really like the exercise, don’t you? Tomorrow you’ll be back, collecting all the returned molluscs and chucking them over the hedge into the field next door. Discus at the next Olympics? You will notice I’m not picking up on the fact that your continual chucking over the hedge was conducted (continually) from inside the greenhouse, where you were scraping stuff up, presumably single-handedly (the other hand being engaged with the aforementioned chucking), at the same time. 😉
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Some will not return (she says ominously) 🙂
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Do you put the grow bag comoost on the borders?
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Yes I do. I use large plastic pots with the bottoms cut out on top. Not too many roots in the bags.
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Yeah me too. I put my used bag contents on the front garden borders. Was just checking not doing sommat daft.
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And I was worrying that I was!
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Ha, well. Safety in numbers…
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We have banana slugs here. They are huge and bright yellow, but only eat decomposing material. In other words, they do not damage the garden. When we were young, we were told that they could fly and would ‘get us’ if we went outside when were told not to. It worked to keep us in.
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That was when we were camping ‘in their realm’. We did not have them at home.
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I like the sound of banana slugs! The thought of large yellow slimy flying machine is quite scary. I would have stayed in too !
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They are so prominent here that they are the mascot of UC Santa Cruz.
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Is this really a newt? If so, are newts more lethargic than lizards? I cannot for the life of me get a decent photo of the lizards in our garden. They are unbelievably fast. Sometimes, they make their way into the house (or maybe the cat brings them in and then forgets about them). Either way, it’s a merry dance trying to get them back outside.
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I think he was thinking about hibernation, they don’t tend to dart about like lizards though. ps I blame the cat 😊
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Yes, the cat. Sigh.
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I’m sorry to have to teĺl you this, but snails always come back when you throw them next door. It may take them a while, but they are home loving creatures and they always return. I just stamp on them.
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Oh dear 😦
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You should paint a cross on the snail shells with nail varnish (if gardening ladies have nail varnish?) before launch to test the return theory!
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This gardening lady does! What a good plan, will take some on Thursday, now should I use red or purple? 🙂
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