Wins and losses in the garden

Seriously, I was overjoyed, like, ecstatic, when yesterday I put the garden fork into last year’s potato patch. Greenery had popped up after summer, and a few weeks ago, after a quick fossick, I had seen a potato growing, and I was optimistic that there might be more. It was sunny. I had been thinking about freshly dug potatoes ever since I first saw that small white nub of a potato poking through the dirt. In went the fork. Lovely soft soil; the worms had been busy. And up came a string of potatoes. If you’ve grown potatoes, you will know what I mean by a string; like a necklace of beads of different sizes, all held together on a string of some sort. Dang. I had dug too early; the little babies needed another few weeks.

Never mind. I took my spoils inside, scrubbed them clean and steamed them for dinner. All but one were delicious, incredibly creamy, in a way new season spring potatoes are not, and richly flavoured. But one was a dunger. It took longer to cook than the others and emerged suspiciously translucent after cooking. It went to the compost. Oh, my compost! On Monday I prepared a garden bed ready to plant garlic on the shortest day, and I dug out a large bucket of compost from the bottom of the bin, and it was writhing with worms! (Oops, wait a mo’, can a compost writhe? I’m having visions of the compost bin dancing in slow-mo to Barry White or Al Green Haha!). That’s such a good sign! All the worms, I mean, not the writhing. I felt happy as I dug the compost into the soil (free, and good!).

But today when I stuck my prying eyes and fingers into the heart of a huge mass of leafy green leaves where a wee cauliflower bud is forming, I was disgusted: not one, but three fat pinky-yellow grey-spotted slugs. I had no choice but to pull them out with my fingers. Touching a slug is disgusting. It took ages to wash off the slime. Highly UNRECOMMENDED!