Easter Remnants and the Birth of Spring

Spring, new life, fresh growth. A good place to start my blog, which I've been daydreaming about for a long while. This past weekend was Easter, and my boys (R1, 5.5 years old, and R2, almost 2 years old) and I had a good time dyeing eggs in time for the Bunny's visit, but my older guy was set against "ruining" our colourful creations by (gasp!) eating them. I finally convinced him that we should eat them by telling him that we would save the shells for our strawberry patch.

Last year, you see, the slugs ate more of our big, lovely, juicy strawberries than we did! I couldn't beat them to it - if I picked them before they were fully ripe, they went bad before they ripened properly, but if I left them to ripen on the plant, they were the main event at the slug buffet before I managed to get to them. I did a little bit of research, and found online that one solution to the slug invasion is to spread crushed egg shells on the ground around the plants, so it is too treacherous for them to venture in. We dutifully saved our egg shells (and asked our lovely neighbours - a.k.a. Nannie, Grampie and Great Aunt, to do the same), and eventually brought them out to spread on the patch. Unfortunately, however, we found we had not saved enough shells to cover the area, and we had waited until too late in the season - the plants had already grown and spread enough that it was near impossible to get to the soil beneath them. So it was the Slavering Slugs for the win, and they had a reprieve, at least for the rest of the season.

So, this year will be different! I currently have a bowl full of lovely rainbow coloured bits from our Easter breakfast leavings, just waiting to spread spring cheer (and slug discomfort) in our little strawberry patch. I have high hopes for a plump, juicy, sweet, and slime and slug-bite free harvest this summer!

...Unfortunately, our patch is currently covered in snow from an Easter snowstorm (!), so we will have to wait until the snow melts once again...