The temperatures are dropping and the hill opposite where I live is a magical mix of golden, yellow, orange and bronze, as all the trees, largely oak and beech, are showing their autumn colours.
The temperatures are dropping and the hill opposite where I live is a magical mix of golden, yellow, orange and bronze, as all the trees, largely oak and beech, are showing their autumn colours.
It is a sight that is a pleasure to see, even though I am sad to see the back of summer (what summer?!!). But there is something else I am pleased about, in a perverse, time-saving sort of a way.
Snails - not the small ones or the medium sized ones, just the large vegetable and ornamental plant-munching sort - are disappearing. They have started to slow down and go off for their winter hibernation (presumably so that they can save energy ready to attack my plants again next spring with an increased fervour!).
Now I may be a fool, but not fool enough to be tricked into forgetting them, oh no! For it is from now that any gardener who would prefer to reduce (dramatically) the damage done by these horrible little critters, grabs a bucket and goes off on a collecting spree.
Snails love to group together to while away the winter months, and if you find one you can be sure there will be a lot more in that protected hiding place too. Check under loose flaps of bark, behind stacked spare paving slabs, around unused flower pots, around the back of planters and pots... and even in gaps and holes in walls. They will be there... and the pickings will be rich!
I wonder what the greatest number ever found in one place is...
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