Warming Up?

I am going to have to start taking my own advice.

For years I have written a column each spring about the necessity of gently warming up to the gardening season. Making lists, doing a variety of tasks that use alternatingly large and small muscle groups, and warming up and cooling down before and after doing any physical tasks have been just a few of my past suggestions. And they are all good ones.

But on those lovely, warm days in early May, I just couldn’t wait to get outside and dig in. Did I bother to warm up a little before getting down on my knees? No. Did I get leg cramps when I tried to get back up? Yes. Did I alternate weeding (small muscles) with digging (large muscles)? No. Instead I spent two hours on my knees pulling out little bittercress and buttercups. Then I moved a tree and a couple of shrubs, which entailed digging six holes and about 90 minutes with the shovel. Did I cool down with a few stretches after I had done the first physical labor of the season? Nope. I went inside for a tall glass of iced tea. Did I have trouble getting out of bed the next morning? Well, of course I did. My hands were cramping, my knees were screaming “ouch, ouch, ouch” with each step, and my back was bending in strange ways to relieve itself of the pain.

But that wasn’t even the worst thing I didn’t listen to myself about. Regular readers will remember almost annual columns about slug control where I preach using less deadly forms of slug bait with iron phosphate around pets or small children rather than the seriously dangerous metaldahyde.

So what did I do? I went out and bought a brand new box of metaldahyde pellets. After all, metaldahyde is a better slug control because it is more deadly. I wasn’t going to mess around with slug control that I have found to be less effective. And none of our dogs or cats have ever shown any interest in either form, so I figured I was safe.

Ah, but we now have a dog that has touched my heart so much so that I let her run in the garden (yes, through the plants) to her heart’s delight. I knew metaldahdye might be a problem for this food-obsessed hound, so I very carefully planted an old cottage cheese container into the ground after I had cut a couple of slots for the slugs to crawl in and get the pellets. That container was in the ground for about 2 seconds before Emily's excellent nose scouted out something new to explore. In another 2 seconds, she had the lid off and her nose in the container.

Luckily, Gary was close enough to Em to pull her away immediately and then he stuck his hand into her mouth and down her throat for anything she might have eaten. No luck finding anything. Of course, this all happened on a Sunday afternoon (i.e., no vet service) so we watched her like a hawk for six hours, giving her milk to dilute any poison she might have ingested. We must have had the saints watching over us that day, as Emily was fine a few hours later, with no signs of poison affecting her. But I learned a very valuable lesson: hand-pick slugs! I won’t even mess with iron phosphate anymore, just in case. My gardens are important to me but they aren’t family members.

I remember so very well my mother telling me as a child, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.” That won’t work for me anymore. I am going to “do as I say.”