the garden: beer and broken babies

It seems like every day this week I've come back from the garden check with tomatoes in my pocket and squash in my hands. very exciting.

this was Friday's haul.

Daughter spent about 20 minutes counting and recounting and triple checking her count.

she was sure the final count was 14.

Saturday, Husband cut the grass and I had the bright idea of instead of just cutting the grass around the mystery vegetable vines (aka butternut squash) that I would hold the vines up off the ground so he could weed eat under them. It was a horrible idea. Two babies broke off the vines. Daughter has been calling the larger one a "ka-wash" and the little one a "baby watermelon" I call them both "broken babies" and vow to never suggest Husband weed eat that close to the garden again!

ALSO, last weekend I noticed the snails ate our first few strawberries and at least two squash! ugh. I'm talking to my mother about it and she suggests I use beer to get rid of them.

Sure, whatever, mom.

Then I start googling and she was right. short of spearing them or picking them myself the safest thing for the garden was to put bowls of beer out in the garden and the snails crawl in and drown. cruel? maybe. less cruel than salt, I think.

So I sacrificed two bottles of red stripe in two pie tins and in the morning ... 8 snails. That means there are 8 fewer snails out in my garden eating my produce.

My friend, Jamie, suggested I just get ducks to eat the snails ... bc the kids would love them. I just laughed and laughed when I read that. I could imagine Son and Daughter running around the yard chasing ducks so they could pet them.

(right now I'm making 18 "sun dried" tomatoes in the oven. Food Day Friday post upcoming on that)