On Father’s Day

I was dismayed to find that Jenny had already nicked my “it’s Friday somewhere in the world”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2009/06/19/in-which-the-gloves-come-off-–-and-on-and-off-and-on-again joke, so I had to save what I had thought would be a super Friday afternoon post for another time, and write about something half-way serious. Sorry about that.

It’s not apple blossom time anymore

I often get asked about inspiration for blog posts, and it’s a funny thing, because I have a list as long as a very long thing of serious stuff to write about, but the posts that everyone seems to enjoy and comment on are more difficult to think of. Anyway, today was Father’s Day and the summer solstice, and I was given 2.2 lb of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk by my wonderful, perfect, lovely children. I did some gardening (my tomatoes and chillies are now in grown-up pots)

and I scrounged around, came up with some random pieces of wood, and constructed a bird table.

Oh, and the other Dad thing I did was to crack bad puns break into the garage because we couldn’t find the key. I even fixed it, later.

Now, I didn’t want to write about any of that. I wanted to write about something interesting that came up at the end of last week in a peer-reviewed journal, but actually it’s been far too nice a day for that. Instead, I’m going to report from the Front: the War on Gastropoda.

You might recall that whereas certain people of our acquaintance were dealing death and destruction in the form of little blue pellets of doom, I was reverting to more subtle methods. Not, as has been rumoured, by staking my children to the bamboo growing in the corner and not letting them inside before they’ve captured and water-boarded every slug or snail in the district, but by using coffee grounds.

‘Why?’ I hear you ask. ‘You’re no tree-hugging hippy greenie, are you?’—and no, I’m not. I was a bit worried about the effects of the poison on birds that might eat dying slugs, but my major reason for using coffee grounds is because I keep forgetting to go to B&Q and buy slug pellets.

But, anyway, I’m pleased to say it worked. The joint coffee-drinking forces of F1000 and KCL (actually, I’m not totally convinced that the Fairtrade muck they provide at SNG can rightly be called ‘coffee’ under the terms of the Geneva Conventions) provided sufficient anti-gastropod power to protect my seedlings. Indeed, one morning I went out and saw a slimy trail from a limey snail glisten up to the coffee ground event horizon, and then veer off; obviously defeated.

Unfortunately, after a couple of rainy days I looked out to find that one of my beans and two mangetouts had succumbed. Trails criss-crossed the coffee grounds. Obviously I need to reinforce the defences on a regular basis.

This is a bit of a problem though, and I’m getting very odd looks as I root through dumpsters at the back of the coffee shops in W1. I’ll have to bite the bullet and remember to cycle to B&Q (now that I’ve fixed the garage door found the garage door key, this is possible).

Especially now, seeing as my lettuce seedlings are stretching their dicots and beginning to look yummy.