It All Started with the Slugs

It was warm enough yesterday that Ian and I slept in the tent in the backyard. Before I got into the tent I noticed that there was a slug inside (we don’t see slugs very often and I was very excited). I picked it up and showed mom & dad, then went back outside to put it down on a leaf when I found another on the stone stairs. This one was about twice as big as the one I just put down and was, therefore, twice as cool. I brought this one inside on a leaf to show my parents and then washed my hands with salt.

I thought that it was just luck that I found two slugs, but this was not the case. When I woke up at 6 am it was a bit chilly and there was still morning dew on the grass; however, this is when I noticed that there were slugs all over the outside of the tent. I eventually got up to go back inside because it was just a little too cold for going back to sleep.

About two hours later, after a continuation of my sleep and a blueberry bagel, I went back outside to find slugs. There were a lot of slugs. Dad/mom found an article while I was asleep that explained that, because we’ve had so much rain this summer the slug population has exploded (Slug fest: wet summer creates slimy problem for Alberta gardeners). Now that I was awake and had good light, I took pictures of the slugs.

Later that morning I took Murph out into the front lawn (where he proceeded to chew on grass). While I was sitting on the lawn pulling grass out of his mouth a dragonfly came and landed on a flower in the bush next to me. So I wrapped Murph’s leash around my arm and pulled my phone out. I ended up getting some pretty good pictures until Murph pulled me over to the next bunch of flowers🌼.

After bringing (carrying) Murph back inside I went into the backyard where mom & dad were eating corn muffins with jam. After eating a muffin I grabbed my phone and took pictures of flowers. (I have no idea what type of flowers these are)

After I ran out of flowers that I could reach, I started looking for bugs. There were wasps everywhere (but I’m not getting close to those jerks) and I found spiders easily enough🕷. None of my spider pictures were very good because I refused to get within two inches of them after one displayed its gold medalist sprinting speed. In the end I took pictures of the third most common bug in our backyard: bees. I got pictures of honey bees and our giant casserole bumble bees🐝.

Ta-dah      [All pictures were taken before lunch]

I tried to take a picture of the wolf spider that lives in the basement, but the lighting is terrible down there.