Stupid tips Part 1

I have a very small garden which over the last few years I have to come to love. I potter about and lose all track of time. I also have a pair of green and pink check gumboots which I adore so will welcome any excuse to wear them. At the end of a hard afternoon in the garden I can sit in my gumboots, downing a restorative cocktail and I don't have a care in the world.

The most frustrating thing about gardening is that it usually looks ragged and half-eaten due to a never-ending plague of snails. I've tried leaving out beer which is supposed to encourage them to some sort of drunken suicide but have never found this to work. I also realised once that this technique has too many parallels with young men and their first cars so it makes me uneasy (I know - possibly an odd reaction). So instead I bait them and ever so often I go on a rampage, hunt them out and crush them to death. I can pretend they are some of the arrogant idiots I occasionally have to work with. Even more satisfying is to apply salt to them and watch them foam up and die but this takes planning (after all who walks around with salt on them). I was reading a gardening book recently that suggested this was a cruel practice and a more humane way to dispose of snails was to put them in a plastic bag and then into the freezer so they could "fall asleep gently". WHAT? They are snails not endangered cute baby seals. As my dear old Grandad would say "What a load of rot!"

I am obviously not a very humane gardener. I will however continue on my search for appropriate and effective snail eradication techniques.