Mother Nature and I have a long, long history. One of her sending hordes of creatures to BITE ME (ticks) or FRIGHTEN ME (many, many ticks...remember the moving freckles? no? The Tale of What Killed Country Christine) or generally BLOW ME OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH and scorpions in my knitting bag and big arse spiders. Let's just say it's never boring when I head out to the great outdoors.
Well, this time apparently the tables were turned! See the lovely cilantro? From my very own herb garden. See the lovely spring roll? Created by my husband with cilantro from my very own herb garden a couple weeks ago. I ate at least 4 of these babies and they were exceptionally yummy. Well, when a dear friend had stopped by, since I'm of a generous nature, I snipped some herbs and offered her a bouquet of fresh cilantro. She noticed these little grey bumps on it. I looked closer, saw that those bumps had EYES and ANTENNAE looking things on their heads. Yup. baby slugs. Lots and lots and LOTS of baby slugs. COVERING the herbs. She promptly dropped herbs onto the ground, said "no thanks" to the herbs, she went home and I went on inside.
I asked the husband, "Honey, you DID wash off the herbs really well, right?" He said, "Oh yeah. I know how freaky you are about dirt and things, so they were unbelievably clean." *I relaxed and sighed* I told him about the baby slugs. He pointed out that he'd not only washed the herbs, but chopped them up with a rather large kitchen knife. I went ahead and ate yet ONE MORE spring roll. About half an hour later, we're cleaning up the mess and I go to put the lid on the little container of chopped cilantro and guess what's sitting there, right on top, LOOKING AT ME????? Yup. A slug. Bigger than the little grey baby bumps, this one had to be a pre-teen at least. I'd love to say I took a photo of it, but in reality, I screamed, had a major fit of the heebie-jeebie-shakes (not nearly as cool as the hippie-hippie-shakes in the song) and threw it AND the container it was in, into the trash and had another super heebie-jeebie-shake (ewwww I just had one now remembering ICK ICK ICK ICK ICK).
I have to say it even mildly grossed out OUTDOORSMAN the husband. Not enough to make him freak out spectacularly like I did, but he decided to not eat any more spring rolls. We tried to tell ourselves we just had more protein in them, but then we decided that slugs probably don't have protein anyway, just phlem. *shakes yet again* ICK! You know, the ONE TIME he doesn't WHIRRRRRRR up his cooking in the food processor....
Well, since this episode, I've managed to go outdoors and not be majorly molested by the forces of nature. Twice! I've camped in western kansas for 4 days and gone to the lake twice! *knocks on wood* I'm thinking the Mother and I may have finally reached a truce. Let's hope so.
On the latest outdoors adventure, I knitted. A lot. And have no freaking PHOTO to share as I left my KNITTING BAG at the LYS today after work. CRAP! I knit almost an entire Citron shawlette out of some beautatious deep red/orange alpaca/mohair laceweight I dyed up a few weeks ago. It's fabulous. And I've got no way to give you an artsy shot of the shawl in process. Ah well. Here's what it looked like BEFORE Friday....Guess I'll just have to go to the yarn shop tomorrow. (I know, terrible, isn't it?)
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