More fun things to do in the depression

No, this isn't a picture of my victory garden.

The best thing I've found to do with the nutty little white flowers that bloom when your arugula bolts and matures (which hasn't stopped me eating the greens) is to sprinkle them on tomato soup. The red soup and the little white flowers are very pretty. They are also nice in salads. But really this whole flower eating business has gotten out of hand (and is so rather excessive in this moment of less is more.) The local pizza delivery place puts handful of edible flowers in their salad (yes, that is a clue that it is not a chain pizza joint, but as one who has truly been Michael Pollen-ated, local and organic) and I want lettuces in my salad and not flowers.

Anyway, the arugula has got to go, not only is it four feet tall, not only is it blocking the afternoon sun from my romaine lettuce starts, not only am I bored with the pretty flowers, but it HARBORS SNAILS!

Ick. There is really nothing ickier than skipping out to your garden and picking a few greens - tossing them (tra la, tra la!) into a sink full of water and pulling them out to find a whole bunch of snails floating in your sink, I mean I am not French. Ick, snails.

There is an old tale of Snail Control that involves putting beer in a shallow pan in the garden - the snails are attracted to the yeast in the beer, fall into the shallow pan and voila dead snails. Repeat until snails are controlled.

So off I go, like an undergraduate, to find cheap beer. Standing in the aisle of the drug store (note there is no cheap beer at the whole paycheck) I ponder my choices, would the snails like a Lite beer or would they prefer the full flavor of Budweiser? Can I actually buy Coors Lite? An awful beer from an awful company? I've never bought Coors in my life - I was of an age to be aware of beer, but unable to buy beer when we were boycotting Coors for their homophobic and anti-union actions, so I am sure that the snails won't be attracted to it either. No, no Coors lite for them, so I go with Bud, it's 30 cents more but it has that attractive and retro red label that I remember from my childhood, and the Clydesdale horses, and plus when I was 17 I lived in a slum two blocks away from the Busch cannery in the Valley and breathed in the smell of hops on most days.

I bury a shallow dish near the borage which is a decoy plant, a plant you plant so the snails and bugs leave your real plants alone. I figure the beer will lure the herd of snails amidst the borage.

Now the problem with the beer thing, is that you have to wake up in the morning and dispose of a whole bunch of slimy icky nasty gross things. So I go to bed with trepidation about the whole disposal thing.

Not that I should have worried, there were snail trails everywhere glistening in the morning sun, but not one snail was in the dish.

So the experiment will have to continue.