Spring and snails

I'm a winter girl. Not thigh deep snow, frozen icicles from your nose kind of winter. Southern California winter...

I was planting my garden the other day and realized as the hummingbirds were zipping around above, that its spring! K, I'm slow sometimes :) This year, I am actually happy my Socal winter is over. Its the first time I have a space to have a garden and I am so excited to see what I can grow!

The bunnies ate the first attempt: knawed down my tomatoes, my habaneros and my bell peppers. Oddly enough, they avoided my cilantro. I have replanted everything and my first batch of cilantro is still going strong. I even planted giant pumpkins. I doubt I'll grow a 500lb blue ribbon winner but a 40 or 50lb one would suffice!

I am trying to grow my veggies as organically as possible -- using natural repellants for the bugs and the bunnies. A lightbulb clicked with a little article hubby mentioned: You can eat garden snails. Wait, what? Apparently the common garden snail is actually a variety brought to the US by a chef planning to breed them for consumption. A failed business plan and a lot of baby snails later, the snails cover the US and can be found in pretty much any yard. Bad for my garden, but possibly good for our tummies. After crawling around and collecting approx. 30 snails, they're living comfortably in my garage, munching on lettuce and cornmeal to clean their systems so we can much on them! In about a week, I'll cook them up in some lemon and butter and serve them to hubby and my best friend who is staying with us for a while. This will either be delicious, or disasterous. I'll keep you updated :)