Gardening is work

I’ve been trying to bring in the garden harvest this year so that Dean’s mom won’t have to when she gets back from Portugal. It’s making me really grumpy. Except for the tomatoes (which aren’t ready yet) there’s dill, Portuguese kale, and chard* collard greens in the garden. All of these get made into Green Soup all year long. The dill and kale are small, but there’s lots of it. It takes hours to sort through it all and get all the stems cut off. Then I have to wash everything, chop it up really small (think shredded lettuce) and put it in bags for the freezer. Not particularly hard work, just a lot of it. It feels like there’s a never-ending pile of greens to get through still.

I did find a cute little snail going through all the cut plants. I was taking them out of one sink and putting them in the other to wash. I wasn’t really watching my hands; after all the hours I was on autopilot. So I was a little freaked when I grabbed a plant and felt something slimy. I dropped it, then took a look. I found this guy:

I brought it—kale and all—downstairs where the camera was, but it was awake and searching for an escape at this point. So it fell off its kale branch and onto some paper I had on the floor. Poor thing. That’s twice it was dropped in the space of 5 minutes. It seemed happy enough, crawling around looking for its kale. After it had climbed back on, I carried it outside and put it back in the garden. I may as well let it munch on the stems that I’ve left in there.

*I was having chard for dinner and mixed up what I was cooking with what I was chopping. My bad.