I know that not all snails hibernate, but I thought that the regular garden variety would! I mean, I don’t usually see them around my little yard in the Winter… at least I don’t think I do…

They seem to go absolutely mental for garden mint, basil, and beans. Notice in the last post when I was talking about all the plants I had I didn’t mention beans? That’s because they ate the entire plant! There were three little stalks coming out of the dirt and there was just no getting the plant back during the Winter, I don’t think it would have come back after that no matter what season it was, really.

The garden mint is a voracious plant, seeming very healthy in spite of the nightly attacks by the snails, but the basil is going the way of the beans, in spite of my putting a ring of salt around the pot the herb is planted in. I’ve also found chunks missing from the tomato plant and the silver beet. Damn snails!

Snails don’t usually bother me, in fact I try very hard to not stand on them when it’s been raining and they’re all over the place. I usually care about the snails, but I can’t stand seeing my little garden be destroyed by their fat little chompings!

Did you know that snails can sleep for up the three or four years? That’s something to respect! There’s also been a snail stuck upside-down to the underside of the awning over my back steps for at least six months. That’s also impressive, I mean, why’s he there? Snails are hermaphrodites, so I can call him a ‘he’ and be pretty sure he is a he.

Okay now for a knitting pattern… Hmmm, what shall it be… I know! If I wear this Snail Hat, perhaps I’ll be able to communicate with the snails and politely ask them to not eat my plants! This hat is so awesome!

I got quite excited about having a garden, so enthusiastic was I that we ended up with many more plants that I’d initially thought we would get. We got a little lemon tree, as my fiancé loves lemon juice on salad and fish, and a lime tree because I love lime juice on chicken and a slice of lime in water. We also bought a camellia bush, no idea what colour the flours will be on that, perhaps white? Along with a silver birch that’s looking poorly for the weather, and a very sweet little olive tree! It’s adorable!

My fiancé’s mother told me that every garden should have a rose, so we got a very pretty little rose bush as well, which will have pink, very aromatic flowers! Ohhh I can’t wait to see it! We also have some very healthy looking geraniums which we took for my fiancé’s mother’s garden, with her permission of course! Then there are some small white daisies, and some pyrethrum and tansies which we’ll dry the flowers of and use in the house to keep spiders and bugs at bay.

I love to cook with fresh herbs and vegetables, so we’ve got a pretty tomato plant, and some silver beet seeds ready to go. Then we’ve got some chives, a huge mint plant with a small apple mint plant, a very cute rosemary plant, a basil plant, and an oregano plant. I love herbs, and plan to get more still!

Now, in keeping with this post, the knitting pattern here has to be garden related! Remember the movie of the book The Secret Garden with Maggie Smith? I used to really like that movie when I was little, and when I typed in ‘garden’ in the search field on Ravelry a tam came up based on that very film… could that be more perfect!? My garden will soon come into bloom, and in the mean time, I’ll knit myself a cute little Secret Garden Tam to keep my noggin warm!

Every Summer our little yard isn’t safe to sit around in, because of the wasps that like to hang around. Whilst looking up natural solutions to deal with this horrid little pests, I found that planting garlic or onions in one’s garden worked to repel bees and wasps. My fiancé is allergic to bees so this course of action seemed a very good one!

So I set to planting one of the onions in my cupboard, and a clove of garlic that had already sprouted a little. I really love garlic, so tend to buy many bulbs at a time, and then some of them start to sprout before I’ve used them. This sometimes happens with my potatoes, too, which has lead to me dumping the sprouted – and way too soft to eat – potatoes in the compost bin, which lead to where the compost bin is at now… potato plants grown so large I can’t shut the lid anymore…

Anyway, I planted these a while back, and then they started to sprout, and grow, and then grow even more! I’m so proud, because every other plant I’ve had in the past few years had died on me pretty quickly. These seem to be flourishing, well, that’s an exaggeration, they are alive and not looking overly dilapidated. My garlic has just sprouted a tiny baby plant, and the onion today had to be split into five separate plants because they were just one big clump that seemed the worse for wear. I’ll know next time the season’s right whether or not they really keep the bees and wasps away or not.

In the mean time, here’s this post’s knitting pattern… Bees! But little cute knitted ones, not the horrid little stinging ones! These are pretty darn cute, and to be honest, I kind of like the little ‘X’ eyes, because they seem… dead… and I don’t like bees… but these are cute, so… yeah…