Snails. Love ‘em, or hate ‘em?

I do both, actually, which is really odd since my attitude towards slugs leans heavily towards the ‘hate’ end of the spectrum. It’s not their fault. They just make me shudder with revulsion, whereas snails are kind of cute. And slugs are just homeless snails … .

So, anyway. There I was, doing a little weeding in my tubs and patio pots, when I spied a big Helix aspersa, or common garden snail. Now, whether or not you think these things are cute, they are serious garden pests if you want to keep hostas and other ’snail salad’ plants. Or even if you just want to avoid treading on them in the dark, because, personally, I hate the sudden crunch that tells you that you’ve just killed or injured a small and slimy life-form – how about you?

Taking all this into consideration, my usual response to finding snails in my pots or hanging around my hostas is to give them a quick flying lesson. That is to say, since I won’t kill them, I relocate them in a rapid, albeit lazy, fashion to the field next door which is usually full of some type of grass or other (um, wheat). It’s a nice soft landing and while I know they’ll just crawl back to the tasty side of the hedge, it gives us both something to do. I feel as if I’m protecting my plants, and the snails? OH reckons they’re all queueing up for the free trip and inviting their friends along.

So when I saw the snail in my planter, I picked him up gently by his little house. He didn’t come willingly, but when at last I had him in my hand, this is what I saw.

You know what those are, don’t you? You know what that snail had been doing in my tub? The blob of earth sticking to him is a clue. The wretched thing was digging straight down into my compost and laying eggs! Bloody cheek!! What am I, a nursery for baby gastropods now? Is this the equivalent of having to sign your kids up to the really good schools as soon as you know you’re pregnant?

Did that snail say ‘I’m just going out for a moment, dear. We really need to sign the snailets up for those flying lessons before it’s too late. Got to keep up with the Helix pomatias, y’know!’

I’m afraid the eggs did not go flying with their parent. I considered them too young. They went swimming instead, where my fish were glad to help to prevent them sinking to the bottom by giving them a free ride.

And I can too call that snail a ‘he’. They are hermaphrodites, you know.

Not everyone finds insects beautiful, I know. But I do, and anyway, for Friday Finding Beauty, I like to make things difficult for myself, so I don’t usually post pictures of beautiful things, but little stories of beautiful events, or, in this case, little slices of life that show beauty in some way.

You see, what happened was this. May is the month for cockchafers (in fact, one of their other names is ‘May Bug’) and this year was a particularly good one for them. I did a post about the first one that flew into the house, but then as one after another turned up in the lounge, it became a little old hat. More than that, it became very sad, since we could hear them buzzing and clattering about the house in distress, but we couldn’t always find them to release them and they’d turn up dead a couple of days later.

So my heart sank a little when OH called me to say that another one had flown in and was making a racket in the conservatory, but I quickly located him on the windowsill underneath our big standard lamp.

(Multiple image)

This one had managed to flip himself onto his back, which is often a death sentence for these big, bumbling, clumsy beetles, since they can seldom right themselves on a hard shiny surface, but for him, it was a lifesaver. It meant that I could easily pick him up and take him to the door, where …

He walked up to the tip of my fingers, spread his wings and took off into the night.

Isn’t freedom beautiful?

Look for more Friday Finding Beauty at Claudia’s blog, Dipity Road.

I was over at Confessions of a Random Chick just now – a blog I found recently and added to my newsfeed because it’s both fun and thought-provoking – and I found a post there with this very title (only without the exclamation mark).

It was a great post, because it didn’t have words, she just posted pictures of what she loved. You should pop over and take a look.

OK, time’s up. Get back here!

Anyway, I thought it was such a great idea that I stole it. Obsessions are such fun things to have. So, here we go … now, what’s first, I wonder?

Oh, look! It’s Mr Depp! What a surprise, eh? I met him, you know, and I took those two photos with my own fair (and slightly shaky) hands!

Also, those of you who read my blog regularly, or get to it through Blogger’s back door will know about the other love of my life*, which is dogs. Specifically, greyhounds. This picture is made up of images of the dogs we have owned since 1994.

Aren’t they beautiful? The little chap with the hat on at the bottom left isn’t a greyhound, of course. He just happened to be giving Sid a very sweet hug at a local show where we were helping to man (dog?) a stand.

What’s next? Well, I’ve always loved to read, and this is a part of one of our bookshelves.

The fact that it’s only a part confirms the ‘obsession’ part, probably .. but anyway. One author I’ve been guilty of being a little obsessive about is this one -

Luckily OH shares my obsession, which is why we have them all in hardback. As well as in paperback.

What have we here, above yet another bookshelf?

Well, well.  It’s Johnny Depp in his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, in all three of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  Pretty, ain’t he?  Even OH thinks he makes fine wall art – but then he has always loved cinema posters.

And talking of tasty -

Chocolate.  I do love chocolate.  In particular I love good, dark, quality chocolate.  And all these were bought on a single shopping trip to a new supermarket which had clearly decided to lead the field in chocolate for the discriminating.  Oh, it was fun, trying them all out!  Except that one in the white and blue wrapper. That one is flavoured with cinnamon and I can’t stand the stuff.  OH had that one all to himself and he was welcome to it.  Of the rest, I think probably the Peruvian 70 was my favourite. Rich, dark, earthy, and yet not bitter.  Excuse me while I drool.

Oh, are you still here?   Um.   I think I mentioned Mr Depp already, didn’t I?  And reading, come to that.  OK.  I’ll stop drooling and move along.

Here’s a hobby which I find absorbing and relaxing.

Every so often my bank account takes a beating when I go on an Ebay binge, or Etsy, or just random jewellery supply shops. You see, I can’t help myself buying up those cute little findings …

Oh well. At least it leads to something constructive.  These I made as Christmas gifts for my Depp friends one year.

Then there are movies!  I haven’t watched many lately, but I do love a good movie.  And I’ll watch them over and over again, especially from this drawer -

Aah, there’s some good stuff in there!  There are also some that aren’t that good, like Before Night Falls, and Private Resort, and I didn’t much like The Brave, but I have to have them because … well, they’re part of the Depp collection, aren’t they, so they do have Johnny in them. And that’s always a good thing.

You might also notice that I appear to have more Pirates of the Caribbean movies than they’ve actually made, and also that I have three four copies of From Hell.  So?  What can I say. I refer you to the title of this post.

Oops! I nearly forgot one of my lifelong obsessions!

Insects and bugs!  And, of course, taking pictures of them.  I love taking photos and I love macro photography in particular.  That’s two obsessions in one, right?

Did I remember to mention this one?

I did?  Oh, right. Okay then.

Before I go, there is one obsession that I have neglected to mention.  I know what it is, OH knows what it is, my boys know what it is, and I suspect that you do, too.

No pictures! We don’t want any incriminating evidence, do we?  Someone might feel they have to DO something about it, and we can’t have that.

*OH is, of course the original love of my life.

You know, I love Las Vegas, I really do.  I didn’t expect to when we first had a stop-over there. It was simply that our airline of choice didn’t fly all the way to the West Coast where we were headed, but into McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas, and we were so convinced we wouldn’t like it that we chose a hotel in nearby Boulder City.

Well, it didn’t take long to enchant us, once we’d set foot in the place.  We’re not gamblers and never will be (although I did lose twenty or so bucks in the slots, just because …) but the whole place is just so bizarre, so over-the-top, so full of itself*, that you can’t help falling in love.  The free shows on the strip are all very good, but the Bellagio fountains had us from the first millisecond … so now we stay on the strip.

We chose The Venetian this time, and I have to say it’s a very beautiful hotel, even if they can’t process a simple request like ‘no feathers in the room’. Yes, it took them four goes at that one, bringing successive armfuls of pillows containing down or feathers until I was gasping for breath before I’d even laid down.  But anyway.

Where else can you take a ride in a gondola indoors? Oh yes, that is a ceiling up there, painted blue, with clouds.  Clever, ain’t it?

But Vegas is also an excellent place for people-watching.  Here’s another shot from inside the Venetian Hotel.

I love the accordian player, don’t you?  But I can’t help wondering what’s going on with those two people standing there.  Are they arguing?  Or is she propositioning him?

I guess that might possibly lead to the obligatory Vegas wedding

It all looks very grand, but what you can’t see, just down the hall (in the direction they’re headed) is the casino, which is full of tourists in shorts and sandals with socks and serving wenches dressed like hookers and everything.

I don’t have a picture of the casino to show you, but here are some wenches, and they certainly look like hookers to me.

Interestingly, the young lady on the left (the one NOT dressed like a hooker) is selling cigarettes! Where else would you see that these days?  It’s because smoking is permitted inside the casinos, you know.

So, moving on outside the Venetian, there are plenty of people to watch on the streets.  Like this guy, determined to get that great shot of the Bellagio fountains.

Or this family wearing their best balloon hats

And then there are these guys, who are trying to sell the services of girls.  The services are unspecified, but they can have one inside your room within twenty minutes, apparently.

You know, it seems that they aren’t allowed to actually speak, so they thrust their little leaflets and business cards right across your chest as you walk by, snapping them loudly to get your attention.  And you know what?  I find it insulting that they’re trying to give my man one of these damn ads, when he is clearly with a woman already!  What am I – chopped liver??  I was actually moved to tell one of them to ‘fuck off’ at one point, which is not something I’m in the habit of doing, let me tell you.

Anyway. After being in Las Vegas for a day or so, I find it necessary to get out of town and find somewhere soothing.  Somewhere good for the soul. And to this end, we made our way to the Valley of Fire and took a short hike to Mouse’s Tank.

It’s beautiful.

It’s soothing**

And there are petroglyphs!  Enlarge this next photo and look right there on that dark bit of rock, towards the bottom.

Finding these things out there in the desert, still attached to the very rocks they were pecked into thousands of years ago … well, it’s a bit like OH walking into the Kennedy Space Centre.  And yes, I shed a few tears of my own.  It’s humbling, is what it is.

We stayed until it was nearly dark, and the moon came out, and so did the bats. It was magical.

It was only later that I found out that we were in exactly the right conditions (soft, deep sand among rocks), at exactly the right time of day (dusk), to tread on a sidewinder and get bitten, so I guess we were lucky.  But we returned to Vegas refreshed and ready for another day of tackiness and indulgence.

*Just for the record, yes I do realise there is much more to Vegas than the Strip, and that not all of it is tacky.  We saw a great performance of Jersey Boys, which wasn’t tacky in the least – although OH was warned about the ‘Jersey language’ that it contained, which made him laugh.

**Mostly.  If you enlarge that picture, you’ll see a tiny figure, right at the top of that rock. It’s OH. He’s not a mountain climber, he had no equipment, he just scrambled up.  Luckily, he scrambled down again safely.

Fun, holidays, aren’t they?