With my wife home all of yesterday, I had no opportunity to blog here. But it was quite nice having the girl around.
She has two flowering plants that she previously planted into a garden plot in our front yard that is mostly smothered in thyme plants these past few years. I don't know what her two flower plants are, but they had gorgeous big red blooms resembling those of a dahlia. The plants themselves were maybe a foot tall.
Well, we've been getting some rain practically every day (or night) ─ it almost seems that it has been so all year thus far. Anytime we get some sunny weather and I manage to do some sunning out in the backyard, it's as if the Sun exhausts itself out and we come back to cloudy and wet weather.
The thick masses of thyme plants are a perfect habitat for sheltering snails and slugs. They have devoured all of the petals and now the leaves of my wife's two plants.
I had pulled up the thyme plants immediately surrounding the pair of blooming flowers, but our weather keeps the open space of ground pretty much drenched ─ the snails and slugs have no problem venturing from cover to assault the two flowers. There always seems to be a few snails and slugs crawling about on them.
I have been reading about deterrents. We don't drink non-instant coffee here, so we do not have coffee grounds, but my wife has a large container with hundreds of pennies within.
And so yesterday I decided to surround both flowers with a covering of pennies.
They do seem to have some good effect. I have seen both snails and slugs venture onto the pennies, but they usually seem to become uncomfortable or confused, and will turn back. I have even seen a couple of slugs that have fallen away from the pennies ─ the slimy creatures looked to be laying inertly upon their sides as if dead or dying.
I have watched them for some time and not seen them make any apparent movement.
But ultimately, when I leave and eventually check back, they will be gone.
Regardless, the pennies do seem to have a deleterious effect upon these creatures.
Last night I bit the bullet and placed an order with Amazon Canada for a roll of copper foil tape that you can currently see at this URL for however long it remains valid:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07N33FPF8/
The estimated delivery date is July 8, so we must meanwhile risk keeping the pennies out in the garden and hope no theft takes place.
Incidentally, I did a search at Amazon U.S. using the term "copper foil tape" that you can find at the very bottom of this post.
My wife did today boil up a quantity of instant coffee to pour all about the two plants as an additional level of protection, but with the rain we keep having, this will soon be a fail.
I went out this afternoon to take some photos of the two plants with my cellphone, but I went completely blank as to my phone's four-digit passcode. Then when I tried to think of my ATM's four-digit code, I was equally blank.
I attribute this to the migraine halo or aura that I found myself beset with late yesterday afternoon or very early in the evening. I have had some struggle ever since to not have a recurrence, but I am left with a vague eyestrain-type headache that haunts me.
I sleep poorly, and tend to rise nightly in the wee a.m. to work on whatever new post I have underway at one of my six hosted websites. When I rose around 1:30 a.m. this morning, I found that I could not use my orange 'blue light-blocking' goggles because they caused my eyes to strain far too much when I tried to read text.
My computer already has the free version of f.lux software that I think is correctly set up to register at 1,950k (kelvin) on a permanent basis ─ I know that isn't going to make sense to anyone unfamiliar with colour 'temperature', but I don't want to become involved in explaining it. As I've already stated, my eyes have been suffering bad strain since that migraine aura attack yesterday.
Suffice to say, I normally wear both the orange-lensed goggles overtop my non-prescription reading glasses as well as use f.lux with its 1,950k setting, but last night I could not handle the additional eyestrain the goggles presented for discerning vision and so I had to just use the reading glasses and rely upon f.lux. If I had done otherwise, I was feeling the recurrence of another aura attack.
I honestly felt better by not using the goggles.
I ought to mention that I got to bed just after 9:00 p.m. last evening ─ I had seen that my younger brother was arriving home at 9:00 p.m. from wherever he had been drinking, and I wanted nothing to do with him. I was feeling too unwell from my ailing vision.
I guess my wife soon decided to avoid him too, for she anon came to bed.
Neither of us sleep well, though. But at least I am retired ─ she still works at a friend's Thai restaurant. Today, though, she didn't have to go in until the latter afternoon.
Alas, I was seeking a nap on my absent brother's bed when she left, for I had hit a serious decline by then from inadequate sleep and emotional duress because I had not eaten aught the entire day thus far ─ just one of my hot caffeinated beverages.
My wife normally spends most of her free time somewhere in Vancouver, so I don't even know if she will be home after work this evening. Maybe she will not be back until Sunday evening or even Monday evening.
Such is our sorry marriage.
I don't feel like blogging further ─ yes, my eyes are troubling me direly (I feel a hair's breadth from a full headache); but I am of especially low spirits. Besides, it is already nearing 7:30 p.m. If my brother is not home by 8:30 p.m., I want to have myself freed up to hightail it to bed.
That means I must have supped before then, and been all prepared for bed. Thus, I must take my leave here.
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