in my garden

there are many great things in my garden, namely cucumbers (which i've loved ever since i went to latvia and had them on garlic toast), tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peas, green beans, lettuce, spinach, green peppers and orange peppers. it's quite something to suddenly have a garden for which you did no work.

the downside is that i also have snakes. apparently everyone in missouri has snakes in/and/or near their gardens. i did not know this though and so was very alarmed to see two snakes hanging out by the peppers yesterday. i think these were garter snakes, but apparently lots of poisonous ones wander into people's yards too. there are also an amazing amount of spiders (thankfully i haven't had any tarantulas or wolf spiders in my house) but brown recluses are very very common in columbia. i have started thinking every brown spider i see (lots, daily) is a brown recluse. i'm sure this isn't true.

i'm still trying to sort out what to do about both the snakes (even garter snakes here bite) and the spiders. my dad got some spider spray and i'm tempted to spray all the walls in my house. a bit ridiculous, but i've probably killed 100 spiders in the past week and a half i've lived here.