It’s been another busy week in the garden. Why go to the gym or participate in YT walking workouts when you have plants to tend and seeds to sow? Only yesterday, I completed over 5000 steps walking back and forth and round and round on a mission to complete my list of gardening tasks.

SNAKES!!!

Yep, and I didn’t scream! Nope, not even a squeak.

The first snake I discovered was sunbathing in my plant nursery area by the honeysuckle, which grows over the trellis and is adjacent to the log pile. I froze as this huge greenish snake about 6ft long looked at me before it wound itself up through the trellis and then slithered over the wall into the neighbour’s garden. It was a Western Montpellier Snake

No, I didn’t take the photo. I identified via wiki: photo credit Snake: By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63025809

The second … Goodness knows what it was. I just saw something with a long tail slither into the hedge.

The third … I was planting up the red peppers into one of the raised beds. I’d dug a small divot to accommodate the plant and was just about to insert when I spotted a brown, fat worm about 4 inches long (or at least that is what I initially thought) slithering across the earth before it disappeared. I never realised snakes could bury themselves in topsoil and actually disappear. I blinked. Backed away. Where was the mother? Did it have any brothers or sisters?

Gloves

The snake incident above was a good reminder to always wear gloves when gardening, because you never know what is lurking in our sandy soil… especially scorpions.

Thrips

Sigh… there is never a dull moment: my baby cucumber and aubergine plants have a thrip infestation.

I asked AI for advice:

Thrips can be particularly troublesome on aubergines (eggplants) and peppers because they feed on young leaves, flowers, and developing fruit.

AI recommended

1. Inspect flowers closely
   • Thrips often hide inside the flowers, where they’re protected from sprays.
   • Gently shake flowers over a white sheet of paper; tiny slender insects moving around are often thrips.
2. Remove heavily infested flowers or leaves
   • This can reduce the population quickly.
3. Spray thoroughly
   • Use insecticidal soap, horticultural oil, or a neem-based product approved for edible crops.
   • Cover the undersides of leaves and flowers as much as possible.
   • Repeat every 5–7 days for several weeks.
4. Use blue or yellow sticky traps
   • Place them near the plants to catch adult thrips and monitor whether numbers are decreasing.
5. Keep weeds under control
   • Thrips often breed on weeds and then move onto vegetables.
6. Check for virus symptoms
   • Thrips can spread plant viruses. If a plant develops severe leaf distortion, unusual ring spots, or widespread stunting, it may be infected and should be removed to protect nearby plants.

How do you control thrips?

Pruning Lavender

Our lavender grows like a weed and quickly gets out of control so I (rather Mr P) cut it right back with the shears. Looking at this photo, it also needs watering

Now for the Smiles

White Bird of Paradise – Strelitzia nicolai

So beautiful!

Oleanader

That’s it for my Gardening Six for this Saturday, folks. Thanks to Jim for hosting this weekly garden Meme.