West Norwood Therapies
  • Home
  • Therapies
    • Gift Vouchers >
      • Gift vouchers
    • Massage
    • Acupuncture
    • Facial Therapies
    • Reflexology - feet & face
    • Reiki
    • Tibetan bowl sound healing
    • Videos
    • Links to classes
  • Practitioners
    • Erika Zettervall
    • Laura Devonshire
    • Miha Rosta
    • Philippa Summers
    • Veronica Massa
    • Tessa Glover
    • (Jennie Duck)
    • Schedule
    • Contact details
  • Contact and Booking
    • Find Us
    • About
    • Ts & Cs
    • Privacy Policy
    • Covid 19
  • Blog

Blog                                  

What can I learn from slugs?

10/30/2021

0 Comments

 
WNT founder and veg grower Jennie Duck considers her relationship with slugs and how learning to live with them could be a fertile ground (pun intended) for letting the 'bad' feelings coexist with the good.
Picture
It’s wet in Scotland today. Very wet. The river outside our house is flowing with force after a relentless 36 hours of rain. Not the best day to be working in the veg patch but first chance in a while and there is plenty of old vegetation to remove, relentless weeds to pull and gazillions of slugs abounding. They seem to thrive in the wet and this morning I found tens of them, ranging in size from a couple of millimetres up to a couple of inches.
None quite as monstrous as this badass from earlier in the year:

My relationship with slugs varies with my mood. They have suffered at my hands and heels when I’ve been wound up and I have abused their bodies as sacrificial targets in darker days. They certainly suffered as I went through a bleak tunnel of grief a couple of years ago. That year my veg was relatively hole-free and my ‘dawn patrol’ slug squishing was an effective way to keep them from rampaging.
Picture
Relatively hole-free veg the year I was particularly aggressive in my 'dawn patrol' slug killing missions
Picture
Humongous slug called Robert who I befriended in July this year
Then I began to explore yoga principles, to reflect and shift toward living more aligned with considered values. The yogic concept of ‘ahimsa’ - the idea of living in a non-harming way - presented a challenge and I began to wonder how that could work in a veg patch. We are an almost-vegetarian household and conscious about where and how we source any meat or dairy products we use and yet I was crushing slugs willy-nilly in the name of nicer looking kale.
This year my attitude has been somewhat more laissez faire. I have transported slugs to the compost heap rather than drowning them with the weeds or squishing them. I have been less diligent with weeding, giving them more places to hide and more leverage to get up to the nice juicy leaves. They have gone rampant, the compost heap is obviously a brilliant place for them to breed and a brilliant place for them to work their way back to the veg patch or over to the greenhouse…
Now I’m wondering what I can get out of this. I am accepting the holey veg and treating them kindly and I can see now an opportunity that perhaps I can treat them as training ground for my emotional landscape. Those squidgy, unpleasant, annoying feelings that come up, that chomp away at me – rather than crush them under my heel or find a way to silence them, can I let them be? Can I let them chomp a bit, give them a bit of space and then help them move on?

This morning I was feeling quite premenstrual and a bit grumpy so a couple of slugs got it. But then I softened and spoke kindly to myself, forgave myself for being grumpy and for the killings and extended myself a little kindness.  I saw my frustrations as slugs and decided it was ok for them to be there, they didn’t need to rule the roost but they did need to be acknowledged and let go.
The grumpiness lifted and I put the rest of the (many) slugs in the compost pile.
Picture
Slug damage on this year's brussel sprouts
Picture
Perhaps the slugs and their damage to leaves can coexist with nice fresh leaves like with this kale plant.
Picture
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Blogs from the WNT team. For our blogs from before June 2020 please see individual profile pages - it's a good way to get to know practitioners too.

    Archives

    March 2025
    January 2025
    October 2024
    September 2024
    June 2024
    April 2024
    January 2024
    October 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    Categories

    All
    Acupuncture
    Advice
    Coaching
    Environment
    Erika Zettervall
    Exercise
    Facial Reflexology
    Facial Therapies
    Fertility
    Grief
    Guest Post
    Holistic Health
    Jennie Duck
    Laura Devonshire
    Lauren O'Sullivan
    Local
    Massage
    Menopause
    Mental Health
    Mihaly Rosta
    Nutrition
    Outdoors
    Philippa Summers
    Pregnancy Birth And Beyond
    Recipes
    Reflexology
    Reiki
    Seasonal
    Self Care
    Shame
    Skincare
    Sleep
    Small Business
    Sound Healing
    Sports Massage
    Stress
    Tai Chi
    Tessa Glover
    Veronica Massa
    Wellbeing
    Yoga

    RSS Feed

Visit us - by appointment only please - in the office block in the Access Self Storage premises at 443 Norwood Road, London, SE27 9DQ

[email protected]
Phone - please contact practitioners directly, or if not in a rush you can leave a message for us to call you back at 07931876931.
Picture
  • Home
  • Therapies
    • Gift Vouchers >
      • Gift vouchers
    • Massage
    • Acupuncture
    • Facial Therapies
    • Reflexology - feet & face
    • Reiki
    • Tibetan bowl sound healing
    • Videos
    • Links to classes
  • Practitioners
    • Erika Zettervall
    • Laura Devonshire
    • Miha Rosta
    • Philippa Summers
    • Veronica Massa
    • Tessa Glover
    • (Jennie Duck)
    • Schedule
    • Contact details
  • Contact and Booking
    • Find Us
    • About
    • Ts & Cs
    • Privacy Policy
    • Covid 19
  • Blog