Mulch, mulch, leech!

True story... yesterday I decided to attack the huge pile of mulch and finish spreading it in onto the humungous garden. Humungous as in we live on acreage so everything is on a much larger scale than an average suburban garden. Gardens take days to weed - its a big job - and I never seem to have enough time to get it done. Anyway, yesterday I planned to get it finished no matter what, so dressed in my thick denim straight leg (hopefully snake bite proof) jeans, long socks, big leather work gloves, sun hat and thick leather snake bite proof work boots, I set out with a pitch fork, wheel barrow and our dogs. The dogs are my protectors and can suss out any danger lurking about (and deal with it!). Now that its autumn, its much cooler to work in the garden and hopefully there are not as many snakes lurking about. It also hasn't rained for a while so hopefully there are not too many leeches either (they lurk around the wet leaf mulch and rocks in the garden). Yuk! I HATE leeches! Last time I weeded the garden I ended up with two on my legs, so this time I checked regularly. They sneek up over my boots and under the tight ankle of my jeans and move quite quickly... argh! I still love working outside though...

Ready to start work - calm, collected and prepared for anything...

Anyway, all went well, checked for leeches a few times (hundred?) and none (phew...). No other wriggly things were lurking around and I actually finished the whole garden - mulched. I was absolutely drenched with sweat and hurting in places I didn't know I had muscles - shoveling, wheelbarrowing and spreading wet mulch is heavy work. After stopping for a rest, I decided to do a bit of weeding in the vegie garden and happily spent the rest of the afternoon potting around. Away from the mulch and the rocks, I had completely forgotton about checking for leeches...

Yep! This is no exaggeration. By the way, a stick is completely useless in getting a leech off...

Finally I called it a day and went inside to have a shower. Ripped off my socks and my jeans, and then I noticed a big black blob on my ankle... AAHHHHHH!! Girly screams echoed through the house as I ran down stairs and out the back door. "GET THE SALT!" I yelled to my startled husband. I jumped around outside, stick in one hand, salt shaker in the other, yelling at the leech "GET OFF!!" in between little girly screams and dogs jumping about with excitement. Anyway the disgusting little sucker finally dropped off. I then tried to bash it with my boot to kill it. Blood everywhere - it was a massacre. Far out they are hard to kill! There was so much blood I had to wash it away with a bucket of water (seriously...)! Did I mention how much I hate leeches?