Meet Shedra... my latest weapon in my war on slugs that have been feasting on my newly-planted plants. Yes, this has been yet another exercise in OCD behavior... first I got the wild hair to "pretty up" my back yard, so zoomed off to Loews and bought a carload of - well, plants, as well as dirt and poop-in-a-bag and mulch, etc. Yes, I'm just renting the house, but barring any unforeseen disasters, I will probably be living here for a good while.... so why not make my surroundings more enjoyable to look at, right?

But then, near-disaster struck... after only a couple days, I noticed that all my hostas and several other planties were sporting big holes in their leaves... AAARGH! After all that trouble of digging and conditioning and planting, something was out to destroy my little backyard garden. Yes, the evil slug. So I tried putting beer out to lure the little slimy lushes and drown them in their own drunkenness... 

it worked to some degree, as there were several drunk & dead slugs in the pans the next morning, but still more holes. Then my friend and gardener extraordinaire, Jenn, suggested "Slug Magic" pellets. I dashed out to Israel's to procure some of this magic stuff and promptly sprinkled the innocuous-looking little white pellets all around my besieged flora. Of course, it takes 2-3 days to really kill the little buggers, so I went into impatient mental overdrive... and thus, the concept of Shedra was born. Actually, I had been thinking of painting that ugly old shed anyway (see "before" pic below), but until now had no idea what I wanted to paint.

Back to Shedra... I figure she'll act as a "Scare Slug", right? If you were a slug, wouldn't you turn and slink the other way if you saw this most imposing creature that looks ready to gobble you up with a vengeance? I would. But then again, I'm not a slug (well,most days, anyway - ha!)