Slating Snails

For a few days now I've been spending some time tidying up what we call "the vegetable" patch in our garden. We've never grown vegetables there, only dreamed of doing so... for almost 30 years? Instead it became a dumping ground, some rubble, cut down branches and tons of slates from when we got half our roof done... and in turn weeds began to take over. I remember once I dug a lot of it over but never used it, so we just try to keep the weeds down and a path through it, which Arlo likes to use it on his lap of the garden.

Today it was the pile of slates to work on that we'd forgotten were there, initially digging them out, then deciding where to put them for now... there are maybe several hundred and will probably take most of them to the tip. But in amongst them were 10s of snails... I am sure big snails in our garden only started in the last 10 years, I wonder if the climate changed and encouraged them but we already have loads that come out at night, and it is a pain to try and not step on them. Some were rigidly stuck together and I wondered whether they were all dead, but slowly some started to move (google tells me some can hibernate for 3 years!)... eek!