A good year for red slugs

Yesterday when I took Callie out for the morning walk, we went up to the top of the vineyard, on the other side of a stand of pine and oak trees. There's a lot of undergrowth in that little wood.

Some of the plants growing as undergrowth look to me like a kind of horsetail Scotch broom, which is called prêle genêt in French. It's an invasive weed. I'm also allergic to its pollen. (This is a revised version of my text, thanks to CHM's comment.)

The broom up at the top of the vineyard has grown big, and it has not only the brush-like leaves that I know, but also smaller flat leaves growing among them. And, most strikingly, it has a multitude of what I would call pea pods growing on it.

I was inspecting these interesting plants when I realized they were full of huge red slugs, which were probably feeding on the new growth. First I saw two of them, then I started noticing more and more. They are three or four inches long and they were climbing around quite acrobatically in the low shrubs.

While some people find slugs and snails disgusting, I can't conceive how you wouldn't see beauty in these particular ones. All the rains we had in May plus warm weather must have provided them with ideal conditions this year. I've seen them regularly since we arrived here 6 years ago, but never in such numbers.

The very bright-colored red slugs were surprisingly hard to see among the green leaves and stems of vegetation. I had to look pretty hard to find them, even after I realized there were a lot of them hiding in there.