The ants go marching

“So, how much do organic potatoes cost, anyway?”   I asked my darling husband last night.

“Oh, about $4 for a five pound bag,” he replied.

“Well, I think that maybe growing potatoes is just a waste of my time and effort.”

Dear reader, you might ask what prompted this exchange.

When I was a youngun we used to sing a song very similar to the “99 Bottles of Beer” song that had words that said “The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah…”  It was a rousing tune, and a lot of fun for a six year old to sing in the back of the car when you are traveling across country.  Not so much fun for the parents to listen to, but fun to sing.

I submit that the words should be amended to say “The ants go marching one by one, oh no! oh no!”   Because if your ants are marching one by one, they will soon be marching in their millions, especially if they find something good to eat.

A few short weeks ago, my potato patch looked like this.

Granted, that picture is of the potato patch from last year, but this year’s patch looked just has happy and healthy.    Shortly after they blossomed, the potato plants swooned, for no particular reason that I could see.   They were not blighted, there were no potato beetles.   They just didn’t look very happy.

Soon, they looked very unhappy indeed

Having decided that we probably should cut our losses and dig what potatoes there were, last night, having been stood up by my massage client of the evening, I went out and addressed the situation.

This what I discovered.

Lets just see a close up of that, shall we?

No wonder that the poor plants were swooning.   Something had systematically eaten all the phloem and xylem of the plants, girdling them.   And someone was obviously enjoying the potatoes that the plants had been making, too.   Look at all the holes in that spud.

Who, one might ask, would be doing all that damage?   Well (if the title of the post has not already given it away), take a look at what I discovered when I broke the perforated potato open.

Yep, those are ants, marching one by one by one by thousands.   I mean, how many ants does it take to do that sort of damage?   Let me tell you, there was not a single potato in that patch that had not been attacked by ants.   Some of them had been harmed more than others, but ALL of them had damage.

I contemplated the storage problem this had produced, as all the harvest now had to be washed and cooked and frozen.   Potatoes full of holes don’t keep worth a damn, I can tell you.

Well, as luck would have it, after I had mourned my potato harvest, I attacked the crab grass that was attacking the edge of the raised bed.    We have put carpet remnants around the edge in a vain attempt to control the weeds near the raised beds.    So, as I was pulling at the grass,which had put its roots through the carpet, and was crawling along the edges of it seeking the water it knew was in the garden, I happened to flip back the carpet scrap.

It was the New Orleans of ant cities, a Tokyo perhaps,  inhabited in its millions.   Life was good in the ant universe; with all those potatoes to eat, reproduction was underway on an industrial scale.

I decided that a tsunami, or perhaps a storm surge was in order.    Watch out!  The levees have broken….

Okay, I’m not a very good Buddhist.   I systematically flooded the entire municipality of Ant, several times.   Gleefully I watched the inhabitants scrambling to safety on the escarpments above the town, and cruelly I sprayed them down into the flood.

I admit to a certain joy in the destruction.    As I was casually using my trowel to rearrange the dirt, the ants sent out their minions to stop me.

Pathetic things.  They are not fire ants, their jaws are so tiny that they can’t find a place to pinch me.   Well, except on the soft skin around my knees, where I have lots of tiny wrinkles left over from my weight loss.

I brushed them away casually.   Then I started thinking about what the ants might be thinking.   Was I some sort of Goliath, destroying their Lilliput?   Images of the Godzilla movies ran through my mind.   Were the ant generals down in their bunkers making plans on how to stop my ravages?

A mosquito whined near my ear.   I checked.   It was not being piloted by an ant, nor was it armed with tiny heat seeking ant missiles.   There were no bombs slung beneath it.

Whew.

I decided perhaps the heat had gotten to me, and I should go in and see about the beer situation.

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An exhaustive search of my organic gardening books and the interwebs has taught me that I need to make a tea from Jim’s cigar stubs to spray on the plants, or possibly I should be spreading diatomaceous earth about liberally, or on the other hand I should be using coffee grounds to discourage the hymenoptera.   Then there is the boric acid/sugar or borax/sugar organic poison route.

I believe I shall be doing all of the above.  Beginning today.

And perhaps I shall create a judicious flood now and again too.

Too bad, ants.   You should have stuck to eating the grass seeds and storing up the tiny seeds produced by the spurge, so that I could have more spurge sprouting in the pathways to weed out.

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Irony

There’s a certain amount of irony involved in life, you know.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was out working in the Stroll Garden, specifically the “Scree Slope” portion where I have all the sedums and hen and chicks planted.   There are wonderful dianthus there too.

Here’s a fairly recent shot of the area, taken from within the Japanese Rock garden.

Truly, it is quite wonderful right now.   But if you zero in on the rocks in front of the sedums, you will see that the maples propagated themselves quite nicely this year.   There are “helicopters” all over the place.

I spent about an hour and a half out in the area, removing the maple seeds, in addition to cleaning out the leaves that blew in last fall.   There were plenty of weeds to pull as well, which is sort of how I justified the rather obsessive compulsive clean-up I was engaged in.

So the irony is I can spend hours hand picking weeds and trash out of a garden, but at the same time pulling my vacuum cleaner out of the closet and running it around the house just seems like too much effort.  I am GOING to do that job as soon as I’m done with this post.  And I am NOT going to photographically document the grass clippings in the hall that rode in on my bare feet, or the dust kitties under my desk, nor the drifts of Ruby’s fur that have accumulated at the edges of the dining room (spring is shedding season, you know).   I shall leave all that to your imaginations.

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I find this ironic too.   This was our weather forecast for this area for this day.

Today: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 1pm. Some of the storms could be severe. Partly sunny, with a high near 75. Breezy, with a south wind between 22 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn’t that pretty much sound like “We don’t think it is going to snow, but we really have no clue as to what is going to happen, so be prepared for just about anything.”

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I found this on Facebook the other day, posted by one of my friends.    It struck me as ironic, and wrong headed too.

Karma is a two-way street.

I’m thinking that one ought to look at that statement and contemplate the fact that NO ONE goes through life without hurting anyone.  Sometimes it is purposeful, sometimes it is accidental, sometimes it is a knowing thing, and sometimes it is from lack of attention.  Sometimes a person who hurts you is lashing out because you have hurt them severely.    Lots of scenarios exist here.

So, the question I think one needs to ask is something like, “Who did I hurt that is now watching me be hurt and feeling lucky because God let them watch?”

One can get philosophical here and meditate on the fact that Mass murderers go free, dictators reign seemingly unharmed, nations trample upon other peoples and remain powerful and profitable, Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh are rich and free.  You could wait a Very Long Time to see your nemesis screw up and pay the price.   Maybe even a couple of life times.

The other thing that occurs to me is that it is a pretty sick thing to find joy in the pain of others, or to sit by, gleefully rubbing your hands together waiting for them to screw up so you can watch them flounder around.

Perhaps the focus should not be so much on “You hurt me!” but rather on “Who have I hurt?”  Perhaps making amends for your  OWN transgressions is a better karmic path than sitting back waiting for the axe to fall on someone who you feel has transgressed against you.

Perhaps.

I could be wrong about that.  That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?

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Now, I believe I shall deploy my vacuum and maybe even a dust rag.  That way, if the tornado develops it will be destroying a nice clean house.

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Surprise, surprise!

There really have been a lot of surprises for me in the last couple of days.   One of the most pleasant ones was the result I have had in treating my arthritic pinkie with supplements.   After a certain amount of research, I decided that vitamin E, and B12 would be a good thing to try.   They seemed to help some, but there was also information that said selenium would help, and one of my friends highly recocommended I try it.   Since she is 68 going on about 46 (if you can judge by her looks and activity level), I decided to add selenium to the mix.   Darned if it didn’t have a positive effect in about three days.   I am very happy and intend to keep on with this regime for the foreseeable future.

I spent some time weeding the herb garden today, and cutting back the dead tarragon to make room for the new sprouts.   I was investigated by the honeybees, who were out eating the sugar water food we provided for them in force this fine afternoon.   They were fascinated by my purple sweater, and one of the landed on my hand for a while, walking around tasting my salty flesh before flying away on urgent bee business.    I didn’t have my camera with me, or I would have definitely gotten a picture of my little visitor.

Another surprise, not so pleasant, was what I found down in the sinkhole when I walked down into it with Ruby today.   I should have taken a large trash bag, but instead I had my fleece pullover, which I took off and converted into a sack by closing up the drawstring at the bottom.   In addition to an automobile tire (which I did NOT put in the pullover) and the complete ashtray assembly from some old blue car, I hauled out about 30 pounds of assorted pop bottles, oil cans, antifreeze jugs, beer cans, miscellaneous plastic, and glass pint whisky bottles as well as just general trash type trash.   It wasn’t quite warm enough to be walking around without my pullover on, but the extra effort required to haul the stuff up out of the sinkhole kept me warm enough.

The Stroll Garden afforded me a small surprise yesterday.   I don’t suppose I should have been surprised since I am responsible for planting these bulbs, but I have to tell you that quite often I come across bulbs in the course of my weeding or planting and I just stick them in anywhere that seems likely and then I promptly forget all about them even though I tell myself I should go in and mark it on the garden plan (which never quite seems to happen, there is always something else to do — like massage, or laundry).  But whatever.   I was surprised, and pleasantly so, by this cheery row of miniature dutch iris and yellow crocuses.

These are out in the area where I have planted two kinds of campanula, both tall, one is blue and the other pink.   The little bulbs really fit into the mix nicely.   When you get up close and personal, the little irises are a perfect blue, with amazing detail painted onto their petals.

Just around the corner from this spot is the Rose Garden, where I have my species tulips and miniature daffodils planted.   A couple of years ago I strewed cilantro (coriander) seeds around the base of the roses, and this has turned into the cilantro source for Jim’s Mexican cuisine.   It surprised me to find that an herb which is an integral ingredient in such tropical cuisines as Mexican and Thai is quite winter hardy.

This is the cilantro patch after being picked over thoroughly for some enchiladas the other night.   Bear in mind that this area receives no winter protection whatsoever and just a few days ago it was covered with snow.

It’s no surprise that the hellebore is hardy, but I am always entranced by its beauty when it blooms so nicely so early.

Right outside the back door is another bulb surprise.   These are a few crocus bulbs that I planted near the herb garden in a fit of madness about ten years ago.   Why I thought such a high traffic area was a good spot to put in dainty little spring bulbs I will never know.   But it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and apparently the crocuses don’t really mind being walked on.

A few days ago I surprised myself by noticing this feather lying on the grey and white path through the woods when I walked Ruby.   I have no idea why my eye was drawn to it when it was so well camouflaged, but it was.   I picked it up and brought it home to see if I could identify the original owner.   I believe it was some sort of woodpecker, and from the looks of it probably a hairy woodpecker.   But I’m not sure.   Still,  it is quite beautiful, and I love the black markings connected by the dark feather shaft.

My reward for dealing with the not so pleasant surprise of trash in the sink hole was to discover an owl feather caught on a bramble as I was trudging up out of the bottom.

This was torn out of the owl as it stooped to catch some small creature bustling about in the lacy brush petticoats the oaks wear.   I was so entranced by the delicacy of this feather, I spent a long time trying to capture its beauty.   The camera had a hard time focusing on its softness, and it was so delicate and light that the slightest breeze set all the down drifting magically about.

I hope all your surprises this weekend are beautiful ones.

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Paying the price

My niece and I went out last Friday and worked for several hours to clear out the pond.

I have to tell you that that area of the yard has been so disturbing to me I haven’t even been able to bring myself to photograph it.   However, there are photographs taken in earlier years that show how it looks when I let it get away from me.  If anything, it was even more overgrown this year.

So, a few days ago, I decided to document how it is now that I have beaten back the water plants a bit.

Seriously, before I worked out there, you could not see the waterfall at all due to the giganticness of the forsythia bush and the massive wild lotus in the water.

The dragonflies love the pond.  This one is posing on one of the water cannas.

But there is always a price to pay for beauty, I’m afraid.   Turns out that my little pond has managed to become the harbor  for some sort of trematode, a two stage parasite of birds and snails.   Thank goodness I did not encourage my niece when she suggested that she could also get into the pond to help me clean it out. Otherwise, she could look and feel just like I do.

I took close up shots but find them way too graphic and disturbing for this blog, really.  Thank goodness I had on my wet suit booties.  I seriously considered wearing my short river shoes, or going barefoot.   Otherwise my feet would be in on the “fun” too.

Actually, these shots were taken a few days after the initial eruptions of hives, which happened on Saturday morning.   Imagine each and every one of those little welts being approximately three times the size they are above… intense itching… diarrhea because of the amount of toxins being emitted by the dying creatures (thankfully that only lasted for a few hours)…  Benadryl, ibuprofen, cortisone cream…   in the afternoon I discovered that margaritas helped enhance the effect of the benadryl…  Saturday is a lost day for me, I can barely remember it, except for a general sense that I was really uncomfortable.

My wonderful friend Jeri told me on Sunday to try doing a salt scrub.   That made the itching 90% better, bearable.   I have done several scrubs and a couple of soaks as well.   The lesions are healing, but some of them are stubbornly itching even now.   The ones on my hands and arms are particularly bothersome as they get disturbed all the time, which makes them itch.

I just haven’t felt much like blogging or anything else.   Still, we managed to get started on reclaiming the root cellar, another spot that I have let go over the past couple of years in despair over the bermuda grass infestation.   That resulted in the discovery of a new tenant at The Havens; a young groundhog recently expelled from the maternal presence has decided to move in back there.    Hopefully it will not discover the vegetable garden.   I have enough problems with squirrels and birds.

My dislike of squirrels has been compounded by the latest activity — putting the netting up over the vineyard, which is starting to ripen the grapes.   We discovered that the squirrels thought that maybe the bird net would be a good place to spend the winter, so there is one net that is sporting large holes where the rodent attempted to chew the fibers into a comfortable bed.   Fortunately, we discovered its presence soon after it moved in and found a more secure way to store the nets.    But I have been spending some “quality time” out in the sweltering day mending the holes; the birds would find them quite convenient.

I really hate squirrels; not enough to eat them, though.   As Jim says,   “I don’t eat rat.”  Not even if it has a fluffy cute tail.

Excuse me.   I have to go scratch.  No, wait!   NO SCRATCHING.

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Mesmerized

I sat down at the computer in order to look at the radar to see if this rain/sleet stuff that is spitting from the pre-dawn sky is going to end any time soon; but I got sucked into the Astronomy Picture of the Day’s site by the trio of images of the aurora borealis taken near Yellowknife.

Suddenly I found myself flipped backwards in time to the days — 34 years ago really – when I lived in Alaska in a cabin that my husband and I and all our friends constructed out on the  edge of Goldstream Valley.   We had a composting toilet, but since we had no electricity the stack really didn’t pull enough suction and it would get very wet and anaerobic if you used it to urinate in.   So we always went outside for that activity, directing our guests off down “The Path” which wended its snowy way through the alder thicket south of the house to the edge of the bluff where our vegetable garden was.

I will just say that I sleep in the nude and have for years and years after I wound up almost strangled to death during my twelfth year by the long flannel granny nightgown I was wearing that had welded itself to the flannel sheets while I threw myself from side to side in whatever dream was controlling my limbs.

That being said, going off down The Path at 2 a.m. when the outside temperature is in the low -40°F (-40°C) range and if you spit it crackles as it falls to the ground is an adventure in efficiency.   I usually would just slip on my mukluks and my parka, put on my hat and scurry carefully out of the house.   You really did not want to slip and fall on the packed snow that surrounded the place, and had for months.

One night I emerged from the cozy cabin so attired, and focused my attention on the ground as I made my way along the path we had trampled through the snowy woods.   It seemed like I could see where I was going better than usual, it was so light outside!   I squatted to pee, musing on the concept that you cannot really buy beer, you can only rent it for a little while, balancing carefully so that the stream would run down hill away from my mukluks, which were merely canvas bags strapped around felt booties.   That night such care was unnecessary, as the warm fluid immediately vaporized into frozen fog and drifted slowly down in the still air.    I stayed down for a minute, stretching my hamstrings and letting myself drip dry.   As I crouched there, I looked up and immediately became drawn into the flickering flowing floating crackling lights that were dancing all over the night sky.

I slowly stood up, unable to take my eyes away from the hypnotic show going on above me.    I don’t know how long it lasted, I really don’t.   But I know that I stood there until my bare knees, which were really all that were showing of my basically nude body between the tops of my mukluks and the bottom of my parka, suddenly lost all feeling and I felt a very cold draft begin to blow up the chimney formed by my torso and the shell of the jacket since I had neglected to put on a scarf.   I also had no hat on, and my ears were hanging out in the open since I had had my head tilted backwards for the show.

I snapped out of my hypnotic state and rushed back into the house.   I shed my outer garments, carefully putting the mukluks up on the high shelf where they would dry out, and crawled up the ladder into the loft.   I slid back under the quilts into the warmth of my young husband, trying not to touch him with my very chilly body.   He rolled over and threw his arm over me and instantly recoiled from the ice maiden he found himself wrapped around.

“Good God!”  he gasped, shocked awake.  ”What have you been doing?”

“There were the most amazing Northern lights out there, I got sucked up into the Universe.”

He immediately got up, went down and put on his parka and boots and went out to gaze at the spectacle himself, as he negotiated “The Path” for his own nightly relief expedition.

I was asleep, half warmed, when he crawled in with me, an ice man to match the ice maiden.   We melted each other.

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It’s been beautiful at The Havens lately.

We’ve been working hard too.   Not only have we been building walls, we have been pruning and burning grape trimmings and we had a sauna in there too as well as some extremely nice and friendly and protracted afternoon encounter sessions.   S0 I have not been blogging, or really visiting blogs either.

Plus I got sucked into Zuma blitz on Facebook and I have been mesmerized by it for days.   When I thought about the Aurora borealis this morning, I realized that that game does something hypnotizing to your brain.    I really can’t tell you how obsessed I have been with it.   And it is going to stop right here and now because I have a lot better things to do than move the mouse around on the computer desk and match colors and make balls blow up.  I mean really.    But I see how gamers get made.   I think their brains become rewired.

Anyway, in between obsessive game playing sessions, this is what we accomplished in the yard.

The vegetable garden is planted, at least the cool weather crops.   I have lots of seeds (broccoli, broccoli raab, beets, chard, carrots) shivering in the ground this morning — it is rain/sleeting just at freezing point — in addition to the bed of  hardy lettuces, kale and spinach that made it through the depths of winter.   This cold damp is nothing to them!   We ate some of them for dinner last night, along with a quiche made from the last of last year’s asparagus.

We had the first batch of fresh asparagus a few days ago, and my my my it was goooood.    Since we picked those first brave spears the weather has harshened and the patch is standing at attention, in cold storage, awaiting the return of spring.   I have little pea sprouts that are about an inch tall.   They are almost old enough to take the row cover off of them.   I have found that the cardinals, blue jays, robins, squirrels, and who knows who else think that tiny little pea sprouts make the tastiest salad ever, so if I want to have any peas to grow up and make actual pea pods, I had better protect the little darlings until they are not so tender and tasty any more.   The peas don’t care about cold weather,  in fact they prefer it.   I pray the spring does not heat up too soon, hot peas don’t make pods, they just shut down and die.

Anyway, that’s the news from hereabouts; hope your news is good.

Hen and chicks “Gazelle”

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