FORMIDABLE FORMICIDAE

I've been a terribly inconsistent blogger - more prone to feeling guilt for not writing, than I am to actually writing. BUT - this past week I got messages from 2 people who said they'd been reading the blog, which amazes, delights, and inspires me.

So hey there Esther Matus and Karen Neuberg.
I hope you are still reading and I hope you like ant stories!

It's summer in LA.

It's always sunny here, but you can tell when it's properly summer in Los Angeles because the ants reappear. Salinger and Soprano worried where the ducks go in the winter. In LA, ducks are year round. It's the ants that disappear - but nobody thinks about them until the heat comes and they organize into black ribbon superhighways and invade our homes looking for water.

The ants in the house haven't been too bad this year and over the weekend we figured out why.
We've unwittingly filled our backyard with hand crafted oversized ant farms.

Sure, we thought that the 4 foot by 4 foot loosely packed enriched soil filled boxes were for the exclusive domain of our carefully tended veggies and herbs - but as Seamus watered the strawberry plants on Sunday, a disturbing number of panicked ants came clamoring to the surface carrying their larvae to higher ground.

This may also explain why so little grows in the garden. Have we been cultivating leafy greens only to ave them carried away piece by piece?

Since we can't borax our food (ah how my appreciation of farmers and their judicious use of pesticides grows), we resorted to the medieval tactic of boiling water and scorching the refugees. Our other tactic follows Seamus' hypothesis that ants hate baby powder - so we followed the dousing with a thorough dusting of talc.

It might be too many animated ant movies, but I think somewhere underground - inside the herb garden? under the succulents? - the ants are regrouping and laughing at us. We may have to deconstruct the boxes, which breaks my heart - but I don't want the ants thinking we're suckers.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS SINCE I LAST BLOGGED
I won a home poker tournament and it was as saisfying and psycologically fascinating as Dan Abram's always described.
We hired a cleaning lady recommended by the fastidious Alicia Good and in Seamus' words "our house no longer looks like crazy monkey children live here".
We have completed the 10 week project of unpacking, assembling and staining our backyard furniture.
Ice cream madness continues. That's right. I can't manage to write, clean or get the backyard furniture stained - but I do manage to make 6 quarts of ice cream a week.
The Break Up vs The Transformers (more on that in a later post).
Uncle Jack took us to an ungodly delicious meal at CHOP.