A quiet couple of days have gone by, so not much to tell about, but I figure they’re better than the nothing that would have been here otherwise.
I spent my Labor Day doing nothing particularly holiday-ish. Though this many years into retirement I still get a kick out of not hyperventilating about the upcoming week anymore since I no longer have a new year of kids to teach. So, my quiet celebration of not working matched up with the day, I suppose.
No exercise class at the Y – Labor Day
– so I frittered away some of the morning, putzed around in the garden a bit, and
continued my running war with the ants. The hummingbird feeder sits right
outside the window where I sit at my computer and on two consecutive days I’ve
glanced out and seen. . .movement. When I looked closer I could detect tiny beings traveling up and down the pole.
Damn. Sure enough – when I went out to
check, there were ant bodies floating in the sugared water. This means I
take down the feeder, brush all the interlopers off the sides of it, bring it
into the house for a good wash (hopefully not dropping ants everywhere), and boil up some new dinner for the
hummingbirds.
The second time, figuring enough is
enough, I sprayed the pole with ant killer, glopped on some Vaseline at the
base, and sprinkled garden ant killer granules on the ground for good measure. And
yet, I’m beginning to suspect we might be going into traveling time for my
little friends so this may all be moot.
I have not yet won a war against ants. Sometimes they go away for a while but they return. And are partial to cat food.
ReplyDeleteOh the money I've spent on ant killer granules over the years! I finally gave up. At least they're all outside and never inside.
ReplyDeleteThat's one nice perk about living on the second floor of an apartment. No ants here, I think.
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem with ants and had my feeder hanging from a hook which was in my garden. I ended up hanging the feeder from my porch instead with no route for the ants to take. I wrote a post about that same "feeling" of starting school again. I don't think it leaves, even after you retire from teaching. -Jenn
ReplyDeleteTen years later and I still have dreams/nightmares of having a class to teach that I can't find.
DeleteOh, I never thought about the ant problem with a hummingbird feeder! (As you can surmise, I never had one in the states, and we don't have hummingbirds in the UK.)
ReplyDeleteInteresting - never realized there aren't any there!
DeleteTerro ant bait. We have massive invasions of ants, seemingly out of nowhere. The ants take it back to their nests and kill everyone. It's a white powder. It's the only thing that stops them here in Spokane.
ReplyDelete