The day before yesterday Husband came in and told me I had to come outside and see something. As I was approaching I saw these rust colored spots on the ground and started to get a little creeped out.
I asked, "Is this going to be something sketchy?" He replied, "Yeah, it's pretty sketchy."
When I got there I noticed that the splotches were moving slightly. They were piles of red ants. Besides the piles there were rocks with their undersides covered with ants. It was chilly outside so they were moving slow but I still had to stay far away. I got stung by large ants twice before and both times it was very unpleasant.
I came inside to look on the internet and see what kind of damage they might do when Husband came back inside to say he was going to try lighting them on fire. So then I started looking for other possibly safer ways to get rid of them. Running them over with the car and submerging in soap water were some things I found.
Husband was back outside burning when I was suddenly overcome with paranoia and had to take off all my clothes to be sure there were no ants crawling up my pant legs. He came back in and I let him know about the other options while he laughed at me for being naked.
In the end most of the ants were destroyed by the series of plagues that befell them: fire, car tires, and tractor scraping.
I'm still afraid to go over to that part of the yard for any period of time.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
New Direction
I started the blog in 2007 and after a few posts either lost interest or became engrossed in school and work. So now here we are in 2009 and I'm going to try again. I'm not a student anymore; now I'm an instructor. And I'm not a city dweller anymore either. Husband and I moved in January from a metropolitan area of over a million people to a town with less than three thousand.
So we moved in January and now it's March. I've got some catching up to do. Calling our new home a hovel might be a bit dramatic but it is rustic compared to what I'm used to. Not that our city house was very fancy but it was block and over time we had fixed most of the problems. Now we've started over again but this time with a 1970's double-wide. The plumbing is weird (no valves on pipes!), the electric is weird (aluminum wiring?), the windows are weird (they rattle in the wind and I've already broken one trying in close it), and the floor is weird (mostly shellacked particle board). And although I've done what I can so far there's still a lot of grime, cobwebs, dust, and dead bugs.
But we didn't move out here for a fancy house. We moved to grow food, see stars, hear birds, and live with the land. That's one thing that's really nice about our hovel: it sits on a couple acres of partially treed, partially cleared land. There are mountains to view on most sides as well as saguaros and many different varieties of wildlife. Maybe it will be almost as fun to read about our new adventure as it is to experience it.
Yours,
The Happy Hovel Wife
So we moved in January and now it's March. I've got some catching up to do. Calling our new home a hovel might be a bit dramatic but it is rustic compared to what I'm used to. Not that our city house was very fancy but it was block and over time we had fixed most of the problems. Now we've started over again but this time with a 1970's double-wide. The plumbing is weird (no valves on pipes!), the electric is weird (aluminum wiring?), the windows are weird (they rattle in the wind and I've already broken one trying in close it), and the floor is weird (mostly shellacked particle board). And although I've done what I can so far there's still a lot of grime, cobwebs, dust, and dead bugs.
But we didn't move out here for a fancy house. We moved to grow food, see stars, hear birds, and live with the land. That's one thing that's really nice about our hovel: it sits on a couple acres of partially treed, partially cleared land. There are mountains to view on most sides as well as saguaros and many different varieties of wildlife. Maybe it will be almost as fun to read about our new adventure as it is to experience it.
Yours,
The Happy Hovel Wife
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