Friends who live outside the village and further out in the country than I are busy trapping beavers and racoons (or hiring trappers to trap). I operate on a more domestic scale. If you were reading this newsletter in 2017 you will remember the Squirrel Wars. They are over, in large part because the squirrels won. My current enemy are ants, in assorted shapes and sizes.
Ants have been around almost since the dawn of time, appearing in fossils around the world. They are a vigorous species with several nasty varieties in residence in the northeast. Several have been with us since the 18th century, brought to the US as so many other infestations, in the soil-based ballast used in ships and then deposited ashore to make room for goods bought for return to Europe.
 |
| Pavement Ant |
The ants devasting my paving are, as you might expect, pavement ants Tetramorum caespitum. They can be identified by two nodes in front of their abdomen and fine grooves on their head and thorax. If I had small children in residence I would have put them to work trapping the ants, arranging for their deaths and then examining them under a microscope. But having no children to conscript I’ll stick to the evidence the ants leave behind.
The tiny ones emerging from the joints between the brick and bluestone on the terrace behind the house bring large sandhills with them. At least I thought they were sandhills until my veterinarian daughter reported that what I see as sand is in fact ant poop. The day I noticed them I had at least 50 mounds to deal with and the number grew.
 |
| An Ant Hill |
Consulting Google produced an assortment of home remedies from planting mint, to a 50/50 solution of vinegar and water, to lemon juice, to red pepper, to boric acid and then on to various commercial ant control products. I chose the boiling water technique, pouring directly into their homes either cooking them or drowning them. When the hills dried I swept them up only to find reconstruction underway 12 hours later in the same locations.
Desperate, I called in an exterminator, Pestmaster, who informed me that the situation at the front of the house was even worse than the back, rife with members other ant families: black and carpenter. The treatment was applied (Demand CS) and after 3 weeks the paving joints can be sealed.
Once you decide on this path you can’t turn back. Pavement ant colonies have multiple queens and many workers. They swarm in May and June sending winged ants that are twice as large as the workers out of the nest to mate and form new colonies. In this manner countless queen pavement ants have been fertilized by the tiny male pavement ants, one-third the size of the queens. You can only destroy an infestation by destroying the colony and killing the queen. If the queen survives the colony will break up and migrate elsewhere.
No matter how much of an irritation the enemy may be, first squirrels then ants, when you study their lives, habits and social structures, a grudging admiration sets in and you find yourself rooting for their side in the determination to multiply and survive.
Now, believing the enemy to be vanquished, I can enjoy the rest of the wildlife. Jamie, my garden helper, had a palm warbler settle down next to his feet while he was weeding, and it has since paid a return visit. Wrens have taken up residence in the wren house – a small black box nailed to the old well house. A thoughtful gentleman in Connecticut I’ve never met made the house for me, after being asked by a friend of a friend.
 |
| The Wren House |
There is a lot of in-and-out activity, what with nest building, feeding and visiting back and forth. I don’t go near the boxes for fear of disturbing the babies.
The birds seem to hang around more since I have stepped up my watering practices. I have an efficient if primitive non-automated watering system.
When I first built this garden, a simple rectangle (114’ x 56’) now in its fourth season, I installed one water line along the length with hose bibs every 40 feet. I keep a 50’ hose permanently attached to the bib with a circular sprinkler head similarly attached at the other end so there is no annoying detaching and reattaching. The hoses are coiled at the bib and left hidden at the back of the shrub border. All it requires of me is that I pull a hose out, set it in place and turn it on. I move it hourly, each hour covering 8 to 10 running feet, depth variable. It takes about two days to cover all areas – that’s about 24 zones, give or take a few.
 |
| Watering Underway |
This may sound formidable, but it is actually calming. First, the time it takes to move a hose is less than five minutes and the process keeps you from leaving the house for more than an hour at a time. This provides hours and hours to read, write, nap, return phone calls, bake cookies, think about dinner. Or if you just choose to sit and stare, the result of all this watering is a deep, cool, green garden that catches whatever breeze is passing by.
