Ants!

Does science fascinate you? Do you pounce on the Tuesday New York Times science section? Or are you a flat earth type—what's real must fit established beliefs and direct experience.

What I think is, we are all scientists. When we are faced with a problem, say, ants in the kitchen, it's a scientific inquiry to ask what is the simplest way to get rid of them. An exterminator may be needed. But first, what's at my local Fred Meyer? I had this problem last June. I remember the month because it turns out to be ideal for a self-inflicted ant invasion.

So, what's on the store shelf? Many have come before me; I'll see what's selling. Well, how about poison compounds targeted to "exterminate grease-eating ants." I don't know if I have the right kind of ants. I'm smashing them left and right and beginning to catastrophize—what if they are the moisture ants that ate my neighbors' house? I need to get hold of myself. Maybe I should just buy this product as worth a try. I can set it out today, so no delay. And it's cheap.

And hey, even my doctor once prescribed me something that didn't match my problem exactly. "Close enough" was what she said. Soon I'll know whether it works and then I can panic, or call in the big guns.

It's scientific, if crude. But what if there's a hidden cost and I end up killing something beneficial? So I took some ants in a jar to the WSU Master Gardener on duty. There Al examined them and reassured me they were not structural pests but more like a cornfield ant that eats a number of things including sugars. He asked what they showed interest in. So I confessed I had cleaned up a hidden spill (Maybe the dishes didn't get done. It could happen). A dried puddle of sweet strawberry juice. With added sugar.

But we'd been clean ever since, honest! And yet they kept coming. The problem was worsening, they were traveling farther in greater numbers, though they continued to come up from just one small gap in the window sill.

Ah, but here's the thing. They follow a scent trail, Al told me. If one ant marks a trail as "fruitful," others will follow despite disappointment and dead bodies. But disrupt the scent trail and they would stop coming. Science just got more fun.

A few drops of bleach on a bit of paper towel stuffed into the gap. It was miraculous. Ants no more. And recently a smart young Huxley student, Sarah, said cinnamon works, too. And nothing icky to use or dispose of.

So as I sit and eat the last of my Shuksan strawberry freezer jam on cream cheese, I am ready for a new season of the deep red beauties to go with my Tuesday NYT. I'll eat till I get hives. But then I'll wipe up the counter. I don't need a side dish of ant angst.

Compost skirmishes: Raccoons 2, humans 1

Despite our shade, I wanted to step up from making compost by mere neglect (See April 14 posting). And use what I already have, if possible. I want to see if worms will help. One of the odds and ends that moved with us from a more amenable locale is a brown plastic bin, bottomless with a clever door to spill the goods when fully baked. How would it work in the shade? I set it a suitable distance from the back door, put in some kitchen scraps and maple leaves and called softly to the ground, "Little red worms, come and get it."

Soon there's been excavation and rinds and husks have been pulled out from the bottom edges. Raccoons. Sometimes I fail to read the writing on the wall. And so I dug down and placed a sturdy wire screen barrier around, weighted down with bricks.

Next I bought worms, because the scraps the raccoons hadn't eaten were just lying there stinking. Time passed while I noted the worms' preferences--these seemed to be picky. Celery was lasting for the longest time. And then I realized I hadn't seen an actual worm for awhile.

Had the ingrates fled the first fall chill? Naw, raccoons like worms--they had simply had themselves a worm spaghetti feed, compost guru Joyce says. Now she tells me. So they win this round. The cute brown bin is now just for coffee grounds and leaves. In 2011 it'll be compost. You have to take the long view.

We'll skip the story of my double decker blue plastic tub tower worm bin. (It got chewed on, and when I moved it into the garage, it leaked.) Raccoons score again.

But I had another composter. This is not so unbelievable if you know us and have seen our garage. If we can re-assemble it, this is your basic overkill German-engineered composter, and "Manfred" will escalate my defenses in the raccoon skirmishes. So I ask Bill to put it together--a steel hexagonal drum, elevated and rotatable like a turkey on a spit. We had used it once, maybe 20 years ago--too long ago to remember why we had quit on it. Or why we had kept Manfred, in pieces, all their years. The assembly instructions are long gone and a Web search turns up nothing.

This is exactly the kind of project Bill finds enticing. You may think I'm kidding. He was at it with skinned knuckles for four hours.

It has been fun taking our jaunt into the woods out to Manfred. With enough leaves, and maybe helped by the Biobags, it hasn't given off much smell, and the raccoons gave up after only managing to pull one shred of corn husk through a dime-sized hole. Who know how long this load will take to decompose, but at least it needs no tending.

There was one problem. Because the drum can rotate, Bill rotated it. He did this just once. During a cold snap. Leaving the door facing down. Of course the half-full mess fell against the door, and it froze solid. Which I discovered next trip to add my bucket. I pulled on the handle to bring the door around to the top, then let go. Luckily my two mugs of strong English tea boosted my reflexes, though apparently didn't have enough caffeine to make me smart. I jumped clear as the drum and it's wicked handle whipped back on a date with gravity. Manfred sat that way for three weeks--lid down and useless--till the thaw.

Now that it's getting full, I'm open to the next idea. I'm think of the sunken bucket strategy. What's your idea?

More potholes—lowering the thermostat

Maybe like me you have wanted to conserve energy (and home heating costs). But how workable, really, is lowering the thermostat? Is a chilly living room about as popular as a hair shirt?

I had to find out for myself. There’s little enough guidance—the typical ten tips include “get a programmable thermostat and set it low at night.” Pikers. Downright timid advice. What's so hard about lower daytime temps, too?

First pass
When I got the bug to conserve, I lowered the daytime setting to 67 degrees. Dressed a tad warmer. In a few weeks we got used to 67 and I started feeling self-righteous. Found excuses to mention our virtue to friends, neighbors.

Sixty-five degrees or bust
Thank you, Geraldine, for not snorting or even cracking a smile when you answered, “My husband is from Europe and 65 is normal there—that’s what we’ve used for years.” A challenge—I love it! So it’s been 65 daytime all this winter.

Aiiee, everything you’d touch was cold. No Bob Cratchit gloves, but I put on everything else. Long underwear, of course. A mid-weight wool sweater topped by an Icelandic wool sweater in the coldest months. (Why does the same setting feel colder in January than in May?) Bill, too, was wearing outdoor jackets. More layers actually is pretty comfortable except for food prep--in a long-haired sweater it doesn’t feel quite sanitary. Maybe it’s not the itchiness that made “hair shirt” a catch-phrase.

OK, but any potholes in this road?
Cool toes? Mom’s crocheted lap blankets took care of TV watching. But a couple of things have seemed a bit much. Every time I go out, I have to change clothes. Meaning, even remove my shoes to get the longies off. Because every building I go to in town is much warmer than our house, leading to major sweats if I don’t debulk.

And how about this. My filtered water pitchers. I don’t recall they ever grew green moss before. Are we alone? Shade and moss inside as well as outside--We'll be outdoing the Bloedel reserve moss garden.

Go ahead and lower your thermostat. But you know you’ve gone too far when your shriek wakes the household just because your buns touched the toilet seat.