If you can come up with an appropriate title to this post, you're doing better than I am!

Yesterday morning, just as I was ready to help Brian practice his violin, I noticed bugs on the floor. Lots of them. ANTS. Little black ants, marching in a line from the guest bedroom to the entry rug and then angling back to the kitchen island. EEK! We have never had any sort of a pest problem in this house since we built it over six years ago, and I was NOT happy. More like creeped out. Itchy. Very itchy. Does anyone else get like that? Sometimes Rick comes home and disrobes in the garage because he's been working on a lice-infested horse. Even though his clothes go directly into the washing machine and he goes directly to the shower, I get very, very itchy. Anyway. I killed and wiped up every single ant - that, of course, entailed hanging around for oh, eleven years to catch all the late-comers and stragglers. During a lull in the massacre, I ran upstairs and googled "Help! Little ants!" and then added Terro liquid ant killer to my shopping list. By the time we left home, the battlefront was quiet....

Getting the mail on the way to town was the perfect antidote, though, because a very distracting - in a good way - envelope awaited me. It was from New Zealand, and contained the pattern for the vest I've been coveting. I didn't want to ruin my euphoria with fear of failure, so I haven't looked closely at the pattern to see if I can manage it. Leave me my delusions....

At the end of a long string of errands, we planned to eat supper out and go to a free outdoor concert at Linfield College. But it started to sprinkle a wee bit, and then a bit more, and by the time we finished supper it was definitely too soggy to sit on the grass and listen to Caribbean music. Drove by the campus just in case; the stage was empty and the sound equipment set up earlier and covered with tarps was gone. But you know what? I'll gladly give up a concert for a little precip! We got ONE day with rain in the whole month of July - one. I had forgotten how delicious the air smells when it rains after a dry spell; last night I think all the plants were extra fragrant in gratitude for getting the dust rinsed off. Walking past a border planting on the way back from doing chores, I could smell both lavender and thyme; sublime.
Of course, when we got home a line of ants was marching back and forth again. I served up a couple stations of sweet Borax for the little buggers, and although it is taking great restraint to allow them free access to my home, I know they must indulge and carry the poison back to their nest to end the infestation. Infestation. Even the word makes me itch.

That's it for now at . . .