Ants Marching

(If I had music linked here, you'd be listening to Dave Matthews right now.)


This morning's walk with Nichole was SO humid - it felt like Florida out there, after yesterday's torrential deluge.  And may I just say, if you were glad of the rain, you can thank me.  I deep watered the other day and that instituted the Murphy's law of watering your grass - the rule akin to the one, "If you wash your car, it will soon rain."  The rains we've had the last few days have been wonderful.

(I further discovered there is apparently a Murphy's law of  garden hoses stating something like, "If there is a split in the hose, the resulting stream will be aimed directly at the person who is turning on the faucet." True story.)

But besides sodden lawns and the seeds and leaves which pooled wherever the sudden rivers took them, we liked watching the ants again.  What caught our eye particularly was a group carrying their eggs to another location.  We are guessing they had a cave-in someplace down below and were moving the nursery.  I've seen it before, the long line of little black or brown critters carrying the starkly white eggs.  We traced them a  couple of yards to a spot under a bush.
Maybe it is simply to another part of their formicary? (I love that word.)   What makes it all so fascinating is the communication involved.  Who tells whom to move, how is that info spread??  How do they find that new home and then tell the others?  Personally, I could sit and watch them quite a while, they're just so interesting.   If the kids had been here, I probably would have come home and taken them over to observe with me.

Oh, and I tried to find an image of ants carrying their eggs, but nothing that was similar to what we saw.  BUT, I know you'll love going to look at this link, about the girl who had ants coming out of her eye!!

http://www.onlineweblibrary.com/blog/?p=313

Wedding Dress Summer

"Wow, I CAN NOT believe you can MAKE a DRESS!!"

That's what I heard from a visitor a couple of weeks ago, a young lady who apparently never learned to sew.  

I write this post between dresses - TWO wedding dresses I am sewing this summer.  Actually, the first one is done and out the door, we only have left to make a sash for it.  The bride is deciding if she wants to add color or to maybe use her lace there...  She seemed surprised I wanted her to take it away after the final fitting, but I really did, I wanted to KNOW it was actually done. Complete. Finis. Whew!!  

She is Christine Lillywhite, a friend of Chelsea's.  She is getting married the same day as our Danielle - August 18th.  That is in only THREE weeks from now.  (I think my shoulders just tensed in anxious anticipation) 

I agreed to make the dress for Christine only because she really wanted it very simple, and I had many weeks to do it.  And obviously, it had been so long since I'd sewn anything for anyone else, I'd forgotten how anxious I get when sewing things for others. 

But I've survived, the dress is done, the bride used the word PERFECT more than once!  It is what she wanted (even after totally having to redo the blousy top that looks WAY different on the pattern picture than it turned out in real life.  But I remade it to better reflect what she was wanting, and she's pleased. )

Danielle also wants me to make her dress, and that will be a lot more fun,  even with a little less time to complete.  She won't get here until next weekend, giving me 2 weeks to properly finish it.  But I think I'll just start cutting and sewing ahead of her, going by her measurements.  Her dress is quite different from the first one, but she also wants it fairly simple.  If either had demanded rows and rows of lace or miles of pearls and beading, it would have been a show-stopper.  This is going to work.

And it's time to truly start delegating all the wedding details to others so I can only be worrying about this dress those last few days.  

Heheh, like that will happen.

(and the photos were taken by my assistant, Jemma.  I handed her the camera and asked her to take a few of me in action, and there were a few decent ones. She also took about 4 dozen photos of the dog, the stairs, the dog ON the stairs.... most are blurry and shaky and totally unrecognizable.  But 6-yr-olds work for Popsicles, I really can't complain.  )

  

  

Patriotic Ants

This has been a great Fourth, well maybe here because it was overcast and a little rainy now and then.  For others where there are fires, not so much fun.

But anytime we have rain here it is cause for celebration.  It seems to have cleared out in time for tonight's fireworks.  This morning it didn't look as promising, it was quite cloudy.  It felt WONDERFUL to walk in the overcast, humid air this morning (at 6:30 it was 79 and sprinkling now and then.)

Nichole and I took a long walk around the neighborhood, talking to friends and watching the scouts set the flags out on the roundabouts at 5 intersections.  They do this every national holiday.  Well, several of them, anyway... Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day. They are good to get up early to do this on a day they could be sleeping in.


One thing we noticed today that was different than on other days is the way the ants were acting.  Usually we   see several different colonies on our walk.  Most of the time they are in a line hurrying someplace - toward food, most likely. They must tell each other there is something on down the trail, with thousands of them going SO fast back and forth.  We once saw them making short work of a bird carcass. YUM!


   Often they are working together in a different way, cleaning house we call it.  They come out of the mouth of their formicary with a tiny pebble and drop it, about an inch or inch and a half away. Then they go right back underground. Those little mounds of brown are easy to see. We haven't figured out what triggers that, and there are often several little hills in one area, presumably all from one colony.  Perhaps the nearby sprinklers made a mess of their passageways and they need to recreate their little tubes.  It does make us wonder just how far all those tunnels are running under our feet... like do they go under the sidewalk and grass and street?  A few feet away, or several yards?


Today it was another thing altogether, which we've seen only occasionally.  The ants, in colony after colony, were scattered.  ALL OVER the sidewalk!  There was no rhyme or reason, no one was headed anywhere at all.  There was no line to follow, no pattern.  Just ants and more ants all over our path. We couldn't really step over them as we walked, we were on top of them each time before we even realized it.  


Since we saw this about 5 times during our walk, we attributed it to the weather. That was the only thing that was different.  It was cloudy and humid, sprinkling a little bit.  Why that would send them out like this, we couldn't surmise.

Nichole decided they knew it was a holiday. After all, they weren't hurrying to get food, and they weren't cleaning out the house...  they must have been celebrating.

 "They are Patriotic Ants!"