Jon's Home Blog » ants

Painting and Yardwork in 92 degree heat

JonC — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:13:10 +0000

Wow, today was a scorcher once again, it’s been pretty warm out lately but that didn’t stop work from proceeding on painting the house and doing some yard work.

Fridays are half day for me and it feels like we worked all day on some of these projects. We’ve been slowly scraping and priming the back side of the house. The paint on the house is not that old but was not applied very well and it’s starting to peel and chip, additionally there are cracks between the slats of the wood. I’m sure the house could use a nice vinyl siding job or something, but paint and caulk are much cheaper for now.

A while ago I scraped, caulked and primed the lower 8 feet of the wall which you can see in the picture and today we scraped another section and began to caulk any gaps and cracks between the siding. Tomorrow I’m going to try go get further up the wall, then caulk it and we’ll put some more primer on.

I’m using a bonding primer from Valspar and it works pretty good. It’s very thick and covers up spots, wood grain and stains very well.

Bryn started scraping out the planting beds today as well and managed to strike and ants nest in the process and got swarmed. Ah natures aerators and largest annoyance in the yard. At least for now they’re staying mostly in the yard! Once the planter is all cleared out of the weeds and such we’re going to put some landscape fabric down and to try and prevent weeds from taking root. then insert a few flowering plants before mulching. Colorful flowers are nice but they’re so high maintenance to keep the weeds and such out of the area it seems like more trouble than it’s maybe worth.

Repainting the house

There are Mushrooms Everywhere in the New Lawn

JonC — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:44:15 +0000

Well I woke to quite a surprise this morning! Mushrooms everywhere in the new lawn. Bryn had mentioned he mowed a bunch down when he mowed on Saturday but I didn’t think a lot about it. He didn’t mention that it was like this. Wow! I guess some things get lost in the verbiage

I like to imagine little people moved into my lawn overnight and made little mushroom homes, you can see some of them are clustered like little mushroom palaces, and then just some stand alone mushroom homes here and there. I hope they watch out for the giant man eating spiders which infest the woods nearby and don’t get flooded out when it rains! Perhaps I need to find more exciting hobbies…

I thought this was pretty bizarre that the mushrooms had only grown where we put down the new topsoil to fill in some low spots before we re-seeded the area. I called the topsoil company and the guy there said that it was pretty common with their soil since they don’t treat the soil with any chemicals. He said it’s due mostly to all of the moisture and rain we’ve been having lately and once we got a few hot days they’d pop off and die. He said you can mow the mushrooms down and the next day they’ll grow right back.

After doing some reading it seems like there are a few other ways to get rid of mushrooms. Some favorites are golf clubs, like a pitching wedge. Go out and get some golfing practice in! Alternately you can put lime in your soil, adjusting the PH to the proper levels or use chemicals. Personally they don’t bug me, and are a sign of nutritious soil for plants and lawns and little mushroom people to grow crops in. It’s only when they start to grow in a ring pattern that you may have a problem. This is called a Fairy Ring. Apparently the mushrooms grow on the outer edges of the Fairy Ring, so the circle gets larger and larger. When the fungus in the ground is this large it can start to steal nutrients from your lawn, instead of help it. No Fairy Ring in my lawn, so I’m doubly okay with it.

When I checked later this afternoon they had all been fried by the sun and not a thing was left standing!

I’m suspecting that these mushrooms will come back overnight again since the humidity is pretty high. It’s actually pretty cool that they can grow back so quickly! I’m going to try and get some photos tomorrow morning as well if they’ve come back. The mushrooms are a neat surprise I never expected, I tend to be finding that out a lot with my first experience in home ownership. Some of the home ownership surprises aren’t really that neat, like the ants, or the giant man eating spiders, and I’m sure other things I’ve yet to find. But yes, it’s a mix of good and bad. May life bring you all more mushrooms and less ants or spiders!

UPDATE: It’s been a couple of weeks and the weather has turned hotter, though we stil have thundestroms in the evening. The shrooms have mostly gone to the great mushroom heaven in the sky and we don’t see much of them. Give nature a chance, folks. Enjoy the mushrooms while they last, cause next week it’ll be a giant man eating spider…

Hunter fail at job ugh

JonC — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:51:48 +0000

Me bad hunter, me look hard for big man eating spider, I no find big spider

I’m alive so you can take that as a clue that I didn’t find the giant spider spider I had seen previously by the barn. While this is a bit of a relief to me in some ways, I did actually try to find the the thing for proof and evidence. I tore apart the pile of stuff in front of the barn, with a rake. It’s perhaps dead and in an unrecognizable lump amongst all the debris, or it beat feat.. lots of feet.. big.. hairy.. spider feet out of town.

Someone told me a spider like this is great against common household pests.. Like what? Rats, pigeons, cats and dogs? wow!

Anyways, I’m sorry that I didn’t get any pictures of this thing. When I saw it yesterday I looked in the front seat of my truck for the camera and realized I had left it in the house. I’m going to keep it with me more often so I don’t miss anymore rare photo opportunities.

I died for you… (maybe) In case I don’t return, these are my last notes.

JonC — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:01:33 +0000

I just wanted to thank everyone for reading my blog pages. It’s been a lot of fun writing and sharing everything from paver sidewalks, ant murdercide and strange articles from time to time.

Yesterday I was home on defective body leave, again, I went out to my truck to grab some papework, and at that point, the chain reaction which may lead to my eventual death or possibly a severe mental disability occured. As I looked towards the barn I saw a giant spider. I don’t mean a big spider, or a huge spider, I mean a GIANT spider.

Now, remember I don’t live in a freaking rainforest, I live in NY between NYC and Albany, it’s pretty moderate here climate and bug wise. In the past when I tell people I’ve seen a big spider, it was perhaps 2-3 inches in diameter and was ‘huge’. After what I saw yesterday, anything under 5 inches in diameter is ‘big’.

To continue with my story, I looked up towards the barn and sitting on a piece of drywall which was leaned against a door which was leaned against the barns outer wall was this giant spider, at least 5″ in diameter(with legs). I was 10 feet away and could clearly make out all it’s distinctive features. It was black, the legs were not tapered to points, but thick and barrel like. It was very easy to see each leg twitch and move, it had a big round rump, and it was black as night. I think it saw me look at it because it kind of ‘jumped’. I closed the truck door and said in astonishment, ‘What the #@%^ are you?’ (sorry mom.. dad.. I was startled!). It quickly flipped me off and dove down in between the old drywall and door… Very quickly! My response was just something to the effect of double checking my brain to make sure I had actually just seen that.

I made it back inside and grabbed the half jug of Ortho Home Defense MAX and proceeded to empty about half a gallon of it over this door, against the door, under the door, over the drywall, under the drywall, around the drywall, anything leaning against the wall, for the purpose of killing this bohemouth of a spider. I soaked every opening, crack, crevace, crevice, you name it, it was soaked. I killed about 100 ants, maybe 20 spiders, some flying insects and a variety of other ‘bugs’ in the process. I just don’t know if I got the spider….

This brings me to today, this evening.. possibly my last evening. Tonight I’m going to go home, drink a twisted iced tea, listen to some quiet music and when I am done, I’m going to go out and peel apart the layers of stuff laying against the barn. It’s quite possibly I will be jumped on and killed by this spider. Could there be more than one? Maybe that’s just one of the babies from a recently hatched nest of even bigger spiders!! I don’t know!! There’s plenty of more theories, perhaps the ants pooled their money and hired some big tough motha to come and get me for killing all their brethern.

But I am doing this for tw-three reasons.

a) My viewers deserve a photo of this giant spider.

b) No one believes it was this big.

c) possible death wish?

I leave the blogs to the remaining ants, by the time they evolve to computer using abilities my adsense will have 29 dollars in it they can use to rule the world. I leave the 29 1/2 years worth of house payments to any sucker dumb enough to move in with man eating spiders!

On the otherhand, I hope I return from my adventure with pics of a giant spider to make you all go eww, and give me another reason not to sleep at night

Wholesale Elimination of Ants in and Around the House

JonC — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:50:44 +0000

Yes, the ants have been driving us crazy around here. There have not only been a lot of them outside, but also inside. It’s time to get rid of the ants!

Near the beginning of Spring I went into one of the local Home Depot’s looking for some pesticide to kill ants with. At the time it was mostly little ants that were roaming around outside around the foundation of the house and the sprinkler timer, singing little marching songs, eating stuff, etc. They can have the yard if they want, for now, but the house is ours!

For some reason going into the insectiside aisles of the home store, they always feel more dimly lit and I somehow feel like I am about to commit an evil crime of some sort. I imagine it’s the same way that a vengeful lover feels when going into a gun-shop, on the seedy side of town, with so many different and exciting weapons to choose from. (Although with killing bugs you get to skip the whole prison dating scene!)

The first thing I bought was sprinkle on ant killer granules. The packaging is always less than exciting and reads like lawyer talk. They could make it a bit more exciting but, well it is what it is I guess. The sprinkle on stuff, to be specific was ‘Spectracide Ant Shield Home Barrier‘. This worked pretty good on the little ants, it comes in a little bin with a flip top and you just shake it around the base of your house then struggle for another 5 minutes trying to get the flip top to stay closed. Most of the little ants abandoned their nests, or more than likely exploded inside of them to the terrifying screams of the other ant comrades. Ethyl!!! Ethyl!! They killed Eth.[..Pop..]

Unfortunately this was not the last wave of ants, it was but the first. I can only suspect the black ants sent the little ones in as a distraction, perhaps to lul us into a false sense of security. The black ants were finding their way into the kitchen, and even after scrubbing down every surface as best as possible to remove trails, and anything remotely tasty or otherwise, they kept comming. You’d napkin one on the counter, then open the cabinet door, and one would be eyeballing you from the top of a can of soup, you’d napkin that too, and see a third one darting off towards the pantry. The kitcken was spotless by this time, so I can only imagine they were after the tasty wood of the kitchen cabinetry.

I went out to the gun-sho…. insecticide aisle at one of the local home centers again to see what else they had. In this case I bought some Ortho Home Defense MAX.. (note, it’s not Max.. it’s MAX. It claimed to pretty much kill everything you sprayed it on, or make it suffer and not want to risk coming back to your place.

The Ortho HDM worked pretty good. The built in pump/sprayer thing worked neat too. I sprayed it around the door frames, window frames and the sill plate of the house the first time. Outside stuff only. It worked for a couple of weeks and then we got a big rainstorm. I guess that washed all the HDM off because the ants came back almost immediately.

I went to spray the second time and that neat stupid #$%@# gun jammed. Seriously, the little pump in the included spray-gun thing seized up and it wouldn’t move any fluid. I swear I heard little-ant feet applause at that moment. I had to go to the hardware store again and buy a ‘professional pump sprayer’ jug. Then I sprayed a second time and again the ants vanished.

This was all kind of annoying because the home defense max stuff isn’t all that cheap. Finally the third time the ants came back another few weeks later I decided to test the indoor properties of the Ortho Home Defense Max. The bottle claims it’s good for indoor/outdoor use, I just didn’t like spraying it inside. Additionally, it says it will be washed off outdoors, but can last up to 12 months indoors. I just sprayed again indoors and the ants have once again dissapeared. Hopefully this will be the last time I need to repeat this procedure.

Conclusions: I’m not certain that I am actually killing the ants, it’s quite possible they’re building up a resistance to this stuff and just come back to get their latest dose. At one point it may end up like a 60′s horror movie and we will be swarmed by these things one night and gnawed down to the bones. I hope they’re being killed though, I really hope! The Ortho Home Defense MAX seems to be doing the job, I just wish it lasted longer outside, but hopefully the indoor application will be better. I was thinking it would be cool if ants were smart enough to realize ‘bad things’ happen if they come near my place, but then I realized smart ants wouldn’t be such a good idea, considering how annoying they are just on pure instinct alone.

Budding Plant with Ants Identified

JonC — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:09:20 +0000

I did a bit more searching to find out what the plant in the below picture is as I have a couple of them in the front planter. According to the info I could find they are called Peonies and the ants just like the sugar and stuff that comes off the buds. I’m not sure how long it will be before these bloom, but the flowers are supposed to look pretty great.

These plants only have a few blooms each, but I guess as they get older and if they’re fed properly they will get more blooms. The front planter is quite crowded with many types of plants so we may try to transplant them over into mom’s planter once the season is through. The leaves drop and the stems need trimming each year. They’re also very hungry plants, and I think with the crowding they’ll just choke the current planter out. Plant density is HIGH with about 6 or 7 different things growing in there. Though I must say when the snow finally melted this year, there was nothing left on top of the planter and all this growth just came through. I’ll probably leave a major portion of the stem and try to get as much of the root ball as possible.

I also want to renovate the planter and make it ‘right’ after we put in the new concrete sidewalk in front of the house and do some work on the front porch.

Please click here to see more of my Ant Related Posts

Memorial Day Weekend and Another Weekend Update

JonC — Sun, 24 May 2009 18:06:21 +0000

I hope everyone in the US is having or had a good Memorial Day weekend. So far I’ve been doing yard work and flying, and tomorrow will probably be grilling as well.

I’ve been a bit slow this week in uploading photos and updates on the new patch I put on the lawn on Monday, 7 days ago. The PatchMaster hasn’t sprouted up grass yet, but it should go in the next few days if all goes well and things should start to turn green. I bought the 15 pound bag for around $25 to patch this area and some others.

There’s some thunderstorms moving in as I type so the lawns have been getting plenty of water. There’s also a pick of the backyard lawn which we leveled and then planted seed with the use of a wood fiber germinating mat. The areas that grew in seem to be doing well, but unfortunately there seem to be good size patches which just never sprouted, and I’m not sure why. I mowed over that mat once, most of it stayed in place. I suspect we’ll have to put more seed down once the summer is over.

The big lawn project however, on the peninsula is doing well as you can see in that photo (with the 4 sprinklers, next to the barn). I trimmed back our Eastern Red Cedar on the peninsula (which is actually a juniper – Juniperus virginiana) so now it is not hanging on the ground. You can see the before picture, with the moss ‘lawn area’ in the forground, and the after picture with the now grassy lawn in the foreground. It looks a lot better being opened up like that and will make mowing a bit easier. I also want to cut back some branches from the acorn tree which are hanging over the front of the barn.

I also added a couple photo’s of a plant that I’m not familiar with. (Update: They appear to be Peonies) It has these big red buds at the top of the stem which have not opened up yet, I guess it’s still doing something in there before it bursts forth. There are a lot of tiny ants all over these buds that seem to be paying a lot of attention to them though. Either they’re waiting for what’s inside, or there’s some sort of plant juices they like there.

Is There a ‘Nice’ Way to Get Rid of Ants?

JonC — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:20:06 +0000

We have a lot of black ants around the property, mostly close to the house it seems. They’re about 1″ long at most. I’d like to get rid of them and I sprayed (yes yes I know not good for Mother Nature) some Ortho Perimeter Defense Max around the house, again, tonight. I feel terrible, these little things are just working their butts off and the homeowner vs nature equivalent of Satan comes around and brings pain and terror into their lives. I really don’t like doing that, but I don’t like the ants either.

Two of the little fackers made it up my pants leg while I was outside, they don’t bite, but I can tell you that it wasn’t enjoyable having them wiggle, trapeze jump and do whatever else they were doing before I could get somewhere to rip my jeans off!

Please provide your input!! All comments are moderated, but unless it’s a blatant ad for another site with no response content, I’ll let it through

Jon's Home Blog » ants

Painting and Yardwork in 92 degree heat

Related Posts

There are Mushrooms Everywhere in the New Lawn

Related Posts

Hunter fail at job *ugh*

Related Posts

I died for you… (maybe) In case I don’t return, these are my last notes.

Related Posts

Wholesale Elimination of Ants in and Around the House

Related Posts

Budding Plant with Ants Identified

Related Posts

Memorial Day Weekend and Another Weekend Update

Related Posts

Is There a ‘Nice’ Way to Get Rid of Ants?

Related Posts

Hunter fail at job ugh