Okay. Ants live in the ground. I've heard of ants living in trees, under porches, around patios, forming nests in homes.

I have never heard of ants living on a roof.

Yep, you guessed it. They weren't only hiding in the leaves on the roof, they had formed a thriving community up there. James knocked the leaves apart with a rake and they came scurrying out by the dozens. He saw ant eggs and grubs. He raked the leaf pile to the edge of the roof and over, and I raked them away from the house. He also sprayed up on the roof and that part of the house that abuts the roof.

We ended up doing a lot more chores than we intended: since we had the big ladder out anyway, he cleaned out all the uncovered gutters and I raked away the gunk and washed things down. I also pruned tree and bush branches where I could reach and James got a couple himself.

I suppose I should have "drug" out the hedge clippers and given the holly, box, and azalea its early summer trim to complete the yard work, but by then we were both filthy and I would have had to go inside to plug in the extension cord, since the dimwits who built this house didn't see fit to put an exterior plug in the front of the house, only in the rear.

That was Sunday's jolly activity; today we put ant granules on the lawn. I hate this part of the operation simply because they are toxic. We took precautions like putting plastic bags over our shoes and putting on plastic gloves, then removing both before coming inside and also undressing in the laundry room so to put clothes straight into the washer, but I was so paranoid about the granule dust that got on James that I did stuff like wash the doorknobs, vacuum the carpet again, wash down the doorjambs he had gone near, and wash the curtain divider to the den that he had touched. Inadvertently my own tiredness cost me more work: I'd left the finished laundry in the laundry room, and then realized some of the dust from James' clothes might have got on the clean laundry. So I spent this evening rinsing and re-drying two loads of laundry.

God, I hate bugs...

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:40:00 PM

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