ants and trumpets

Happy Friday, folks. We’ve got another sunny day ahead of us, if the skies (at this very moment) are to be believed. I hope it stays nice.

I spent most of yesterday outside. After lunch, I waited until Mom went outside for a smoke and ambushed her. She’s been rooting some cuttings a neighbor gave her, and they were at least 2 weeks overdue to be put in the ground. “Point me at what needs to be done with the Gabriel’s trumpet”, I told her. “They’re looking really alien and I’m beginning to worry they’re growing sentient.”

The highlight of the gardening was the discovery of several ant lion nests in the sandy soil we were prepping. I hadn’t seen them since I was a kid, so I was l pretty excited(? why?) to find them. At that point, I went into full “excited bug kid” mode, where I pointed out all the little nests to Mom. Then I took it up a notch and gave a little demo on how the nests work. I grabbed a couple of little ants and dropped them into the nests.

For what it’s worth, Mom can still do the same “oOoOOh, that’s interesting, dear” she could do 40 years ago.

At that point, I changed into shorts. We spent another couple of hours working on the wildflower garden. It needed to be “thinned out”, which actually became “scorched earth mode” after a little while. We ended up just pulling up everything, busting open and spreading the contents of whatever seed bunches we found. I saw one cicada husk. Dead or not, they freak me out. I left it in the dirt and tried to keep an eye on it so I didn’t step on it barefoot.

Final tally: 8 new Gabriel’s trumpets to go with my Lucifer’s trumpet, half of the wildflower plot cleared, and no more ant lion nests.

As I said, today’s weather is supposed to be a continuation of yesterday. Lovely weather, and a little warmer. There’s going to be more gardening stuff happening, and I have to fix something on Shawshank‘s blog.