Day 2

I thought a lot about ants today. There are ants in the kitchen, in some of the house plants. I don’t really mind although I hear a lot of complaints from those who do. To my mind, it’s their season. They are busy at work aerating the soil, cleaning up waste and, most importantly, opening peony buds. Peonies are just so impressive in their florid flooziness and their sweet scents… and that all of that showy goodness requires the work of some fastidious assistants who are just trying to feed their family. I like to think of the ants as roadies for a Dolly Parton type of flower show.

I watch a lot of ants scurry up and down our cherry tree…. it’s time for them to raise aphids to feed their babies. I found a leaf with a herd of aphids being tended by one black ant. It’s a tiny world I know so little about. At some point I will try to stop the ants from raising their herds in my cherry tree. They damage the fruit…and I do love cherry pie…so I’m not always so understanding. Right now I can still afford to be curious and amazed.

It used to be said that the weight of all the Earth’s ants would outweigh the humans combined weight. I think this no longer holds true with 8 billion of us now. I think this means a lot of people are complaining about ants. There are still more of them than there are of us.

I ran out of time to make you a decent drawing of ants… this will be forthcoming but for now you can look at this photo I took. I hope you are not grossed out and can see how amazing this really is. This ant is upside down, under a leaf, five feet up off the ground. It is tending a brood of aphids to milk their secretions for the ant babies under ground. That’s a pretty good commute to get “milk.”