Finally some rain!

Works for me – although we’ve got 3 jobs this morning that it rather complicates, but oh well …stuff happens 🙂  If need be he’ll do the inside part today and go back and do the outside when it stops. But complications aside, sure would be nice to get enough rain to get some fire bans lifted, wouldn’t it?

And I’m happy that I can skip watering my tomatoes for a change. Picked my first three yesterday – well, not really – have picked and tossed lots of ugly black flat bottomed ones already – but finally (after adding calcium as one of our tenants insisted I needed to) got some nice non-ucky tomatoes.

Still getting lots of calls about carpenter ants in Tay, Tiny, Severn and beyond. Still lots of people discovering that they have them, or more like, giving up on the trying to fix it themselves with over the counter products and calling for help, now. The majority of the products you can buy are so mild (thanks to government regulations) that for carpenter ants, they really don’t do the job, unfortunately. Professional products, too, are strictly controlled by government regulations – but at least we’re allowed to buy stuff that actually works, thank goodness.

We’re also hearing back from some of the carpenter ant jobs we did earlier this year, which is absolutely expected. There’s almost always a “bloom” about four weeks after treatment. For the first few weeks, you see lots more dead ants, less live ones – and then at about four weeks, the nests are decimated, the queens are dead, and all of a sudden a whole lot of really dumb ants start showing up. People get worried that “it didn’t work” … but in almost every case, it is the exact opposite – the bloom is the indication that it DID work!

There are always many more times the number of ants in the nests than you’re seeing – when the nests die, all of a sudden there’s a flood of the little buggers that don’t know what to do without their queen and out they come. And they’re dazed and confused and do dumb things, too. In one case, they exited en mass and marched into our customer’s pool! – but usually they’re nowhere near that organized about it.

It can be a ~little~ distressing to see so many more all of a sudden. We get that, and  we will come back if need be, honest 🙂

But in most cases, if we can convince you to wait just a little bit longer, you’ll find that you no longer need us to come back, because it really is over and the problem is solved.

Ants are fascinating; I wish we didn’t need to kill so many of them – but since they do so much damage to homes & cottages if left unchecked, it must be so.