The Fast and the Furious

Actually, that title has nothing whatsoever to do with this post. If anything, it probably should be called "The Spastic and the serious."

First the spastic.

Have you ever really watched ants work? They are fascinating little critters. I discovered some gaining entry to our dining room a week or so ago. They march in, zero in, and leave. sortof.

Today, though, there was a small crumb, well, maybe slightly larger than small, in the floor. The ants were making a bee-line (hahahhahaa) toward it and attacking it like there was no tomorrow. For kicks, I left it.

In a few minutes, the food, AND the ants were gone. Well, that was cool.

So, tonight at supper, I notice that Kristi has dropped some pieces of crackers. Once again, the ants have found their way to the manna. What was interesting, though, was this one little guy was simply trucking it with a piece of a cracker that was like 50 times his size. I called the kids over and we watched for a while.

I got everything swept up and cleaned up, and later noticed a couple of pieces of bread or something, and a cheeto, lying by the door. My kids fed the ants. The crackers are almost gone, and I left the cheeto just to see how long it would take them to get the thing out of there.

There's a life lesson in that somewhere. "The Parable of the Ant"

Hmmmm, actually, in comparison to the rest of this post, perhaps THAT is the serious part and the rest is spastic.

Yesterday, my children ate some watermelon. Knowing the little they know about plants and gardening, they saved the seeds and wanted to plant them. No problem, I also have some pumpkin seeds that I have saved from last fall. ("some" might be a bit misleading -- there were probably over 200).

So, it rains all day today, but when it stops, we head to the backyard.

Travis shows me where to plant them. It is a good spot. There is no grass growing there so Bernard won't have to worry about mowing it.

I dig up the topsoil, and poke 12 or 16 neat little holes in the ground for the seeds.

Travis starts to put the watermelon seeds in, only to have Kristi start WAILING that that is what she wanted to do. Fine. Travis starts putting the little pumpkin seeds in (I have two sizes). We get, oh, 4 or 5 holes "seeded" and decide that is ridiculously slow, so we just scatter them on the ground. I cover them up, smooth it over, and throw the rest over the bank.

It must be noted that I have a black thumb. I can't keep a plant alive, NO MATTER WHAT I DO! It is for this reason I do not have houseplants, I do not keep a garden, and I do not housesit for people. I kill plants. It is what I do. I am like a walking, talking herbicide.

Therefore, it does not matter to me that I "started" our "garden" two months after everyone else in Western North Carolina.

It does not matter that I did not "prepare" the soil, though it obviously needs it -- heck, it won't even grow grass.

It does not matter that I did not plant in neat rows and furrows, and when they start coming up, we can't weed because I don't have a clue what is a weed and what is a pumpmelon or waterkin. (Which is what they may very well be, because, well, we scattered).

But, because I think it is a requirement if you homeschool to plant *something*, we did it.

I don't think it will grow, but if it does, we are going to have pumpkins coming out of our noses!!!!!