Its supposed to snow tomorrow evening. I am looking forward to it. 

I have my car fixed, my pc fixed and a broken phone. Thinking positively, that means, if it snows a lot, it will be a perfect setting for getting a lot of behind the scenes work done tomorrow without any phone call interruptions. Lol!

On the topic of thinking positively….. lifelong, I have always considered ants as annoying little thieves. A few years back I found a stream of ants flowing from under my cabinet to a little tiny piece of food I dropped inadvertantly on my kitchen floor. My first thought was…Wow!!! How did they find that!!

My second thought was.. jeesh! Look at how many there are. Its going to be difficult to kill them all. 

My third thought went right into strategy.. I prefer organic methods rather than chemical, if I start annihilating them at the point of exit from their hideout hole under the cabinet maybe I can get them all in one fell swoop without them scattering.  

 As I crouched down to watch them more closely to study their movement patterns so to better time my pouncing on them,  I became more fascinated with them and my mind began to wonder as it wandered…. what is their purpose on this planet? What are their intentions in my kitchen? What do they do with this food? How are they going to carry such a huge crumb? Why would I jump so quick to killing ants just because they are there? Do I really need to buy that powerful toxic chemical spray to get rid of them? Do ants have families? 
The more I watched them, the more I quickly realized that they are not a pestilence that I have been taught they are. On the contrary they serve a vital and important piece in the chain of life?

What’s with my rush to kill them?

And then I decided to do something different. Something that all of my friends probably would not have done. I decided to let them clean up the crumbs as they found them on my floor. I made a deliberate effort to step over them instead of on them when I walked through the kitchen. I could see how seriously busy and hard working these ants were. I couldnt stand the thought of them also dying under foot in the midst of them fullfilling their duties and actually… doing me a favor. They were cleaning up the floor for me if I let them.  It took 1 day for them to clean everything up and disappear back into whatever hole they came from. Poof, as if by magic. There one day, gone the next. And I had a clean floor without having to sweep it up myself! 

I thought of the hundreds of times, I picked up a broom and shovel to clean up. And how busy I was with work at that moment. So when I did my job, and I let them do theirs… it worked. Did I like the site of ants crawling on my kitchen floor?.. nope. I realized, it was their quick persistence I didnt like, and how they were not stoppable en force. I also had a fear of them spreading into the living room and crawling all over other parts of the house. I am not the most clinically clean of housekeepers you know, lol. So this challenge of trusting ants was a bit unnerving. Still I was willing to try getting through it to see where it leads. To my surprise and amazement they cleaned up and disappeared without a trace. I didnt have to work so hard if I let nature do its thing. I felt a bit like Cinderella. Lol. 

I also realized during this process, that I could not invite any of my hasty fearful ant killing friends over during this cleaning phase, lest I be judged as a nut, and the ants and their families be destroyed.

I made a note to myself, that perhaps the ants were coming out then because it was spring and they were getting more active seeking food to make more baby ants. I was grateful I did not wipe them out. They also never came back the rest of the year. And that was not necessarily because of my improved housekeeping skills lol!

It is spring again… and they came back to visit me this week. Lol! I dropped 1 pecan when I was baking. They found it! I didnt know ants LOVE pecans!!! I decided to see how long it would take them and how they were going to move that giant pecan. It took them 48 hours to get rid of it without a trace. They had a steady stream of workers that lined up to grab a giant bite from the pecan, and carry it back to their cave. The next one inline did the same, and so on. Very efficient and diligent little critters! I have noticed this week how grateful and happy I am to see them again. They are peaceful and dont attack. They just go about their task, and if I am in their pathway as I am cooking (because it is still my house), they walk around me quietly and patiently without any complaints. Wow!

Such lessons we can learn from watching nature more closely and not interfering with it, not judging it as less than or annoying, not fearing it, not trying to control it, or exert power over it or steal from it, nor destroying it. But working with it to let it support us. Making friends with nature feels really nice. 🙂

(I feel like a long haired hippie! Love them! Flower power!!  Ant power! Lol!!! )

Those are my positive thoughts for the day. I hope you have a wonderful evening. 

Peace,

Barb