"Team"

Every time Bro4 comes over, he says, "You should get rid of the weeds in your driveway.  They'll crack the cement."  My typical response is some variation of "I'll get to it".  Lately, I've told him about my friend's eco-friendly method of killing weeds with bleach, which prompts Bro to say, "Just use Round Up".  This conversation is as predictable as the sun rising in the morning and setting every evening.  Even if he doesn't say it out loud, I know he's thinking about telling me to get rid of the weeds until I cave to the inevitable and get rid of them. 

If you're interested in the bleach method, saturate the leaves instead of the base of the plant.  Use a sprayer with only plastic parts (no metal).  Give it a day or two and the plants will die.  The bleach dissipates, so it's better for the environment, but it's better if you don't let your pets walk on it the first day.  I'd also recommend that you do it before the plants get too big because I still ended up scraping the dying plants with my dedicated driveway shovel, which is actually a coal shovel, but who has coal these days?  I even went the extra step and swept the drive (with the dedicated driveway broom) to get rid of the bzillions of maple helicopters.

My driveway looks lovely.  Well, it did look lovely before the winds and rain came and brought down several more bzillions of maple helicopters down.  But in that golden moment when my driveway looked suburban perfect, I noticed an ant colony swarming on my perfect cement.

Ants are pretty amazing.  They display excellent teamwork.  I resisted the urge to stomp on them and let them move house in peace.  I hope they remember my peaceful nature next time one of them wants to bite me when I'm weeding the garden.  Maybe they're trying to get back at me for burning their ancestors with a magnifying glass when I was a child?  Even then, I wasn't thrilled with murder for entertainment.  I took to burning paper and leaves instead.

I watched the swarming ants for a little bit because I found it interesting that they were passing up eggs and handing them off to each other.  The eggs (or larva?) were bigger than the ants carrying them.  Then one of the ants bit me, and I decided there were better things to do than watch ants.

I don't know if it's true though?  Perhaps watching ants is the absolute best use of my time?

Thoughts, creativity, inspiration, realizations happen in unexpected moments of quiet time, and we don't get those moments if we never slow down enough to witness our own lives because we're too busy watching tv, playing video games, or doing stuff we're "supposed to" do.  Should all of our discoveries be in childhood when we have endless time to watch ants?