permaculture

[yarrow@sfo.com]

At 9:34 AM -0500 8/1/07, mIEKAL aND wrote:
> ...invite any of you with brilliant or crackpot ideas about solutions to
> join the discussion.

Have you tried "talking" to the ants about boundaries? I'm serious.

Some years (decades) ago I was living in an apartment where I saw one 
cockroach. I'd been reading J. Allen Boone's _Kinship with all life_ 
and Michael Roads's book about how he was able to garden in 
kangaroo/wallaby country. The previous owner could not have a garden, 
even behind a fence, because the critters would jump over and help 
themselves. Basically, he talked to the critters and told them that 
the garden inside the fence was his; they could have anything outside 
the fence, and he'd leave them alone; but if they ate anything inside 
the fence, he'd hunt them down. Then when he sold the property, he 
told the new owner about his "arrangement." The new owner thought he 
was bonkers, and was not able to have a garden because of predation.

So I tried "talking to" the cockroach: don't let me see you or any of 
your relatives, I said, and I won't bother you; if I do see you or 
yours in numbers or on a regular basis, I'll hunt you down. It 
worked! I didn't see another one until the week I was moving out.