plants! ants!

My latest attempt at a flower box

I tend to jump into things with little forethought; getting myself out of trouble is one of my self-perceived strengths. (Long-time observers and friends, you may see it differently). When I had my original ant problem -- not to be confused with my current ant problem -- a friend mentioned that ants hate salt. Delighted to have a natural solution, I created a salt barrier near their entry point. Instead of sprinkling a little salt near them to test their reaction, I joyously dumped an entire 500 gram box of sea salt in a semicircle around my balcony door, convinced that if a little salt would deter them, a lot would scare them more. In truth, I have never been good at science. In seventh grade, I copied my middle older brother's old lab reports, because copying his answers was easier than thinking up my own.

That bit of academic dishonesty was topped by my laziness in 9th grade World History. I remember we had been assigned an article about the ''Nacirema'' people. I listened attentively before the bell as my classmates whispered, ''that's American spelled backwards!'' Clearly I hadn't read the essay, nor the textbook we'd been wading through. When it was time to take the mid-term exam, I flipped through the four pages of essay questions and began to sweat. I don't remember the questions, but I know I couldn't answer a single one. I sat for a few minutes, and wondered how it would feel to get my first F. But then I shifted from panic to action. Slowly, I crossed out my teacher's questions and wrote in my own. Thankfully I was clever enough to ask questions that I could actually answer. I worked until the bell, and confidently handed in my paper.

Back to my adulthood shenanigans: A few hours after sprinkling half a kilo of salt on my floor, I was disappointed to see ants walking up the salt mound, down the other side, and right into my living room. ''You fuckers,'' I thought, as I crunched salt crystals under my feet. I wondered why I hadn't done any research before acting on off-hand advice.

As for my current ant problem, I just bought a plant off of craigslist. The price was right (15 euros), and I'd been wanting a little greenery in my apartment. In recent months, I've killed a Gerber daisy and a white cyclamen. A while back I bought the quintessential, hardy Parisian flower box plant, the geranium, and killed that too.

Dead Gerber daisy

I was hopeful about this new plant. I shlepped it home and beamed at its twisting beauty. Noticing the soil was dry, I watered it, then went to meet a friend.

You might notice that I have started keeping eggs on the counter top, too.

When I got home a few hours later, I noticed an ant in my bathroom. ''I'm going to have to tell my landlord he really needs to take care of this ant problem,'' I fumed. Then I walked back into the living room and saw ants scurrying across the floor. I picked up my shoe and began splattering carcasses, hoping that the ants would become frightened upon smelling death. Yes, they were frightened and scurried under tables and out of sight. I continued slapping my shoe to the floor and admitted to myself, with sadness, that my new plant was infested with ants. ''They must have fled as soon as I watered the plant,'' I concluded.

I banished the plant to the balcony and planned to disown it the following morning. Before going to bed, I emailed my mom for advice. My mom wrote back that her mother used to take ant-infested plants outside, rinse the soil with soapy water, and re-pot them. ''Rubbish!'' I thought to myself. ''Who WASHES a plant?'' My brother's wife sent a link stating that ants are deterred by certain smells, so I placed four cinnamon sticks and a few cloves of garlic in the top of the soil. The ants stayed out of sight, but I knew they were still in the soil.

As I kept researching, I noticed that the easiest solution promoted online is to drown ants in a borax solution. Except I challenge any of you to find borax on a store shelf in France. I tripped over myself in the hardware store when trying to request it. ''Bonjour Madame. Auriez-vous du borax. Bo--rahx,'' I tried. ''I mean, in English we call it borax. I don't know what you call it here. Acide borique?'' When the saleswoman asked what it was like, I could only add, ''it's a white powder.''

''No, we don't have that,'' she answered confidently. I checked with someone in the paint department, and someone else in the gardening department. No one knew about borax, and no one had any suggestions for an alternative.

We're now onto day 2 of this endeavor. This morning I followed my grandmother's advice. I immersed the flower pot in soapy water, and later noticed the ants crawling up the stalk and onto the leaves. Disheartened, I went back to the Internet. ''What am I doing wrong?'' I wondered. And then I read more carefully: apparently you need hot, soapy water to kill ants. So now I've doused the entire plant with hot soapy water and have re-immersed the pot in a bucket full of more hot, soapy water. If nothing else, I'll have the cleanest garlic cloves in town.

I've been wanting to start an herb garden for a while, but I'm suddenly beginning to reconsider the idea. If you strip me of my powers of persuasion, if you take away my ability to finagle, it seems I may not encounter success. On the other hand, I'm slow to feel defeated, so who knows what I'll be up to next.