On Ants and Oven Repair
Things fall apart! The door of the oven is the place where repairs are needed most often, since it can get banged every time something goes in or out. After a long winter and rainy spring, it was time. Whole pieces of it had come off, and some of the quick repairs I had done in the fall hadn't held. So I mixed up some more mud and sand and grass and made sure that both surfaces were wet enough so that, with enough pressure applied, the new mix would gel with the old. Et voilà. As you can see I wasn't going for a seamless look. Maybe some day I'll apply a full, smooth finish over the whole thing... After a day or so drying on its own under the tarp, I decided to dry it further by firing it up. And as the temperature got hotter, suddenly, they appeared. Thousands of them. (Not the best macro video, no. I leave that to the pros .) Ants came bursting out of cracks in the oven from all over. And they were evacuating their young!...