There are many ways to get rid of fire ants. You can use a mixture of sugar and borax. Pour the mixture around the ant hills, and the ants will carry it inside the colony, killing it off. Another solution is the sugar substitute, Equal or Nutri-Sweet. These have been known to be poisonous to ants. Just pour it around the hill and you will see little any bodies laying around in a couple days. Like the others have said, if it's garden ants let them be - unless it's a huge infestation. Here is a link that might be useful: Ants In The Vegetable Garden

I just moved to the central coast of California, and there's a type of bird called a towhee that roots around in tangled bushes in my front yard. I really don't have a problem with that; but these pesky birds seem to take great delight in flipping decorative bark out of the planters and onto my driveway and into the street. I used my blower for the first time to get all the bark pieces back where they belonged, then I was gone for about one hour and returned to find an amazing amount of bark thrown back into the street and onto portions of my driveway. I might have to consider replacing the bark with rock; but is there any chemical repellant and can spray or otherwise distribute on the bushes these birds like to play in, so I can spend more time with yard maintenance other than cleaning up after these dang birds. I've never seen anything like it.

We had a long discussion about it two or three years ago. MichaelG suggested that it should and could be alternaria blight. Comparing my roses to the very few photos of alternaria available I had serious doubt that it could be anything else but botrytis. I also sent photos to NCStte univeristy that provides consultation and does lab tests for Extension Services. They came back with Botrytis. I also sent them samples but by the time they got it the samples were contaminated with something that is present on dying tissues. They ruled out alternaria - the guy who answered my emails and dent the report on the samples is an expert on alternaris, so I guess, if he rules that out, I should accept this as a fact. So still don't know the scientific answer but those roses of mine sure looked botrytis ridden to me. I also found a paper from Brazil that stated that if humidity's is over 90% for many hours, botrytis spores could survive up to 112F. Here, relatively close to the coast we have o0ver 90^% humidity and dew from early evening till mid morning.That amounts to more than 10 hours, rather more. This again leads me to believe that was botrytis I had. Baldo also said the Botrytis is a year-around problem in Hawaii.

Since this is an outer wall, I'll wager this is thermal expansion/contraction of the piping or heating elements. When I was very young, the house had a family room that had been converted from a screened porch. A loop of hydronic baseboard heat was the easiest to add to a system that had radiators elsewhere. As the heat would come on, one could hear the baseboards creaking with expansion, which would occur sequentially around the room. Sounded like some small and not especially energetic critter making the rounds. If you don't see droppings, you don't have mice. Snakes, maybe, but not mice.... ;-) Cheers