If you've read this blog from the start, you know my still-new-to-me home has a serious insect problem. The brown recluse sighting confirmed that.
It's been pretty under control for a while.
Till last week when I saw a trail of ant marching from the back door frame, across the wall to the kitchen counter.
Ants.
The one thing we didn't have yet.
If I were a poisoner, this would create an issue. The ants have figured out how to crawl up inside the closed door frame, then to march inside about 2 feet off the ground. No flat surface for poison.
Instead, I tried vinegar. It's supposed to mess up their pheromones.
It works ... for a bit. They get confused, because they don't know where their well planned trail was. They wander, they back up, they wander, they come up with a new path.
Darn.
And there are tons of them, so this isn't a a "kill a few and move on." The ants have got to go. They don't seem to care if there's a food. They just show up. Must I poison? Any ideas?
My husband, btw, is usually concerned about bugs' ability to bring in germs. The ants made him grin. He hasn't lost it. It turns out ants actually secrete an antibiotic. So if they are climbing in our cupboard - god forbid - they're actually making us healthier.
It's not enough to weaken my resolve. They've got to go.
Any green sure-fire tricks?

If you're like me, you've been seduced by Method's pretty bottles and simple design. But maybe you haven't picked up any of their cleaning products, reasoning that cool bottles alone do not a successful product make.
Think again. They're green. They're the kind of green where they frequently tell you what's in their products, instead of making up their own fake green certification to slap on a line they make in their Big Evil Corporation lab. I haven't been to the Method plant, but I imagine it to have tulips in it. Really. One sniff of their wood polish will have you on board, and not because of chemicals that will get you high.
Why praise Method now? They just gave their green products an extra push with a temporary store in Chicago. Yes, you have to go to Chicago. But you'll offset your carbon by buying their products and talking them up to friends, who will buy them in place of their regular bad-chemical, petroleum-based cleaning agents. Sweet, no?

I've been gone, but I'm back. I've got a lot that needs to be written about, a lot that's happened, and a lot of tips that have been sent my way.
If you're one of my merry tipsters, keep it up. Write-ups are coming. If you'd like to give me info on something green we should know about, e-mail me or comment below.
Thanks for your patience!

Saturday, when the cities north of us were suffering under the rains' wrath, we were sitting pretty. Wet, but pretty.
The Mexican Independence Day parade was still held. If that doesn't say, "We're not underwater," I don't know what does.
Then came Sunday.
I don't think it was Sunday's rain that did us in. It was all of the water from our northern neighbors, flowing angrily downstream.
So why did Will and Grundy fair so well during Saturday's rain when other people were bailing water?
Could it be that we have a little thing called fields that soak up water?
When rain hits impermeable surfaces (often 90 percent or more of cities like Chicago), it rolls into storm sewers, which lead to our rivers.
When the sewers back up, it flows to low ground.
Here, where we don't pave every single thing, some water runs to the rivers, but a lot runs to fields that can absorb it, to prairie plantings that can send the water down low into the earth and other systems built to handle the rain the earth gets.
But our system here can't handle our rain and the rain from the impermeable cities.
Now we're sandbagging and trying to avoid tragedy.

Dear Chicago,
Please plant some water-absorbing prairies. We don't want to do this anymore.
Love,
Will County

Foam soap dispenser
KitchenAid
This isn't a standard review, in that it seems you can't actually buy this product any more, except on eBay.
Consider is a suggestion for whatever brand warms your heart.

The Prairie People want you!
The hot days are over and these keepers of the woods are ready to get back to work.
And they're doing it at New Lenox Sharefest on Saturday.
The Will County Forest Preserve District's volunteers are always looking for new additions. Give it a try this Saturday during Sharefest to learn the joy of cutting brush, buckthorn and other invasive species.
If it rains, you can still do good. You'll switch over to general beatifying instead of brush cutting.
And, yes, you can bring the kids. This is a great chance to show them the value of volunteering and of our open spaces. (You'll need to stick around to supervise them, but you want to be there anyway, right?)
This week's workday is from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. Saturday at Hickory Creek Barrens, at Schoolhouse Road and U.S. 30.
Dress to work in the woods. This means long pants, socks, sturdy shoes, an outer covering for some sort for your upper body.
Please, please bring some sort of work glove. You'll want them on and there won't be enough spares to go around.
And it would be nice if you would register so there will be tools and water for all. Call Renee at (815) 722-7364 to register. If you're reading this at 8 a.m. Saturday, go anyway. Renee will have info for you.
If you want eat lunch at the preserve, pack something. Otherwise, there's supposed to be a lunch for Sharefest volunteers.
I have to work, unfortunately, so I can't be there, but I have my fingers crossed to be free for future work days.
The weather has been so nice. Ditch the trip to the gym by getting out and about in the woods. You'll breathe fresh air, stretch your legs and do a good thing for every man, woma and child in Will County.
These volunteers keep the woods and parks going as woods and parks, instead of buckthorn-choked thickets. Be one of the good guys.

I always seem to use my last check before actually realizing it's my last check.
Yes, I know there are reminders in my checkbook. I'm oblivious.
Some of you readers are scratching your heads right now and saying to yourselves, "Checks? You mean those things I used to write before I moved to the greener computerized banking?"
I'm still getting up to speed on paying some things online. Bear with me. Until then, there's going to be some paper and some fuel-consuming Post Office trucks. Sue me.
While I work to go greener, I'll at least choose a slightly less evil paper check, one that can spread some love.
Consider green checks from:
The Check Gallery Inc.: These checks are made from recycled paper and printed with veggie-based ink. But they won't make you bounce a check because the introductory offers are awesome, and the followup prices aren't bad either. You can pick checks that further your message or organization, like the National Wildlife Federation. My faves, the Earth Matters checks, have a recycling logo and tout the soy-based inks and recycled paper.
Message Products: These checks send a message by declaring your affiliation with or affinity to a given organization. It's not just lip service. The nonprofits get some of what you pay, on average about 10 percent. And these checks, too, are on recycled paper with soy-based inks. On the animal side, you can pick from animal rights groups and wildlife groups. Environmentally, you have everything from Greenpeace and Sierra Club to Civil War Preservation to Friends of the National Parks.
While I'm waiting for my order to arrive, I'll be trying to master paying bills from my bank's site instead of at various companies' sites. Then I'll use fewer checks. But when I do use them, I can feel better about it.

Cheese sticks
Horizon Organic
Another good option for your kids' lunches: Horizon Organic's cheese sticks, available in mozzarella and colby. There are individually packaged sticks in each bag, bad for packaging, good for getting your kids to eat dairy at school.
And they're really tasty.
The mozzarella sticks have 80 calories and five grams of fat each (no trans fat).
The colby has 100 calories and nine grams of fat each (no trans fat).
If you're one of those "My kids won't get fat on my watch!" moms, keep in mind that these offer up 20 percent of your needed daily calcium. Let the kids have cheese, just get them moving, too.
And take a look at the ingredient lists for these cheese sticks:
Colby ingredients: Organic pasteurized cultured milk, salt, annatto (vegetable color), microbial enzymes (non-animal, rennetless)
Mozzarella ingredients: Organic pasteurized cultured part-skim milk, salt, microbial enzymes (non-animal, rennetless).
They're not using rennet. Rennet is a substance used to turn milk into cheese. It comes from the stomachs of baby cows.
Why make cheese without rennet? Let's just say the baby cows don't just hand over their tummies and keep chewing their cud.
I could list a million good things about Horizon Organic, but I'll just sum up the general idea: Family-owned farms, organic ingredients, better-treated cows, hormone-free milk, etc. The list keeps on going. Check it out yourself at Horizon Organic's Web site.

In my last entry, I confessed that my ComEd bill was nearly triple what I used to pay. So much for being energy efficient. But that entry reminded me of something I've been meaning to get around to talking about: a new energy program.

When you make a phone call, you usually get billed based on the rate at the time you made the call.
When you buy a plane ticket, you pay the price attached to that seat at the time you buy the ticket.
But when you use electricity, you usually pay an average rate instead of paying what the rate is at the time you're using it.
Or that was true until ComEd offered its Residential Real-Time Pricing Program that lets you pay the going rate for kilowatts at the time you used them.
A reader we'll call Felicity e-mailed me with the details. (Normally, I'd do full disclosure, but we're using a pseudonym because her job could get a little ticked about her singing the praises of this program to me.)
The best part is when you can use free energy. That's right: FREE.