Cloud Storage - The Plain Facts of Going, Going, Gone

While it serves no purpose, though that raises the spectre of what would rate as proper purpose, Mavis Eggwhistle, who like all the other folk in Lambertville and  Ringoes, has not seen Bart Brassica since January, has been rifling through old photos and found this one of Bart, taken one night when Bart was either guarding his prize crop of over-sized hearts-ease or putting together a floral valentine. This latter idea is entirely Mavis's, a fancy induced by how quickly the past fuzzes up into a jigsaw of missing pieces. Right now she is starting to imagine that Bart Brassica, or even herself, might be a figment, a complex fictitious folly. Granny  Egg has advised Mavis to stop reading So Crates and start eating proper suppers.

Anti -Tea Device: The Kettle as a Dead End

A week ago I made a cup of tea. It had the unmissable taint of formic acid, the pungent signature of the ant. Undrinkable of course. I suspected a stray ant in the teapot. Cut to yesterday afternoon,  I heat the kettle for tepid water to make bread, and along with the 450ml of aqua out comes a dozen ants. Pour out the rest of the water, more ants. Refill and tip, more ants. A series of a dozen refills and each emptying delivers yet more ants. Here you can see one of the last,  washed out at rinse number 17.

Hell, an ant nest in the kettle? Is this like Jonestown for Ants? Was some errant ant leader simply suicidal. Is it an ant cult? More filling and emptying, and while the ants have gone the smell of formic acid remains.  How long had they been there, perhaps their bodies disguised as tea leaves in the teapot?
Post Script: Hunting for an antidote to that persisent formic smell, I've boiled kettle water with a chunk of lemon, twice, then followed up with water and vinegar, ( yes, same citric acid trick).The inside of the kettle is, improved, shiny eve, and the smell, well the best I can say is ameliorated.

Single Flower Theory

Camellias, easily bruised, difficult to arrange, ephemera in a flower. What's not to like? This one , gleaned on a late night walk, was well and truly over the fence, and it might have been a public service, to take it making one less slippery fallen flower underfoot on the morrow. Here it sits, a might be anemone, in this Venetian vase of black and whit glass cane.

Con-Chivances - An a Buddance

Bought for soup, the bundle of yet 

to flower budding chives, 

thrives on its release, each head 

listening for the next move.