But the other day my daughter came running inside screaming, "The patio is swarming with ants!" I went out to see what was going on and I see a ton of ants making a line across the lawn and headed directly for the pomegranate tree. They were climbing up the trunk and crawling all over the leaves! By nature, I'm the "live and let live" type when it comes to insects outdoors. So I left them alone, assuming they could do no harm. But this morning I noticed that many of the tree's leaves have shriveled up and I'm afraid that ants will kill the tree or at least ruin the fruit.

Does anyone have any information that can help me?

First of all, why are the ants suddenly attacking this tree?

Can they do real damage?

If so, what is the simplest way to get them to stop and keep them off of the tree?

I prefer a natural remedy to using chemicals, but if only chemicals will help I'm willing to go that route.

So we are thinking of filling in the pond w/small red lava landscaping rock on bottom (lots of this in a garden we are redoing and I dislike it), then river rocks on top w/the fountain still bubbling up in the middle. Any suggestions on how to do this properly so that the water will not leak out, and we don't have to continue to refill the water level? Thanks for any ideas, I live in Wyoming so there is LOTS of snow in the winter and it is only used in the summer months.

Now we are also going to redo the front of the house w/a full length deck (eventually a roof over it). Have some cinder blocks, and thought about using wood decking over them w/the blocks as support. Do we need to place the blocks in sand to level? Or how should we proceed?