Controversial: pesticides/ants

Some people espouse the use of chemicals and pesticides in the garden, some do not. I sort of take the middle of the road approach.

I do not use any pesticides on the food that I grow. I used to use sprays on my roses but since I began planting more sturdy antique roses, and deciding that I could live with a little blackspot (a fungal leaf disease common to some rose varieties) I rarely do that either. There are the usual bugs in my garden but I take a balanced approach and it works out, some bugs get eaten by other bugs, and I have frogs, toads and lizards living in my gardens that help keep down the bug population without me having to resort to chemical use.

However

I sometimes use Roundup to spray weeds that get out of hand. AND, there is no question that I have an ARSENAL of stuff in my chemical cabinet (out in the garage) to do battle with the hated Fire Ants.

In case you have not run across them, these little horrors make giant mounds up to two feet or more across, or sometimes they are sneaky and you hardly see where they are and you are pulling some weeds and WHAM they come out by the zillions and bite. Hard. And the bite swells, and often develops in many people into a painful tiny pustule that lasts for some days.

I HATE THEM. And then of course there are the times you are shamed and embarrassed when as you are working in your garden (and the neighbors are all sitting around outside) you step in to perhaps prune a rose or somesuch and the lil varmints come streaming out and start crawling up your jeans and by the time you notice there are hundreds of them and you start dancing around trying to get them off. The neighbors are greatly entertained by this.

When this happens, my normally conservative approach to chemical use evaporates and I use whatever I can get my hands on to make them go away. They do, for a while, but always return. Horrible varmints.

What is your view on pesticides and how do you cope with garden varmints?