Flora Landscape Design

Tomato Fruit Problems Visual guide to tomato fruit problems

whatever your great gma told u forget it. No matches. No nail polish. No Vaseline. No soap on a cotton ball. All of those do the same terrible thing, they stress the tick out, and a stressed tick empties its gut back into the bite before letting go. Which, if you think about what that actually means for a second, is literally how Lyme and the rest get transmitted so you’re not speeding up its exit. You’re making it throw up into you.
Fine-tipped tweezers. Grip right where the mouthparts enter the skin, not the body, the head. Pull straight up, steady, no twisting, no jerking. It’ll feel like it’s resisting because it is, the mouthparts are barbed. Just keep the pressure on and it lets go in a few seconds. If a piece breaks off in the skin, leave it alone. Your body pushes splinters out. Digging around with a needle does more damage then the fragment ever would.
Clean it with alcohol or soap. Wash your hands.
Now here’s the part most people skip: don’t flush the tick.
Tape it to an index card. Clear packing tape right over the body, write the date and where on your body it was, and stick the card in a drawer. If you come down with anything weird in the next 30 days, rash, fever, joint pain, that flu-that-isn’t-flu feeling, that tick goes with you to the doctor. Some labs will test the tick itself, which is faster and often more reliable than waiting for antibodies to show up in your own blood. A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you.
The other thing worth saying out loud: if the tick was engorged when you pulled it, and you can’t swear it was off your body within 24 hours, call your doctor that same day. Don’t wait for a rash. Fewer than three out of four Lyme cases even produce the classic bullseye. A single preventive dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of a deer tick bite cuts the Lyme odds way down, and most docs in tick country will write that prescription without giving you a hard time, especially if you walk in with the tick taped to a card and a clear timeline.”
*****THIS DOSE OF ANTIBIOTICS CAN BE GIVEN TO YOU BY GOING TO THE PHARMACIST*******
NO DOCTOR REQUIRED*******

We do quality long lasting retaining walls using landscape block of all types, recycled plastic landscaping timbers or dry stacked stone to fit your garden needs. Over 25 years experience.

Avoid all toxic chemicals for your best health! No toxic lawns! No toxic agriculture! No toxic petrochemicals!

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A majority of the top pesticide-using counties in the U.S. have cancer rates above the national average.

For years, pesticide users have claimed agrichemicals have caused cancer, along with other health complications. Courts have agreed, ruling against pesticide manufacturers multiple times.

Several scientific studies have also found links between cancer and pesticides, which can drift through the air or run off into nearby rivers and streams.

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As of March 2026, if you live in Arlington, Massachusetts and you fire up a gas-powered leaf blower, you're breaking the law. For both residents and the landscaping crews that serve them, those machines are permanently banned — and the reasons why should make every other city in America ask why they haven't done the same.
This might sound like a minor local ordinance. It isn't. Gas-powered leaf blowers are among the most polluting small engines still in widespread residential use in the United States. A single gas leaf blower running for one hour can emit as much smog-forming pollution as driving a car for over 1,000 miles. They emit hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and fine particulate matter directly at ground level, in residential neighborhoods, often operated by landscaping workers who spend hours a day breathing what those machines exhaust.
That's the air quality argument, and it's serious enough on its own.
But there's an ecological argument sitting right behind it that doesn't get talked about nearly enough.
Those leaf blowers aren't just moving air and noise through your neighborhood. They're destroying one of the most important and overlooked habitat elements in any suburban ecosystem: the leaf litter layer. The leaves that fall from your trees in autumn are not yard waste. They are habitat. Hundreds of species of moths and butterflies overwinter as pupae in fallen leaves. Ground beetles, fireflies, and beneficial insects shelter in the damp layer beneath them. Salamanders, toads, and small mammals use deep leaf accumulations for protection through the coldest months. Birds forage through leaf litter constantly for the invertebrates living inside it.
When a gas leaf blower clears a yard down to bare soil and blows everything to the curb, it doesn't just tidy up the yard. It erases the winter habitat for an enormous range of creatures that live in and around your neighborhood. Then the debris gets bagged, trucked away, and processed — removing the nutrients that would have fed the soil if the leaves had simply been left where they fell.
Arlington's ban forces a different approach. Rake it. Leave it. Mow over it to chop it into smaller pieces that decompose faster if you need it tidier. Let it stay under the shrubs and in the garden beds where it already fell.
The man in this photo is doing exactly what Arlington is now asking everyone to do. Low-tech, quiet, and as it turns out, far better for every living thing that shares his neighborhood.

Bluestone Perennials and Wilson Brothers Nursery are 2 of our favored mail order nurseries. See if you can pick out just one favorite echinacea/conflower from their 57 different varieties at Bluestone?

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Echinacea / Coneflower | Bluestone Perennials It's hard to imagine a sunny perennial border without Echinacea! Easy to grow in almost any sunny spot, our Coneflowers include well-known classics as well as some of the newest and most exciting advances in the field. Butterflies love the flowers, birds love the seeds, and we love the generous long...