dekprizm: You may be seeing winter moth caterpillars. The UMass Extension Landscape Message April 20, 2012 is just out and has these recommendations: "For infested plants with opened or opening buds, a spray of Bacillus thuringiensis Kurstaki (B.t.K.) can be quite effective. However, B.t. needs to be ingested by the caterpillars to be effective and if the foliage is not yet near to being fully expanded, then wait for that to happen. Otherwise, the new foliage material that appears over the next several days, after spraying B.t., will not be covered with B.t. thus allowing the caterpillars more leaf surface to damage before ingesting the pesticide. An application of a product that contains Spinosad as the active ingredient should provide excellent results at this time or in the coming weeks during the caterpillar feeding stage. Many pyrethroid insecticides are labeled for caterpillars as well. Avoid spraying apples and crabapples with Spinosad or pyrethroid products if they are in bloom. Pyrethroids can be very harsh on pollinators, such as bees. Spinosad products are toxic to bees at the time of application but this threat diminishes significantly 24 hours after application." It sounds like B.t. is the safest, if your conditions are right. If you have to use Spinosad or pyrethroids, then it's important to apply the product very early or very late in the day when bees, etc. are not active. I'm just repeating what I'm reading here - I haven't used any of these products (I haven't had serious infestations here). I'm sure others here with more experience will respond. Claire

UMass Extension Landscape Message April 29, 2011 "Winter Moth (WM) eggs hatched a couple of weeks ago and host plants with swelling buds were attacked by the tiny caterpillars wriggling into the expanding new foliage and flowers. Norway maples, blueberry and others are common hosts at this time for winter moth caterpillars. Oaks are another preferred host but generally break bud later than maples and thus preclude the tiny larvae from entering the buds. Cool weather and other factors that delay bud opening can result in much damage to leaf and flower buds, especially when many larvae exist per bud. Some areas of Rhode Island have reported as many as 12 caterpillars per bud in some plants within the past week. Overall, winter moth is expected to have scattered areas of outbreak numbers this year in eastern MA. Once buds have expanded sufficiently a spray with Bacillus thuringiensis (Kurstaki) or one that contains Spinosad as the active ingredient should provide the desired levels of control. " Claire

I don't know zone alarms well, nor firefox too well, its not my normal everyday browser. But I do know that firefox will disable any 'Plug-ins, Add-ons, Extensions, etc that are incompatible with it. This does not mean ZoneAlarms is not acting as firewall. It only means that whatever plug in for some kind of added protection beyond the normal firewall rules isn't working. Might possibly be you could uninstall zone alarms completely somehow, and reinstall it completely fresh... hopefully zone alarms is smart enough it would recognize the particular plug in isn't compatible with current firefox versions and not install that plugin, but perhaps maybe a different one. I'm just guessing.. I really don't have much respect for zone alarms from years ago experiences and don't know if they have code writers that would check compatibilities now or not - but for something as popular as firefox they certainly should. This post was edited by mikie on Wed, Apr 17, 13 at 23:51

This is a great thread. We're not remodeling but building a new house, and man, can I relate to a lot of these. ...you know every lighting fixture, faucet, sink, appliance by memory because you have endlessly researched each one. you freak out your own GC because you can discuss minute details about your house/kitchen from memory down to the 1/8". you have more e-mails from your GC/subs than you do from your friends. you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat about some critical detail and then go downstairs to e-mail your GC about it right at the moment before you forget.