Before you kill yourself, you can come over and put me out of my misery. I thought I had Lyme, but that test came back negative. Whatever I have, has made it almost impossible to walk for the last six weeks, so I haven't been out in the garden much. When I have been out, I've been shocked at how much has been eaten. I didn't mind a few nibbles now and then, but this is wholesale carnage in certain areas. This is after I almost ran over a very young fawn with the garden tractor this spring and made it run off, hopefully for good. (this is for the people who worry about mowing chipmunks) A fence is definitely in our future, but I really don't see how to only enclose the garden in a manner that doesn't look like a fortress. I'm also not sure I've really got enough room between my gardens and my neighbor's property.

I'm sorry that the link I provided doesn't take credit cards - I suggest Googling for the item and finding another vendor that does if you don't have a Paypal account. May I offer another perspective on the Lyme Disease crisis? I know that many people really feel that a diagnosis of Lyme is a devastating, life-altering, health issue. I don't know them so I can't dispute their beliefs or health status, but I can state that I have had Lyme and been treated for it (twice) with a course of oral doxycycline, both times successfully and I do not have any long-term issues. My poor DH had neurological Lyme (positive spinal tap and Bell's palsy) and he was also successfully treated without long-term consequences, though in his case it required a PIC line and 30 days of very expensive IV antibiotics. In my rural, farming neighborhood, nearly everybody has had Lyme, at least once. We live in the upper Hudson Valley in a Lyme "hotspot". I find feeding ticks on me at least dozen or more times each year, despite fairly rigorous anti-tick behavioral precautions. (I use no sprays or insecticides on either myself or clothing.) I do keep doxy on hand to take prophylactically (single 200 mg dose) if I find a tick I don't know, for certain, has only been on me for a few hours. (That strategy has always worked well until the advent of Anaplasmosis which can be transmitted much earlier on. It is unknown how much time is needed for Anaplasmosis, unlike Lyme which needs a bite of 18-24 hours duration. In the case of the bite where I got Anaplasmosis, the tick could only have been on me less than 6 hours, and probably only biting me a good deal fewer hours.) If you live in a tick area you might consider discussing post-bite prevention antibiotics with your MD. (And as a side note unlike some drugs which can lose potency over time, doxy both loses potency and becomes toxic. So, please, don't use old doxycycline, ever.) Since I expect to encounter ticks, daily, I only rarely discover a tick that could possibly have been on me more than a few hours. (Example 21 bites last year, but only a single instance when I didn't know for sure that there was no way it could have been on more than 6 hours. And even though I took the preventive doxy for it, it was not a matter of having missed one after being out, just a failure to do a tick check prior to going out for the day.) Which brings me to my most important strategy suggestion: If you live in a tick area, or plan to go to one: do a thorough tick check BEFORE (or daily in the am in my case where I live in tick-hell) you go out. This gives you a tick-free starting point to age any subsequent bite. I also change out of my outdoor clothes after being in the woods or gardening as soon as I come inside. I never sit on the couch, or a bed, or on a rug in tick-exposed clothes - in fact I won't even sit down, except in the bathroom, in tick-exposed clothes. I wear tall boots (Wellies) for much of the year. I have separate outdoor coats for going out into tick areas and going to the grocery store. I routinely tuck all my layers in carefully: undervest into panties, turtleneck (with cuffs!) into pants, shirt into trousers, etc. I find only very thick socks will stop tiny nymph ticks, so I don't bother much tucking pant legs into socks. Working in my woodlot, I wear Carhardt bib overalls with slightly over-long legs that slop over my shoes. I never, ever, wear shorts, or sandals, or a skirt in a tick area unless I am prepared to be there for only a few minutes and then go in and strip down for a full tick check. My late Mother who was an ornithologist (wildlife biologist who specializes in birds), made for herself one-piece, zip-front overalls because she worked in very tick-infested areas of the world (with a whole different set of virulent tick-borne diseases.) I've been thinking of digging out her patterns and seeing if I can make myself some lightweight ones for summer this year as I anticipate being even more exposed than usual. I had to give up one of my most-cherished daily activities: walking out in the early morning with my cup of OJ to see what had come up overnight in my garden because I usually did this in my long nightgown. Ticks just adore hopping on to flannel and then hiding in the seams only to come crawling out the next night in my bed! Notwithstanding my fairly elaborate anti-tick strategies, I want to point out that a tick bite, even a diagnosis of Lyme disease, is not necessarily an enormous health crisis. True, some people seem to find themselves engaged in protracted issues, but most people do not. There is a substantial, and thriving, cottage industry promoting long-term Lyme disease problems. Ordinary, straight forward, evidence-based, medical care in most cases is more than sufficient. Don't assume that just because you've heard of Lyme horror stories that long-term problems will inevitably happen to you. And in the case of Anaplasmosis, what I am recovering from just now, there is NO known case of long-term, or chronic, infections. In researching it after I got out of the hospital, I found many of the so-called "Lyme-Aware" websites lumping all tick-borne diseases into the chronic-crisis viewpoint. But deep research into the medical literature at a medical library refutes this. One person who I encountered recently in my effort to get the word out about the presence of Anaplasmosis (someone really promoting the whole chronic-Lyme thing) told me that my high post-disease Anaplasmosis antibody level was "proof" of the disease remained lurking, insufficiently treated, in my body. Um, no, the antibodies show my own system's response to the infection and its state of being able, now, to better defend against it in the future. This is how vaccines work! I suggest taking a good deal of the chronic Lyme online information with a healthy dose of skepticism. Your own primary care doc can take care of you quite well in the case of Lyme. You don't necessarily need to be treated by a so-called Lyme-Literate physician. Do daily tick checks (at least 2X day); decide on some family strategies for minimizing the risk of bringing ticks in on clothing to drop off in the house; consider getting a script for prophylactic doxycycline for tick bites of unknown length; put Frontline on your pets if they go out; get any tick off completely and promptly and without squashing it while doing so; clean the bite with hydrogen peroxide or Betadine; lay in a supply of Benadryl topical cream if you, like me, get very itchy on the third day after a bite; take the 14 or more likely, 30-day, course of treatment if you develop any a tick-borne illness and don't make yourself too crazy over the highly-promoted, but remote, potential of long-term illness. It's not inevitable, nor even, likely. Please note: I am not saying that some people don't develop long-term illness from tick-bites, just pointing out that there is considerable hype, and a lot of misinformation, out there related to Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. I urge you to keep in mind that most people do not have any serious problems. And I really don't want to dispute Alisande, someone who I respect a great deal. But I don't agree that the treatment protocols are confused. In the case of Lyme and Anaplasmosis, (the only two I have personal experience with)they are pretty straight forward. When my husband was diagnosed with neurological Lyme (a stage worse than "simple" Lyme), I checked out various so-called Lyme-Literate medical practices. Some were so obviously doing "wallet-biopsies" on prospective patients that my alarm bells went off. As Alisande says most won't take conventional insurance or Medicare, require significant up-front cash payments and there's substantial uncertainty whether their treatments are any more effective than standard care. We opted for standard care and even at that advanced stage, it was a complete cure for him. What is very effective against the risk of of all tick-borne diseases is: personal vigilance (daily, careful tick checks); prophylaxis of some bites; and recognition and prompt treatment of any illness. In the case of three of the four possible tick-borne diseases in the NE (Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Erlichiosis and Babeseosis) doxycyline treatments of varying lengths are the cure for the early-stage disease. Only Babesiosis requires different antibiotic regimen. HTH, L.

Thanks again everyone for all of your advice! Nancy in mich, it sounds like we are on the same page as far as how we think about vets! I am now on my 8th vet in 15 years. Previous vets cost me dearly in dollars, time and frustration. Most due to misdiagnosis. Because of early experience with this, red flags go up when ever vet says something about disease and medications. Fortunately, I now have a vet that I truly love. Plus, I know of many others who feel the same way. I only wish I had found her years ago. Her points are always well made, I may not always agree with them, but they are well made. She operates on the premise is prevention. If there is a chance that the animal could get something (such as Lyme) she insists on the dog getting a Lyme disease shot. My previous vet had the opinion that if the dog got Lyme, it was easily diagnosed and treated, so he did not give the shot. Vet is truly looking out for the well being of my three dogs. I have told her of my previous experience, so she knows very well how I feel about this. I have considered brewers yeast, but have not had experience with it. I will make a trip to the holistic pet shop I use to see what they have/suggest. Thanks again for all of your advice!!! SG

I just finished The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, I enjoyed it. I finished All The Way To The Tigers by Mary Morris today, it was a great glimpse into India and a woman's quest to see tigers in their natural habitat after a debilitating accident. A friend recommended Scythe by Neal Shusterman that was ok, I am not really into science fiction. I also listened twice to the audible book Thicker Than Water by Tyler Schultz the whistleblower of the Theranos scandal. It was fabulous. I am now reading Pico Iyer's, The Lady and The Monk. Has anyone here read Pico Iyer? He is an amazing writer, poetic in a realistic relatable way. I am enjoying seeing Kyoto through his descriptions. This has been been my August reading. I also started The Island of The Sea of Women by Lisa See. I put it down halfway through, not for me. Lisa See is one of my favorite authors, but I did not enjoy this book.