Do they look like little alligators? If so, those are ladybug larvae (no, they don't look a thing like Mom, do they?). See the photo link below, but arrangement of colors varies among ladybug varieties. Leave them be, as they eat more aphids than adults. They don't eat fruit. Otherwise, I haven't a clue. Sue

Hi, I live in Brevard, too. Just in case we're neighbors, do you ever see American White Shepherds out-n-about, along with a funny-looking Chihuahua? That's us, lol. Don't be afraid to come over and say hi, we're friendly. I wonder if those tiny little dark colored flies are fungus-gnats, and/or possibly fruit flies...and are the caterpillars tiny, too, kinda crawling around in the potting mix? If so, those might be the tiny little dark colored fly's offspring. We've been non-scientifically experimenting ---if you live in our neighborhood, you'll see the house with some coonties in the front yard. One of the coonties is singled out with a head-net (the kind that people wear over their heads and it covers face, ears and neck with a draw-string cinched up to help protect from biting bugs and stinging bees). Well that coontie with the head-net on it is filled with Ladybugs...So I was wondering if a Ladybug filled netting might work for your container gardening on your deck. Btw, nice decking! Also, we've been using 'used coffee grounds' on all our plants, whether potted or planted out for landscaping (see link below for gist), and I think it's been working, even on those those tiny fly gnat thingies, which I think makes the soil or potting mix somehow unappealing to them! Um, just in case it needs to be said, I am not an expert. If you live anywhere near Emerald Island Nursery, Rockledge Gardens, or Sun Harbor Nursery, all are super nice, very helpful, and supply organic remedies. Good luck to you, and very best wishes! Here is a link that might be useful: Coffee grounds

To all who have wished me a speedy recovery: Thank You! I am feeling steadily better (1 month out), and expect to be back to full strength shortly. @Alisande, If you think you may have babeseosis at the moment, then insist on being tested. Same with anaplasmosis, both are less-difficult than Lyme to diagnose from blood smears, I believe. (The issue with the blood supply, aside from the traditional head-in-the-sand attitude of the blood industry, and of course the cost, is that there is no rapid-enough test for babeseosis -or possibly the other tick-borne diseases -to work with the need for fresh blood.) But as I mentioned, anaplasmosis has distinct, characteristic, changes in routine blood work that are almost diagnostic. I can check next time I am in the medical library if there are specific changes in the case of babeseosis. I may have that info for erlichiosis, if you'd like to know it. Anaplasmosis has distinctive mullberry shaped artifacts (morullae) in the disease-specific blood smears (as does erlichiosis, I believe). Babeseosis is different but unless you, like I, have had malaria it's pretty distinctive in the blood test for it. The tests aren't inexpensive (the unadjusted street price for them is $500-$1,000 -each- but my insurance company whacked both of them down considerably. Since you're on Medicare, you'd only pay a percentage of the CMS-negotiated cost which is likely to be as aggressively moderated as that of my own insurance company's contractual rate. Since all three are bacterial, not spirochete, -caused it doesn't require the complex analysis of PCR bands that Lyme does. But frankly if I was on my second continuous month of Lyme I would have pretty awful constitutional symptoms from that lengthy treatment alone. I can barely make it out the 30 days of a single course before I have disturbed sleep, night sweats, muscle aches and pains, etc. Part of my fierceness about discovering ticks early is to avoid the need for the lengthy course of anti-Lyme doxy. Since doxy won't really do anything for babeseosis - and other drugs will - why keep taking what may be the wrong cure? I don't think you would experience symptoms from babeseosis or anaplasmosis (or even Lyme) infection before locating the tick. The incubation time needed to get sick from a still-attached tick would have resulted in a deer tick as big as a green pea, a nasty pearly-grey tight blob. It's hard to imagine you wouldn't have noticed it well before getting sick if it was still attached. Don't you itch like mad when you have a tick attached for more than a few hours, not to mention days? I'd be wild! BTW, the tick-hours-of-bite measurement has a built in problem: the aging relies on analysis of stomach digestive contents. But that assumes, and it is not always true, that the bite the tick was discovered making is the only bite, not a second one. Also you mentioned you squashed the critter in removing it. You might want to consider beginning more intensive searches for ticks on your body twice a day in order to not miss one. I have hair so long I can sit on it so I do realize it can be hard to check your scalp and hair. I have also found attached ticks under my breasts, in my belly button, on various unmentionable parts of my bottom, and even larval ones between my toes and fingers. I usually keep my long hair tied up in pigtail outdoors. I tuck the pigtail down the back of my shirt to minimize the likelihood of ticks getting caught in my hair. Of course I always have a hat on outside for sun protection, so my head and scalp are less-common tick areas. I do tick-checks at least twice every day of the year, unless I am away from home overnight in the city. It's just like brushing your teeth. I'm not convinced that Lyme "lurks in your body" but given that it is caused by spirochete I suppose it's possible. (Another spirochete-caused illness, syphillis, has a proven habit of lingering on and re-occurring, often despite treatment.) I know, for certain, that I have had Lyme (from clearly positive blood tests), been treated successfuly and subsequently had lengthy periods of profound physiological, and mental stress, without Lyme popping back up and adding to the problems. And I still have one band for Lyme on the latest PCR, which indicates an old, resolved infection, so there's no question it's still visible in my blood, but not thankfully making a pest of itself. I also still have serological evidence of malaria in my blood and I haven't had any illness from it in more than fifty years! But the bacterial diseases (anaplasmosis, babeseosis and erlichiosis) seem extremely unlikely lurkers and later-pouncers, especially if treated. What I definitely think they can do, however, is damage other organs and systems resulting in consequential, long-term problems (like the poor fellow described above who lost his spleen as a result of a babeseosis infection.) Your description of high fevers, muscle aches and pains, etc., sound much more like anaplasmosis than Lyme. Did you have any "regular" blood tests done at the time? The average time from bite to onset of symptoms with anaplasmosis is 8 days. I could look that time up for erlichiosis and babseosis, if needed. I don't know enough about Fibro, but aren't night sweats and aches and pains part of that, too? You may not need to go to any doctor more specialized than your primary care doc to check for the bacterial tick-borne illnesses. And then you'll be able to know, and treat, any that are there. I didn't get any hint that the tests for them lead to confusing, or contradictory results, as I know the Lyme test can, because it is a different, and more complicated test.. If you test negative for them, including having normal routine blood results, you can cross them off your list of worries and look elsewhere. (And get off the wretched doxy!) HTH, L.

Logic you have succeeded in convincing me and here is why. "Attorney Noah Pusey said his clients tried to back out of the deal before closing but were told they'd lose their $5,000 deposit." Buyers who need a mortgage routinely sign a contract with a financing contingency, among other contingencies. If all of the other contingencies are satisfied the only way the buyer can get out of the contract and get his deposit back is if the buyer cannot get financing. Not if the buyer cannot get financing that makes sense to him, but only if the buyer cannot get financing of any kind. If the mortgage company did to others what it tried to do to me on the day of settlement, put a monkey wrench into the financing I chose, I wonder if I would have been obligated to continue with a restructured loan on a moment's notice or lose my deposit. I guess so. Luckily we had gone through our local bank and we found out later the monkey wrench was thrown by Countrywide, to whom we were sold almost immediately we found out afterwards. Luckily my hometown banker found a way to counfound the the ridiculous demand Countrywide had come up with at the last minute. Of course none of this was explained to me at the time. I was just furious with her that the matter did not come up until the day of closing and in fact the sellers, who went to the table earlier in the day, were the ones who called me and said there was a problem. I was one of those that did not realize or understand that my local bank was going to sell my mortgage. It was certainly never brought up during my conversations with my local banker.