Guten tag mein freund Christian, Welcome to this forum. I lived in Mannheim, Germany for 3 years and traveled to Italy were my father was born. I am also back on this fig forum with many of my good fig friends, Christian, Rafed, Art, Martin, Mario, Giuseppe, Aaron and many others. All of us here have been very helpful to each other in the past years and now here again at GARDENWEB-HOUZZ in the future years. It is cold here -3 degrees F. daytime temperature Phil from Northern Ohio

You want a soil that has good drainage. I usually end up mixing up my own. Even MG's so-calle Cacti and succulent mix seems peaty to me. I guess they just want to lighten the load--so you basically seem to get peat moss. I like the brand Hyponix better to use as a starting base, you can add some coarse sand, perlite and orchid bark. Palms love water, but their roots also want oxygen so with a loose soil you can freely water especially in the growing season, and especially if you put them outside as many here do. In the summer, mine get hosed down every day.

well because it takes time to go through and remove all that junk that no one wants anyway and yes often times stuff does get left behind. If they wanted to offer that junk they could include it on a disc so you can install it if you want it but pretty much all of it is just a trail version anyway so you end up having to either buy it or remove it. I use pc decrapifier on the computers I set up to get rid of that stuff. Yes you are right you can go through the time and effort to google each one and see what it is and if you might want it then take the time to fully remove it which means installing a good removal tool. And why? you never wanted it to begin with. The pc manufacturers are making money off us anyway with our purchase but they want to make even more by putting a ton of garbage on there too. That was one of the reasons I really like the new vizio computers they don't do that. Many people get a new pc and immediately wipe the entire hard drive and do a clean reinstall of just the Operating system to be fully rid of the extra junk.

I had long heard that Chagas disease from the bite of an "Assassin Bug" is what Charles Darwin died from. But I had also been told when we were doing the bug collection project in biology in high school that "Assassin Bugs" were beneficial predatory insects (along with Praying Mantises and Dragonflies) and were told if we killed one to include in the collection it wouldn't count towards the grade. The explanation is that while the same common name is applied to both insects, they are different species. Also somewhat related and similar looking bugs are the Squash Bug (which damage/kill my squash plants) and the western conifer seed bug (which reportedly sometime will drill holes in PEX plumbing pipes) Also in reading more about Kissing Bugs, it says they transmit Chagas Disease by first biting (often near a persons mouth) and then pooping on or near the site of the bite. Ewwwww. It also stated that the particular species of Kissing Bugs that are spreading north across America are somewhat less dangerous because they typically don't poop on you after biting, (again ewww) and because its much less likely that they would have previously bitten a person or animal that carries the Chagas disease parasite, at least in locations where the bugs are newly moving into. So while it isn't a dire imminent danger, it is a new danger that I wasn't aware of, and if they are in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, surely they are in Virginia too, and even if one isn't carrying Chagas Disease, its bite often causes a serious reaction (as Dawn described above) and can even cause anaphylactic shock. Edited to add: Plus since, as of yet, there is no vaccine against nor effective treatment for Chagas Disease, it is kind of a big concern.