Everyone is saying it is going to be a bad year for ticks. No winter freeze to knock back the population. Here’s my support for the observation, starting with one tick taped to an oyster shell fragment.

The rest of my evidence, about 15 others, represent no more than two hours worth of collecting in the tiny area around the cold frame outside the vegetable garden.

I have not heard any comments on tick habitat preference changes yet there seem to be more in the most heavily cultivated part of the yard, namely the vegetable garden, than in the meadow where their vectors, the deer, roam. So far this year, I have found only one tick in the meadow. But every time I go near the vegetable garden, I’ll spy a dozen.