Stress Relief via Big Greenhouse 3 31 2020

With all the tremendous stress in everyone's lives,wanted to send along my recipe for stress relief-getting back to nature via gardening and working in the greenhouse.My older son and I recently set up very nice 10 by 20 greenhouse with extra-wide entry and exit doors and he has plenty of egg-laying hens in two very spacious coops and had a friend come over from SShore,wanting to pick up few dozen farm fresh eggs and we chatted with her and turns out she knows at least two folks who have recently died,most likely CoVid19 victims,young in age,think one was maybe 40,the other about 38 or so,neither was anywhere near elderly and debilitated but think both had some co-morbidities(renal disease,liver disease,etc)and it was hard to fathom losing folks that young and older son showed her our chicken yards,large vegetable garden and greenhouse.I made sure to keep more than 6 ft distance from her and I busted my tail working on not only moving plants from greenhouse to garden but also loaded up at least 30 4.1 gallon containers(just arrived today)plus 10 5-gallon buckets I picked up at Harbor Freight.We tried last year putting our plants directly into native soil and to our dismay,we must have had a virus in our soil(tomato mosaic virus,possibly)or a fusarium wilt,neither of which has a known remedy,other than planting in another area and we are experimenting with container gardening,results look extremely promising with about a dozen Better Boy tomato plants in various sized containers and they look incredible.The stress relief part is getting into greenhouse,checking out the incredible progress of our seeds that are now plants,some over 14 inches tall and I spent some time transplanting plenty into either the large containers or smaller pots while we get garden ready and get more containers filled with good soil.Just got 30 fine containers,have another 30 coming tomorrow and once finished,we will probably have well over 300 containers filled with lotta fine heirloom plants,exotic watermelons,squash,etc.We like getting rare and exotic seeds and once the Farmer's Markets open,older son should have more than ample goods to sell!!Awesome stress relief!!

Mandevillian

Earlier today,participated in extremely informative webinar sponsored by LAHU(Louisiana Chapter of NAHU-National Association of Health Underwriters)and there were quite a few folks on this particular webinar,including executives from Ochsner Health Plan,BCBSLA,Humana,United,Principal as well as numerous Group Health Care,Individual,Medicare Brokers and all of the carriers are doing what they can in these stress-full times.Will be sending along slide deck to Group Health Plan partner of mine and after webinar was over,I went back to greenhouse to clear my head and two things help alleviate stress-working in greenhouse and going fishing and gonna get me a good dose of both pronto.Seems like our next few weeks gonna really test the resilience of Louisiana residents as well as rest of country and really hoping and praying that Metairie doc and his wife develop vaccine quickly.Surely many investigators working non-stop on this critical endeavor and praying that vaccine gets developed before too many more months elapse.

Mandevillian,doing my best to remain as stress-free as possible

Dang Mande, that’s a heck of a farming operation you got going there in your namesake community! The seedling Pink Heirloom and Cherokee Purple tomatoes you gave me several weeks ago are thriving here in containers at my place in Abita Springs. Rest of my garden is doing amazing as well. You right, gardens are hard work, but very rewarding at harvest time. During these “work from home” times, I’ve been spending time in my cucumbers, squash, zucchini, bell pepper and tomato garden every evening! Not only good way to pass time, but also provide delicious fresh veggies for the family soon!

GB3,Thanks for the compliment,older son and I really went all-out this year and we hope to be reaping some rich rewards real soon.Did some more gardening this afternoon,after nice solo T-Funky slab trip.I would love to find one dem big ole schools of slabs but so far have only pecked away at a chunk or two each trip.Boy,it would be very nice to have a box of slabs like de biggest one today.Funny thing is I showed beast off to two gents I came across(they found nice school of sac a lait)and I was extremely courteous,staying away from where they dropped marker buoy and one stated that my chunk looked to be about 1lb and I almost asked that gent when was de last time he had his eyes examined as I have caught a few right over 1lb and this chunk was 14 inches long and vert fat,almost looked like small TripleTail!!Glad ya tomatoes are thriving-we pride ourselves in starting just about everything from seeds and we have some extremely exotic plants dat ya aint gonna find most places!!

Mandevillian