I do believe that we can very strongly enhance moods and mitigate moods we want to get rid of. I thought I said that pretty clearly, but a lot of people seem to think I said that we can't affect moods at all. What I did try to say and what I do believe, is that we can not create a mood from scratch. Maro, if you relax through gardening, I would suggest that the physical motion, sense of accomplishement, or the distraction relaxes you from your description. That is much different than having someone enter a garden and having their mood changed by what they experience by being in it. It is, however, creating a place through design that gives you an activity which you do with the purpose of gaining a certain experience. Anyone remember the three things that I mentioned were taught to me - activity, experience, requirement by a very brilliant professor (James Kuska). It took him a half year of beating us over the head with it until only some of us got it. Activity = gardening Desired Experience = relaxation Requirement = x SF of garden space, full sun for most of the day,... Relaxation is the mitigation of the stress. In order to relax in a garden you need to have brought stress to the garden in the first place, I think. (dark vs. light, Eric) If the cops chase the violent criminal through a well designed peace garden, does he give up? If you are sad and blue and sit in a beautiful colorful quiet garden that feels private and to yourself, do you feel better? Of course. Are you completely elated and turned around completely by it? I don't think so. The design enhanced a littlebit of your good feelings and reduced some of the bad. It did not create a mood from scratch. Planning activities that you already know evoke certain feelings are a great place to start. Don't dismiss the actions of looking, smelling, hearing, ... as not being activities. Some activities are very passive, but they are important activities. The physical landscape that you build will effect the experiences that people get out of whatever activity they do. Predefining what that experience should be certainly frames what the physical landscape should be like to attain that experience. Does that make sense to anyone, but me?

I wouldn't describe it as a garden funk exactly, more a lack of motivation & the absence of anticipation & excitement I've normally felt in prior years when Spring approached. The emergence of some long-awaited perennials was gratifying this past week but didn't give the surge of excitement I've typically felt in previous years. The only thing I'm in a buying mood for is Hakonechloa/Japanese forest grass. A nearby nursery has a variegated form for sale and promised to save me a gallon pot until it's warm enough for me to plant it in my north-facing shade bed. I've tried to buy it in the Spring for several years running only to find it sold out wherever I shopped. I grew enough perennials, trees & shrubs from seed via winter sowing between 2010 & 2012 to fill all my garden beds and may, with very few exceptions, never buy from a nursery again. The ornamental dogwoods I grew from seed the first year have grown taller than I am already--I gave my neighbors two that are currently 6 ft. tall. All my butterfly bushes were grown from seed that another gardener sent me because I was (at the time) a newbie winter sower. They're all amazing plants; maybe not hybrid cultivars but healthy, thriving all the same & doing what they're meant to do. Garden clean-up has just begun but I'm gradually chipping away at it. I regret it's happening so late this year--I feel like us gardeners (okay, other folks too I suppose) have been cheated out of six or more weeks of nice weather thanks to the l-o-n-g, l-o-n-g winter. Everyone suffers when this happens but I think gardeners in particular feel the pain of those lost weeks when garden beds normally awaken. It's time lost neither our gardens (or we) will ever get back. I can sympathize with your garden funk Kevin. Funny thing about a garden, though. Eventually it begins to lift your spirit out of the mud and into the sun.

With just me and my husband I know it can be really hard to get just two peoples worth of anything even accounting for left overs. Cookies? The recipe makes 48. Halved is still 24. If I quarter a recipe (and who can quarter an egg?) then we STILL have 12 cookies! At some point I have to stop eating the cookies. I give away all the food I can now as soon as I make it. I make the cookies and prepare office/friend/neighbor packages immediately because it's that, eat them all and become rhino like in size, or throw them away. Just recently, last week I think, we had chili and toritlla chips for dinner. One can of chilli with the nachos as spoons. The 14 ounze bag, the smallest tortilla chips we could find, had two good size servings removed and I immediately threw the rest away. Having small families seem to make it much harder to eat what you buy and still be healthy. Things just aren't sized to feed fewer people. Cakes have what? nine billion pieces? We've resorted to buying those 8 dollar pieces of cake at the grocery store in an attempt to defend our own health. But is it better to throw out the more packaging of the cake slice then to throw out the cake pieces? Along with our small fridges we got small ovens at 24". I can only cook small turkeys, small chickens, 150 cookies at a time, etc. I got rid of every full size cassarole dish and got more small ones. That way I can make a 6 person dish most of the time and do two of them if I ever need to feed 6. Just recently I went on a rampage and got rid of all my plates that were above a certain size and am looking for smaller ones. I am downsizing my diet! Lol. Is it easier with a big family because some of those items like cookies, pies, bread and chips etc seem more reasonably sized? Actively balanceing how much enters the house, the bodies in the house, the environment. It's a real bear.

Elmer, neither of my parents lived long enough to be covered by Medicare. My mother was 53 and my father was 56 when they died 33 days apart in 1970. My husbands parents both had died before we met very early in 1981 (his mother in 1969 and his father in 1980). I really had no one to talk to about it who had personal experience with it (I am more than a year older than my husband). I have had plenty of experience being given information by others (people who are paid to know the facts) that I then relied on, only to find out too late that they were wrong and didn't know what they were talking about. Some of these errors in trust ended up costing me financially. Therefore, when it came time to think about signing up for Medicare, I didn't want to trust anyone else for the information. I wanted to read and learn for myself, to have a full understanding of how things really work when it comes to Medicare. I've said plenty of times before, and I'll say it again now, that I know my husband and I are incredibly lucky to be State of California retirees. There are many health insurance plans from which to choose when you are an active employee, and when you retire, you keep the same plan unless you choose to change to a different plan. (And you can change every year during Open Enrollment, if you so desire.) You can retire from State service at the age of 55 (earlier if you are disabled), but when you turn 65 you must sign up for Medicare unless you are covered by your still-employed spouse's health care plan. In my case, my husband was still actively employed when I turned 65, so I was exempted from the Medicare requirement. However, knowing now what I didn't know then, I should have chosen to switch to Medicare immediately because the State's monthly contribution to health insurance more than covers the monthly premium for Medicare and our Medicare Supplement policy, but didn't fully cover the monthly premium for our PERSCare Anthem Blue Cross PPO policy. We were paying $527.74 out of pocket (well, a payroll deduction from my husband's monthly pay), which was over and above the $1,125 the State contributed each month, as well as having a yearly deductible (which is waived for preventative care), and a $20 copay for office visits. Now, we pay NOTHING. (Well, that's not quite correct -- we do have to pay the IRMAA fee for the prescription drug coverage [which is part of our Supplement policy], but that's because our income is over the threshold amount for paying just the regular premium. Although the State reimburses us for the monthly IRMAA for Medicare Part B, the law doesn't allow for reimbursement of the IRMAA for Part D. But the Part D IRMAA is less than $30 for the two of us.) My husband retired a year and a half after I did, but he didn't turn 65 for another year. But, as soon as he retired, I had to sign up for Medicare because I lost the "coverage by a still-employed spouse" exemption. Our PERSCare Anthem Blue Cross PPO policy became our Medicare Supplement policy when we started coverage with Medicare. One thing that is admittedly odd is that the State pays more towards retiree health benefits than it does for active employee health benefits. But, since we're retired, that's ok by me. :-) The State contributes $1,349 each month. Our PERSCare Anthem Blue Cross PPO Medicare Supplement Policy is $779.52 for the two of us, leaving $345.48 extra. Out of that extra, the State reimburses us for our Medicare Part B premiums and the Medicare Part B IRMAA fees. There is still some $ left over, but the State keeps that. Our Supplement policy covers the deductibles for Medicare Part A and Part B, and it pays the 20% of the allowed fees that Medicare doesn't pay. We do not pay a copay for office visits. Since I have been on Medicare, the ONLY thing medically related for which I have had to pay anything at all has been prescription medicine - and that's a minimal amount because of our Supplement plan. (One generic med that I used to pay $5 for now costs me $0.58.) ANYWAY, folks need to know the truth about how Medicare works and what doctors can and can't charge you (over and above what Medicare pays), so they can make an intelligent, informed choice about (1) whether or not to get a Supplement plan and (2), if so, which plan to choose. Dr. Kahan's book has a great full-page chart showing the various supplemental plans and what they do and don't cover. By the way, Medicare Supplement plans (which are also called Medigap plans) all have to meet specific criteria and they are standardized, Different insurance companies may charge different premiums, but all "Plan A" plans have to cover the same stuff at the same rate, all "Plan K" plans have to cover the same stuff at the same rate, etc. "Plan F" plans are considered to be the "Cadillac" (or in my case, the "Lexus") plans because they cover virtually everything. That's what our PERSCare plan is. Oh, that limiting fee that I mentioned in an earlier post -- the fee over and above what Medicare pays to a nonparticipating provider -- is covered by our Supplement policy.