u/TropicalDan427

So I have western flower thrips in my veggie garden. I’m keeping their numbers low so I’m not really concerned about the plants outside. I expect to coexist with some level of thrips every summer there. Indoors however I have a zero tolerance policy for thrips. Since discovering thrips outside I have been VERY diligent and meticulous to not introduce thrips inside and more specifically inside my plant room behind a door that’s always closed as well as windows that are always closed

Currently we are not opening our windows at all and are going to replace some of our window screens with 75 mesh no thrips screening. So far at least several weeks after discovering thrips outside I have not found them or signs of them in my plant room. Granted the plants I have indoors are generally less preferable to thrips( epiphytic cacti, air plants, and sanseviera) but of course it’s still possible. I check every single plant daily for any signs of thrips, I have blue sticky traps everywhere and so far nothing has been captured in them. I put bonide in all my plant room plants as a precaution although ive heard bonide doesn’t work on a significant portion of western flower thrips populations. I have spinosad, pyrethrin, neem, tons of 99.99% rubbing alcohol(that I dilute of course), acephate, bifenthrin, insecticidal soap, citric acid, and horticultural oils on hand if needed. Outside I have deployed predatory mites, pirate bugs, and nematodes(the ants are complicating that though), because the less I have outside the less likely they are to get it.

Other precautions are:

-changing my clothing before entering my plant room

-any harvests from outside must be placed in a ziplock bag BEFORE entering the house and immediately placed in the fridge. Herbs are to be dried out via the oven

• once a week I spray a mixture of neem, soap, and rubbing alcohol on my plants

Is there anything else I can be doing to protect my indoor plants. Also if the thrips do get inside and are the type that’s resistant to imidacloprid do I have any other options for systemics? I kind of assume especially with western flower thrips that I they get to my indoor plants they will never fully go away

I’m not even entirely sure if this qualifies but it’s something that has bothered me for years.

So in the neighborhood I grew up in as a kid I made friends with the boy across the street. He was the same age as me. In hindsight I now see the signs of his controlling behavior but as 5 year old autistic boy I certainly wouldn’t have. Regardless i became good friends with him… or what I thought was good friends. Nothing “weird” actually happened until about 5th grade to early middle school. I don’t want to go into specifics but essentially coerced me into doing sexual acts on him. I didn’t want to but he kept the pressure on and even blackmailed me to do it so I eventually gave in. I would still like a complete idiot see this kid a lot because I liked hanging out with him otherwise. So because I didn’t walk away this went on for years until about 8th grade when I basically went no contact with him.

I’ve never told anybody this, not even my wife knows because she knows who this kid is(knows of him they weren’t friends) and I know if I tell her she’ll just make a big deal about it.

Anyways that’s my story I guess

Happiness lately has only been fleeting for me. Almost every single day I at least cry to myself about how things once were. I was once a kid who didn’t worry about major things. A time when my biggest issue was who I was going to sit with at lunch or what I had to do for homework that night. Yeah there were bad times of course but I have never felt anything like what I’m feeling now. I worry and I worry a lot. I worry about my health, I worry about the state of the world, what’s going on in my own country. I worry about everything now to an almost existential level and it makes me sad. Ever since the 2020s these feelings have only accelerated. There’s things feeling that each passing year is worse than the last. While I have a wife who loves me and I love deeply I don’t feel like I belong in the current decade. I feel like I belong back in the 2000s or even the 2010s. I was happy, I didn’t worry. I just want to go back. My parents were younger, both my grandparents were alive and healthy, I actually still felt wonder and felt as if the future was bright. I felt excitement… I hardly feel these things anymore just looking at the state of the world and this country today. Maybe it’s because I was just naive but if that’s the case I enjoyed being naive. I want to be naive again. I wish I wasn’t aware of the evils of the world or the crushing responsibilities of being an adult. While I can do things to kind of relive my childhood it’s just not the same. I want to go back home so badly but home doesn’t exist anymore. Home is only a memory now. A memory that becomes increasingly distant. The car keeps moving forward away from home but it can’t go in reverse. I’m so homesick