Sadness....

April usually brings to us a flurry of last minute craziness, non stop working around the clock and excitement, while we entered the last 2 weeks before the greenhouses would normally open for the season. But not this year.....

Unfortunately due to an insurmountable mountain of problems the greenhouses will not be opening this year. I have mentioned in several of my posts, that we have been struggling thru alot of problems and have had to make some very hard decisions that we haven't wanted to make. Alot of the decisions we had no say in and were forced to follow because of this darn partnership. If we had, had a crystal ball 2 years ago and had known that the business was being started right at the time, the recession was just getting ready to start, we never would have started it and had we also been able to look into that same crystal ball and seen into the future, to see all the problems that the greenhouses partner was going to bring to the table, we definitely never would have brought him into the equation. The business could have started without this partner, he wasn't needed financially and he was brought in for reasons that really seem dumb now, but that's that 20/20 hindsight thing and there is nothing we can do to change, what has all ready happened. Even if the partner had never existed would the business be opening today, I don't know, I have a feeling the economy , the recession, the credit crunch etc., probably still would have been too much, of a strain, on a brand new business. But we could have closed up shop and waited for the storm to pass and tried to restart after the recession was over. But with a partner involved, and when a partnership goes horribly wrong, just as in a marriage that fails and goes into divorce, there are no winners. Things get split up, dissolved, assets are lost, etc etc. To completely dissolve this partnership and all ties to each other, the business had to cease to exist. So we can no longer use the same business name and everything that was the business will no longer be there. Its been a very hard time for my better half and I, lot of heartache and pain. We had put so much of ourselves into that business, personally, emotionally and financially and its all gone. We cant help but feel we have wasted 2 years of our lives with this venture.

But I also strongly believe everything happens for a reason and even though I cant see any good reasons for what we have had to struggle thru, I know that there is a reason. Somehow this will make us stronger and better and we will find a better path us and our nursery/greenhouse business.

I had mentioned in one other post and will mention it again, if you go into business with anyone, think long and hard about it, make sure you know that partner inside and out. I don't care if they are your best friend, a family member, or just a business acquaintance. You don't want surprises after you have entered into the partnership and its too late to get out. Make sure that all partners have the same work ethics, and goals for the business. That both partners are committed 100%. Make sure you have an iron clad contract between the partners, detailing exactly what is expected from each side of the partnership,including work hours, and financial cash flow into the business by each partner, so that when one partner doesn't uphold their end of the bargain you have some type of legal recourse. It makes for a very bitter situation when one side of the equation is doing 95% of the work and has put all of the cash flow into the business and the other side is making excuses for why they arent following thru on what they promised to bring to the table. It wasn't supposed to be that way. We take all blame for bringing the partner into this mess and we have to deal with the consequences of that and the losses we have incurred because of a very, very bad business decision. But to be fair the business probably still would have suffered because it was too new,when the recession struck. So now we are left with cleaning up the mess.

Ok enough wallowing in the mud, we know what went wrong and now we have to fix it, and like all divorces extricating yourself from a partnership is a long and painful process. So it will be a while yet before we can officially say its over.

New game plan. Stay tuned. I will outline more over the next few days.