how many dead plants is too many dead plants?
Happy Thursday everyone! We! Are! So! Close! To! A break! Keep going y'all!
There is nothing more humbling than turning on a stand mixer and either a) the flour flying back into your face cause you started the speed too high or b) you use the whisk for the wrong ingredients and it gets stuck cause it's too cold and you're staring into the void of the stand mixer as nothing actually happens except the whisk slowly proceeds to spin around your cream cheese and butter, mocking you.
Moving on, I stumbled across this article that Anne Helen Petersen posted (I will one day stop mentioning her, but that day is not today) about the hoarding problem of the online plant community. First off, every online community has a hoarding problem - that's how you get the best youtube videos, tiktok shorts, Instagram shots, etc. The beauty community has it with their expensive as hell eye-shadow palettes; the book community has it with buying new covers of books; and the plant community has it with bougie plants (go check out the variegated monstera cutting sections on Etsy. I once saw someone asking $10k for a piece of a plant. A PIECE). It's not good, but the way internet moves, to stay on top of the latest release, you have to keep buying stuff.
I always find it fascinating the people who purchase tons of plants and don't think about the space that these plants will take up. Yes, hello! A self-read. I do have too many plants - about 80 - but what was true in the thread that Anne Helen Petersen posted that I agree with is that you should not be buying 80 plants. Hell, you shouldn't really be buying over 20. "But then how do you have 80 plants!" you exclaim.
Propagate! Your! Plants! I recently got a text from someone who I gave an aloe plant to four years ago whose plant is now so strong, it gives off baby aloes and she can use them as gifts. I own maybe ...seven monsteras and thanks to my mom's plant, I have paid for none of them (which! a monstera! is super overpriced in NYC. Go take a field trip outside of the city and get something more reasonable!!).
If you have a friend who has plants *coughs* ask them for a propagation. Hell, if you feel bad, offer them five bucks for soil and a new pot. Some people might be like "Ew, no, back away from my $15k variegated aloe vera!" and some will be like "Yes of course! If you don't take this jade plant off of my hands I will fling it into the open ocean."
Also for people who love plants and keep killing them - honestly, if you're cool with it, just keep trying. I love my string of pearls plant because they're pretty and an Instagram darling, but wow, I killed maybe five of them. Shout out to my mom grabbing a bunch at her local plant store. But after murdering so many, I discovered what it takes to actually keep them alive, and now they live a lovely life on my bedroom window. I'm currently killing multiples birds of paradise (sob). My recent challenge is keeping a few calathea orbifolia alive, which, after chatting with my neighborhood plant store and keeping a better eye on them, I went from one struggling to three that put out new leaves every few days I don't have room for this please send help.
But circling back to the article and away from me crying over dead plants, as pretty as the plant stores plants are, do your research. Some trendy plant stores overcharge by a lot (I saw one selling 8 ounces of solid for 30 bucks. I bought 55 ounces for $13), the plants themselves are sometimes not well taken care of, and the shiny shiny leaves, while beautiful, might not work in the room you want it to work in. If you can afford it - yolo! Constantly buy a bunch and see if they'll live or not! If not, figure out the direction your window faces: Southern exposure is harsher, longer light, Western and Eastern exposures are strong light that's not as harsh, and Northern exposure is the weakest light. Is your home humid enough or dry? (My heat zaps the moisture out of the air so fast). And more importantly, do you have enough room in your home to hold these plants, Brieana?!
Anyone can have a green thumb. Sometimes, you gotta kill a few plants. But once you figure out what plants work with you/your space/your temperament, you'll have a flourishing greenhouse.
But don't go crazy.
Recs this week!
That's it! So long! Farewell! Remember me when you relax and do nothing and think of me swimming in emails!!!
There is nothing more humbling than turning on a stand mixer and either a) the flour flying back into your face cause you started the speed too high or b) you use the whisk for the wrong ingredients and it gets stuck cause it's too cold and you're staring into the void of the stand mixer as nothing actually happens except the whisk slowly proceeds to spin around your cream cheese and butter, mocking you.
Moving on, I stumbled across this article that Anne Helen Petersen posted (I will one day stop mentioning her, but that day is not today) about the hoarding problem of the online plant community. First off, every online community has a hoarding problem - that's how you get the best youtube videos, tiktok shorts, Instagram shots, etc. The beauty community has it with their expensive as hell eye-shadow palettes; the book community has it with buying new covers of books; and the plant community has it with bougie plants (go check out the variegated monstera cutting sections on Etsy. I once saw someone asking $10k for a piece of a plant. A PIECE). It's not good, but the way internet moves, to stay on top of the latest release, you have to keep buying stuff.
I always find it fascinating the people who purchase tons of plants and don't think about the space that these plants will take up. Yes, hello! A self-read. I do have too many plants - about 80 - but what was true in the thread that Anne Helen Petersen posted that I agree with is that you should not be buying 80 plants. Hell, you shouldn't really be buying over 20. "But then how do you have 80 plants!" you exclaim.
Propagate! Your! Plants! I recently got a text from someone who I gave an aloe plant to four years ago whose plant is now so strong, it gives off baby aloes and she can use them as gifts. I own maybe ...seven monsteras and thanks to my mom's plant, I have paid for none of them (which! a monstera! is super overpriced in NYC. Go take a field trip outside of the city and get something more reasonable!!).
If you have a friend who has plants *coughs* ask them for a propagation. Hell, if you feel bad, offer them five bucks for soil and a new pot. Some people might be like "Ew, no, back away from my $15k variegated aloe vera!" and some will be like "Yes of course! If you don't take this jade plant off of my hands I will fling it into the open ocean."
Also for people who love plants and keep killing them - honestly, if you're cool with it, just keep trying. I love my string of pearls plant because they're pretty and an Instagram darling, but wow, I killed maybe five of them. Shout out to my mom grabbing a bunch at her local plant store. But after murdering so many, I discovered what it takes to actually keep them alive, and now they live a lovely life on my bedroom window. I'm currently killing multiples birds of paradise (sob). My recent challenge is keeping a few calathea orbifolia alive, which, after chatting with my neighborhood plant store and keeping a better eye on them, I went from one struggling to three that put out new leaves every few days I don't have room for this please send help.
But circling back to the article and away from me crying over dead plants, as pretty as the plant stores plants are, do your research. Some trendy plant stores overcharge by a lot (I saw one selling 8 ounces of solid for 30 bucks. I bought 55 ounces for $13), the plants themselves are sometimes not well taken care of, and the shiny shiny leaves, while beautiful, might not work in the room you want it to work in. If you can afford it - yolo! Constantly buy a bunch and see if they'll live or not! If not, figure out the direction your window faces: Southern exposure is harsher, longer light, Western and Eastern exposures are strong light that's not as harsh, and Northern exposure is the weakest light. Is your home humid enough or dry? (My heat zaps the moisture out of the air so fast). And more importantly, do you have enough room in your home to hold these plants, Brieana?!
Anyone can have a green thumb. Sometimes, you gotta kill a few plants. But once you figure out what plants work with you/your space/your temperament, you'll have a flourishing greenhouse.
But don't go crazy.
Recs this week!
- Have you heard of the new Netflix show enticing eyeballs, Arcane? I went to visit a friend and we needed something to watch while we ate a metric ton of delicious food, and I happened to remember hearing about the show. Readers, we finished it in one sitting. I don't know how to describe it except for a prequel show for a video game I have no intention to play. It was fast paced and every episode ending was a cliff hanger that kept you wanting more. The highs were high and the lows were beyond subterranean. I loved so many of the characters and hated one in particular but they were all so fascinating. While I'll never play the game it's based on, I'm still excited to watch the second season.
- Speaking of video games, everything Supergiant games has put out has been incredible. I'm particular to Hades, a roguelike game (basically every time you die, you start again), where you play Zagreus, the son of Hades, trying to escape from the Underworld. But I really want to push an older one that captured my heart recently, Transistor. It was quiet, and really stuck with me so much after beating it a month or so ago. You play as Red, an opera singer whose voice was taken after her boyfriend was murdered, and she proceeds to seek revenge on the people who killed him. I had heard great things about this game when it came out, and then found the documentary for it where they had the lead protagonist be a guy but they realized that like... that's... boring and no one was vibing with it, and they switched it to the opera singer being the one taking revenge, and the rest was history. It's maybe a three hour game but it's fun and has incredible replay value. (Also both games soundtracks are amazing.)
- Also, here is the recipe for the cinnamon buns I made, using my stand mixer for the first time! I think they're tasty and others have agreed. If you don't have a stand mixer, I've made them twice without one!
That's it! So long! Farewell! Remember me when you relax and do nothing and think of me swimming in emails!!!
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