Welcome to tiny gardens. I start out with a little horticultural essay for you, and then get into what I’ve been reading and working on this month.
If you want to: own a plant you don’t have to take care of
What you will need: paper, pipe cleaner, clay, embroidery thread or any other construction material
This week, for my plant column, I wrote about how to take care of your plants if you’re not able to water them. I believe this is genuinely useful. Plants are alive and you commit to the responsibility of owning a living thing when you buy one. But life comes up: a bad cold, vacation, seasonal affective disorder, four assignments at the same time. With the advice in my column, you can procrastinate on plant care without killing your charges.
But by answering this straightforwardly, I’m avoiding one of the tensions of houseplants: they are alive and also decorative objects. They evolved somewhere that was probably not a living room, and we continue to make them live in a dark, dry, enclosed space. I don’t think this is inherently irresponsible; I don’t feel sorry for plants. Bringing a little nature indoors improves our mental health. And I think it’s touching when humans welcome such an alien species into their homes. But fashion often has drives that we (or at least I) sometimes don’t think through fully and might not necessarily be proud to say out loud, especially when they’re connected with ecology. A big factor is scarcity. People like items that are rare, according to social psychology, even if they’re rare for sensible reasons like climate constraints. We often think plants are precious specifically because they're not well-suited to our region. A representative from the Sill once told me that people in Los Angeles like big, tropical plants and people in New York City love cacti and succulents. Which is fine, if we’re consciously aware of that tendency and willing to put in the effort it takes to keep our tiny strangers alive. See: my journey with my carnivorous plants. But if we don’t think through our fascination with live organisms that have shapes and textures and colors that seem special to us, we set ourselves up for failure.
As my life goes on, I’ve gained satisfaction sinking into my reality instead of trying to fight it. I love learning about the ecology of my city and the way the history of my neighborhood affects the plants we can grow in the community garden. I choose what I grow in my house more deliberately and make sure they have some sort of special meaning to me personally. I can take a small piece of the city and bring it inside. I can remember my apartment in San Francisco through a big plant that started as a piece of stem in my former landlord’s flower bed.
Another facet of embracing truth: I only have so much time and windowsill space, and all plants need water and light to grow. I can incorporate my love for the natural world into my home with art instead. I don’t have to buy plastic plants, which are destined for a long and bleak afterlife. I can use what I already have. When I grow something myself, I feel a special attachment to it; the same is true when I make something. I have a bookshelf that’s too far from the window for a plant, and I didn’t feel like putting an inherently humid growth beside my books, so I made this plant sculpture that I’m proud of from a stooped vase, paint, wire, tape and paper. I think adds a lot of color and texture to the space:
I had a whole other point I wanted to make with this essay about how my Tiktok for you page is a soothing oasis of doable but ambitious craft inspiration. But I’ll just show you some Tiktok inspiration on how to incorporate plants that you don’t have to water into your home:
This is the tutorial I used for my sculpture.
Moss rug (this one seems VERY involved).
Easy floral wall art.
Pipe cleaner lavender. A very involved version in which you make your own pipe cleaners is here.
Collage flowers! I love collage.
Happy crafting!
Things I wrote in January
After a slow end to 2022, mid-January saw my schedule heat up. One of the things that holds me back from sending out this newsletter is the feeling that I haven’t published anything recently or that if I wait another week, I’ll be able to share more projects. So, in the interest of shipping, I’m not going to hold this hostage waiting for the three other pieces I wrote over the last two weeks to come out (the fourth was the plant column mentioned above).
I did have some fun stuff for Wirecutter come out:
I spent several months testing dozens of brooms, dustpans and dust mops in order to bring you this guide.
The most-bought WC pick on the site during January was our toilet plunger. I did not write that original guide, which has some incredible testing by Doug Mahoney that involves re-plumbing a toilet with clear pipe. However, I did do this how-to about plunging.
Things I liked in January
Planet Fitness
Last autumn, the expensive gym I was going to left my corporate sponsorship program and priced itself out of my budget. Instead, I started going to Planet Fitness once a week (and running, but that’s another story). I paid for an annual membership, which is $100, so about $8.30 a month. The gym has signs and ads declaring it a “judgment-free zone,” which I thought was a gimmick at first. But the vibes actually do feel chill and homey. There’s big, beefy, 20- and 30-something men lifting huge weights, but they’re in a demographically appropriate minority; they work out next to people of every gender of all different muscle densities, body sizes and age. Most people are polite, and when the off-person is cranky it’s in a manageable, New-Yorker-ish way. I like it.
J. Crew tissue turtlenecks (currently OOS but they’re available at the outlets or secondhand)
Last Black Friday, these turtlenecks were on sale and I bought a few of them in black. Now, that’s all I wear when I want to go outside. Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes, while wrong about some things, were right about black turtlenecks. They look professional without being stuffy, they’re comfortable and are easy to wash and layer.
Murder She Wrote
Angela Lansbury created a masterpiece in the character of Jessica Fletcher. She’s a late-middle-aged woman who lives alone, works, jogs, has no children, can’t drive, is rarely (if ever) seen cooking and has a different boyfriend every episode. This show is also a fascinating look into the culture and politics of the mid-80s to mid-90s. Every day I don’t start a Murder She Wrote podcast is a victory, because while I am constantly tempted, there’s already at least four and I have too many projects to juggle. It’s available with commercials on Amazon’s “Freevee” service, but I don’t think you need an Amazon account to watch it. Looking for an entry episode? I recommend the salacious seventh episode of season four, “If It’s Thursday, It Must Be Beverly.”