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If you want to practice patience and the horror of letting go, cacti are there for you.
You'll soon learn that sometimes what the subject of your care needs the most out of you is nothing.
Overdoing is a death sentence; overwatering, over sunning, over shadowing. The damned green nub might even seem to mock your ministrations when you're not looking.
Let it be, please. Remember the name Münchhausen.
The desire to act is the most insidious poison for a cactus; it will get you high off the delusion of the importance of your actions as it drowns your plant, which will fuel further your thirst for action and the inevitable death-spiral of rot and fungi.
It doesn't need salvation. It certainly doesn't care for it.
All it asks for is a little water, enough sun, some repotting and, of course, love. Always love; just not enough of the stuff for it to kill the cactus.
Apr 23, 2024
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"How am I ever supposed to take care of myself," I cried to my mom, "when I can't even take care of a plant?!"
I was 15 and my cactus had just died from overwatering. I avoided house plants for years, until I came across a pothos while my mental health was in the gutter. The little thing became everything to me. I propagated it, bought more plants. Whenever dark clouds come rolling into my mind, I lay my plants extra attention. "I take good care of myself, little one," I tell them while watering them, "so I can take better care of you."
Sep 2, 2024
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how do you throw away a plant. i dont believe there is such a thing. i think you and i watch in despaired silence as one leaf withers after another, the brown rot swallowing from the bottom up. whom do i blame for its slow death, me? the cattleya? no but what wrong have you done by trying to live.
Jan 25, 2024
Feb 23, 2024
Top Recs from @capnhahab
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Underwear, soap, sunblock, sheets; if you're putting up a barrier between the physical you and the oh-so-hazardous world then, if possible, have it be the most effective barrier it can be.
May 15, 2024
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Receiving is giving too. Also, there's quite a high chance you deserve to be complimented.
Apr 26, 2024
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Why do they hide so much history within them? Why does that past come out in most unprompted ways? Why is the pizza line at Costco essential for me to learn my grandfather's name was Salvador, that dad was buddies with famous luchadores, or that he is casual friends with many a notable playwright?
I hope it's not the feeling that I'd be uninterested; I certainly am.
His storytelling is so casual, so carefree. Maybe he likes the old days to be the old days and his place to be in the now, and his way of keeping the past at bay is to scarcely visit it, to give nostalgia no special regard.
Perhaps he likes the chance to be mysterious, and he very much is in these moments. It's strange for there to be mystery between us, but that's unavoidable, I guess. I try not to take it as a barrier. We are mysteries even to ourselves; it's an unjustly tall order to make ourselves crystal clear for others, even our children, perhaps.
Whatever it is, I treasure each pearl of the weird history, the places he has been and the trouble he got into. He was and still is that young man just as I hope to still be who I am today, even if in bite-sized, shocking portions.
Apr 29, 2024