I bought the first plant the week after the layoff. There are eleven now. I’m not going to pretend that’s a coincidence.
A plant is a small thing you can keep alive on a day when you are not sure what else you are doing. That is most of why they are here.
Pots, and the part nobody mentions
One pot is never the number. You repot, you split something that outgrew its corner, you carry one home because it was three dollars and you were already standing there.
I look for pots with the saucer built in. That is the difference between watering and mopping.
If you fall for one with no drainage hole, put an inch of lava rock in the bottom before the soil goes in. It is not drainage. It is room for error, which is usually what you actually need.
Mismatched vintage plates work as saucers and cost almost nothing at a garage sale. Mine do not match each other or anything else in the house. That is the point.
The gnats are coming
Not a possibility. A schedule.
Sticky traps handle it. Get the ones small enough to sit down inside the pot, below the leaves, where you stop noticing them after a day.
Do not take it personally. Gnats mean the soil stayed wet, and wet soil usually means someone was paying attention.
Light, and the rooms that do not have any
Not every room has a window that works. Mine do not all face the right way, and a 1959 house was not laid out with anybody’s fiddle leaf in mind.
A grow light solves it. The current ones look like lamps instead of laboratory equipment, which matters when the plant is in a room you actually sit in.
Warm-toned, and on a timer. The timer is the part that keeps the plant alive through your worst week.
Moss poles, if you are growing something that climbs
Monstera and philodendron want to go up. Left flat they sprawl, and the leaves stay small.
A pole wrapped in natural twine is enough. You tie the stem loosely and the plant takes it from there.
This is the one that taught me something. It does not grow because you want it to. It grows because you gave it something to hold on to.
Height is what makes a corner look finished
One plant on the floor reads as a plant. Three at different heights reads as a room.
Stands, a tiered shelf, something set on a stack of books you were not going to reread. Vary the texture while you are at it: terracotta next to ceramic next to a basket.
That is the whole trick. There is not a second one.
Why there are eleven
I was not doing much that year. I applied for jobs. I cleaned out closets. I moved a great deal of time around without moving anything else.
Watering things was different. It was small, it was on a schedule, and something was measurably better on Friday than it had been on Monday. That was not true of anything else I was doing.
The house was the one thing still in my hands. The plants were the cheapest possible way to prove it.
If your job just ended, there’s a longer piece here about what the first weeks actually looked like.
The rest of the house is here.