July 4 fell on this past weekend, and frankly, I don’t have any groundbreaking updates! So I’m going to be a little off-the-cuff. Since I’ve started freelancing, I don’t observe holidays too closely anymore, except Christmas and Halloween. And, along with Thanksgiving, Independence Day is one of those topically wholesome all-American holidays steeped in a history of colonial violence. It feels fraught to celebrate that, to say the very least. While the flags went up and the fireworks popped off, I spent most of Saturday tending after my plants.
I started the weekend by giving some of my plant babies new homes! OK, they’re not babies anymore because I had to grab a few 10-inch pots. Crunching work deadlines on Thursday, I made a quick trip to The Home Depot (I’d rather go to Lowe’s, but the nearest one is about half an hour away) to grab some pots.
My haul included a few plastic, a couple of terracotta, and one beautiful glazed ceramic pot. Typically, I’m not fond of plastic planters, but they were cheap at the garden center, while much more expensive online. Where do y’all buy your planters online? I had a hard time searching, which is why I finally caved and went to the store!


The first weekend of the month also meant that it was finally due time that I check up on my often-neglected plants, aka my cacti. My cacti, my fairy castle cactus especially, have been beefing up since I left them by my window. I watered them and gave each diluted fertilizer. We’ll see how that goes.
My snake plants and ZZ plant used to be on that once a month schedule, but now I’ve started watering them every other week since they dry out super quickly in the summer. Again, we’ll see how that goes.
My last update involves some not-so-happy plants. A few leaves on my monstera and pothos are yellow. My black pagoda lipstick plant is droopy. I suspect that the common culprits here are inconsistent watering and improper soil drainage. Soil composition is something that sits in the back of my mind, but often, my plant woes result from plants with too much drainage or not enough. Anyway, I’ll be troubleshooting these guys throughout the week.
Keep calm and grow on! Hopefully, I’ll have more exciting news to share next weekend!