a plant + book blog
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up Is Only Moderately Life-Changing. Well, it’s been not a minute, but several minutes! Y’all, I finally made my way through The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up! And while it wasn’t magical, I did find myself drawn to KonMari’s brute cleaning philosophy — my main takeaway from this handy little book […]
Back with a short weekend update, plant friends! It’s been busy lately, and I’m trying to allow myself to relax a little bit this fine Monday evening. Not much decluttering happened this weekend, but I do have intentions to better organize my fragrance collection as well as throw out some plants I don’t want anymore. […]
I am shocked by how many ficus plants I’ve owned, given my track record with them. I’ve had several plants in this genus: two ficus lyrata, a ficus benjamina, and of course, two ficus elastica. These are fig plants, but the edible common fig, ficus carica, isn’t your ideal houseplant — it really prefers being […]
An honest and morally clear collection of essays, Zadie Smith’s Intimations grasps at how this unprecedented moment in time peels back the layers to reveal our relationships to the world around us. Happy autumn, fell book lovers! My latest read, Zadie Smith’s Intimations, is one of my favorite quarantine books so far. “Intimations” is quite apt […]
Hello, plant friends! I haven’t had a lot of groundbreaking weekends when it comes to my plants. Actually, I’ve been doing a good deal of ignoring them as of late. I’ll get to the good, the bad, and the ugly soon. This weekend *did* end up being a productive one in terms of organizing my […]
Elizabeth Acevedo serves up a tender and warm story in With the Fire on High. Hello, book friends! This week I picked up a sizzling hot read: Elizabeth Acevedo’s With the Fire on High. I adored Acevedo’s The Poet X and how it creatively formed a narrative through poetry. So I’ve been jonesing to pick up […]
Hello again, my fronds! I don’t have much of a weekend update. My plants are surviving the heat wave, but they’ve been giving off less growth than usual, probably because autumn is rearing its head right around the corner. Typically on Labor Day weekend, I enjoy the extra day off to celebrate my birthday! We’re […]
Let’s talk about the dieffenbachia. For me, it’s the plant that I fall in love with over and over again whenever I look at it, but it’s also the plant that I tend to ignore. My dieffenbachia, also colloquially known as a dumb cane, has been slowly eking by over the past year, and while […]
Laced with fantasy and folklore, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is a surreal tribute to storytelling through the memoir form. Hey, y’all! I’m back with a review of The Woman Warrior. Maybe five years ago, my adviser recommended me this book when I was working on a thesis re: Vietnamese American literature, but I hadn’t gotten around […]
Y’all, I have gone three weeks without acquiring new plants. Congratulations to me! I’m sure this will change once autumn makes my home more suitable to indoor plants, but for now, I’m appreciating any plant that’s displaying steady growth. Especially the big ones, like my monstera, philodendron ring of fire, and variegated rubber plant! I’ve […]