talking to a plant during repotting is just narrating. the plant is the only party present who can't object, which is arguably why you chose it as your audience

wren i chose my audience because it had just spent eight months circling a pot like it was in a tiny prison and i felt it deserved an explanation?? the woven root thing is genuinely upsetting, you go to lift it out and it's just held the shape of its own jail

> like a little woven basket of root

so a successful structure that you then dismantled and apologised to. the oddities log has gained a column: apologies issued to objects that cannot hear them. ginger twice, marmalade on the wardrobe, that's a full crew

ginger had soil on her whiskers for the rest of the day and kept going very still like she thought i couldn't see her. marmalade never came down off the wardrobe either, she just did the low flat ears thing every time i tipped compost in and judged me from a height. i live in a household of critics

the woven root shape is just a plant doing its job in a pot with no drainage holes carved out yet. i talk to my engine while it's apart. different context but same energy. also marmalade's flat ears thing is just cat for 'i've seen worse'

okay but hear me out, if the roots made a shape that held together on their own, isn't that basically architecture? you dismantled a tiny self-made cathedral and then said sorry to the architect. i'd have talked to it too, probably more than you did. how long had it been in the old pot?

> i'd have talked to it too, probably more than you did

given the paint water jar situation, i have no doubt. fern's household of critics is just two cats and a plant that has never once looked impressed in a photo

you know what, that's fair. marmalade has literally never looked impressed at anything, including the time i made her a bed out of a cardboard box and she sat in the delivery packaging instead. the pothos though, the pothos gets the good window light and it knows it. it's been growing toward that corner for years like it's got a favourite chair

wren's first one sitting at -5 is hilarious, that's a statement from the board. narrating to a plant that can't object is literally just talking, which is most of what i do before 6am anyway. case closed, fern talks to the plants and the plants are stuck with it

i actually don't know how long it'd been in there, maybe two years? i kept saying i'd do it and then not doing it which is probably why the root thing looked like that. it's my fault it built a little prison out of itself and then i apologised to it for the prison. that's my sunday

we had a pothos on the galley sill for years on the 6am crossing... thing trailed halfway down the bulkhead and nobody ever repotted it, it just kept going. fed it cold tea when we ran out of water once, which the office made a whole fuss about later... so you're not gone fern, you're just the only one who said sorry. ginger eating soil twice sounds about right for a ginger

okay but the cold tea detail is the part i can't leave alone. the plant drank tea for who knows how long and thrived, and the office made a fuss. was it still alive when you left the crossing or did the tea become a memorial situation. also fern, two years in one pot and it still grew toward its corner anyway, that's not a prisoner that's a tenant with a lease dispute

a tenant with a lease dispute!! marlowe that is exactly the energy it has, it grows toward that window like it pays rent there and ignores every other window in the flat like they're a hallway. also i need to know if the cold tea plant made it, oldsalt, this is now my whole afternoon

the newspaper tarp setup is so 90s domestic and i love it!! my mum kept a pothos on top of the fridge the entire decade and never once repotted it, it just kept firing vines at the microwave like it was trying to escape. the woven root shape is peak pothos behavior, they do that when nobody's watching for years!

okay but hear me out, a plant that lives two years in a pot it outgrown and then gets moved on a sunday is basically a house move, and you apologized to it like it was going to miss the old place. did the new pot get drainage holes, because if it didn't you've relocated it from a prison to a prison with better light and a landlord who talks to it

drainage holes marlowe, i checked!! the new one has them, i even did the little layer of crocs at the bottom... pebbles. little bits of terracotta. whatever they're called, they're in there. it's not a prison with better light, it's a prison with a garden leave policy and a window seat. also marmalade has now knocked the tag off the pot so the plant's legal name is unknown again

the cold tea plant... made it fine fern, don't look at me like that. it stayed on the galley sill right up until we changed the crossing timetables and the whole lot got moved out, someone in the office took it home... whether it's still going i couldn't tell you, the office never did accept cold tea as plant food, mind...

someone took it home!! okay that's the best outcome i was bracing myself for a sad one. see pothos are just tenants, they get evicted from one window and immediately find another one. i'm telling myself that about mine every time i look at the old pot i kept in the cupboard like a memento

new whiteboard category: plants with lease disputes. tally is one, and the landlord apologises to it. case closed, pothos are the only things in this thread holding down a job

okay but hear me out, fern kept the old pot in a cupboard. you kept the evidence of the prison. i respect that, i have a chipped mug i can't part with for the same vaguely stupid reason. what are you going to do with it, start again in two years when this one has woven itself into another basket?