I literally did lmao, signed it with my face

The eclipse: (goes on)

The birds: (go quiet)

I haven't updated any photos since before they had all even germinated so here's some:

First up, here's the Italian basil! There's like 4 plants in this pot so I probably wanna separate them out soon. They're already trying to flower so I've been pinching them off and started pruning the dead leaves too.

Right now all of these are on the front porch at my gfs house where they get more sun than they would in my house.

The Italian basil smells AMAZING and it's hard to believe that back in March/April they were just seeds :0

I think it's really funny how the red pot has a new sprouting coming up. What took you so long buddy 😂

The lemon basil is a bit less interesting. I JUST moved them to this pot yesterday, they've been sitting in the seed tray yellowing for like a month 😭 the smell is rly interesting and I'm excited to see what kind of dish I can make with it. I usually like using basil with lemon and garlic seasoning on chicken or salmon, I bet the lemon basil would go spectacularly with one of those dishes and really contribute to the citrusy flavor.

It'll be a little while for these to grow up some more. I pruned some of the particularly dead leaves off as well.

Mint! Also moved to the big pot just now.

Funny story about these, there's 2-4 more of these and my gfs dad asked if it was mint. I said yeah so don't put them in the ground under any circumstances lol. Then he said he's thinking of planting them in the swallow wort 😭

At first I was like, you're crazy. Then I talked to gfs mom (Prof of environmental sciences with a specialization in wetlands, rivers, and beavers/beaver dams) and she was like well actually, swallow wort is a much worse invasive and spreads with seeds in the wind but we haven't been able to get rid of it, and mint spreads through runners/roots (idr which) so if it takes over then it'll contain itself much better than the swallow wort, and if it *doesn't* take over then that's just one more thing that didn't work.

So.... Sure? Excited to see where this goes.

I have a very happy African violet again!!!! After almost all winter of no blooms, it was a real treat to watch the buds come up and now have almost a month of consistent blossoms. I need to get a heat mat for all my warm weather plants in the winter, then maybe I'll get to experience this year-round again ☺️

Also in flower is the orchid that I got for my birthday last year. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to keep it alive, so I'm very pleased that I've done well enough that it's flowering 😂 I think I need to take off the clips, since all the plant above them died and I just haven't touched the pot at all. Maybe I'll uppot it this year and see if it grows more.

The cactuses are doing well after a period of stress after uppotting and a brief dry rot scare that seems to have resolved itself with more conservative watering. All the narrow segments are where new growth is happening. If I get around to procuring some pots, I might separate off the pups while the weather is still warm. I would love to get these into a sunnier spot, maybe I'll get a chance whenever (next year perhaps) I move in with my gf for real.

I'm also having some success propogating the African violet!!!!!! This leaf fell off and all attempts at propogating in soil have failed, so I stuck it in the bowl of water that I've been using to root spider plants and there's actually some root growth!! I want to let it go a bit further before putting it in soil. This plant appears to dislike propogating, and this is my only successful attempt at getting roots so I'd like it to be pretty happy before moving it to soil. Another leaf in the same water situation just rotted, so the data so far is a 50/50 chance of rooting in water haha.

I need to pull out the spider plant before it gets complicated to remove. It's a bunch of decorative stones with water to just above the stone line, and the roots are climbing all around the stones. The last one I rooted in this bowl, I moved to soil much quicker.

This jade plant has been in its pot for just under 2 years now, but there's still not visible roots around the sides so I think I need to just add some fertilizer. It's neat seeing 2 years worth of growth from propagation represented here.

This plant was also gifted to me as a birthday present when all I asked for that year was some dirt and a rock from New Hampshire, so it's symbolic to me as a month later is when I made the decision to move back to New England and now I'm here. The plant that was once a piece of home is now just one of tons of new england plants I live all around now.

As for all the spider plants, i think I need to seriously overhaul the system I have for planting them. None of them are doing particularly well, and the one I stuck in a pill bottle has proven actually quite difficult to water. All of them have been difficult to water, honestly. The small pots dry out quickly and resist watering, so I end up either pouring it all straight through the drainage holes or floating the soil and making a mess. Even if it means planting them in fast food cups, I'd like to swap up my system so I can occasionally just bottom water everything in a pan when I need to remediate, since I'm not the best at keeping a watering schedule. Many of them are also in 2-3 year old soil, so it's definitely time to repot and/or fertilize them.

That's all the photos Tumblr will let me upload, but you should also know that the snake plant is doing pretty well. I think it also needs to be repotted just bc it's been in there for 2 years, but I'm hopeful that within the next year or two I'll get a prop out of it. Yay!

I acquired this bit of furniture, a shoe bench, from a curb pickup. The photos on Facebook had broken drawers but it turned out that it was just a cam lock pin that had come unlocked, so I twisted it a bit and now the drawers are as good as new.

The exception is that I didn't realize the handles were cheap plastic and I broke one by accident trying to shove it into my car. I didn't want to have it just look duct taped, so after duct taping it I knotted some yarn around it to cover it up. The drawers are on nice tracks and come out smoothly, so even though it's not a perfect fix it should work perfectly from now on. The yarn I used doesn't really fit the color scheme so I might redo it later, or crochet something a bit more patterned.

I'm excited to have a little sitting and storage area under this window, where I've been wanting to put something for a while. I like to fold laundry on the bed and this makes a nice spot to do it and then sit and crochet while watching x files on the bed.

Don't mind the floors 😂 I need to vacuum. In late August I'm gonna take a couple days and just deep clean my apartment, so that it's livable for the fall classes when I'll be spending much more time there (since I've just been hiding at my gfs house)

The other thing I did was move the string lights from the other corner of the room to this one, since this is actually where I typically need more light after dark. It's on a remote switch so I can control the lamp and the string lights from one of two remotes, one by the door and one by my bed. I want to get more flower garlands and string lights to put in around the whole room, ideally ones that are flicker free. I bought these ones on sale at kroger 3 years ago and only realized when I got home that they flickered, which doesn't bother me *as* much but they bother Aren (my gf) a lot so I'll have to either keep them off most of the time or replace them if she's spending a lot of time at my house.

I love how this corner of the room is turning into a reading nook!

I still need another bookshelf and to properly organize my books, they're all out of order from how I had them shelved and had packed them for the move last year, so right now it's literally just random sorting. It's just a matter of sitting down and categorizing them for an hour or two. It'll happen organically at some point, probably. But I guess I'm slightly hesitant because some of them are still in a box under my kitchen table and I don't want to have to find places for those after sorting everything else, so I want to have another bookshelf first.

All my comics and DVDs on the smaller bookcase are already organized.

I don't post on Facebook often, usually just resharing a post every other day or so about trans education or mutual aid, but a lot of my friends are on there from my teen years, so a lot of church leaders and Christian University college professors. I decided it might be fun to share a fun fact with my regular updates, so I had fun with the following:

[ID: picture of my bedroom as a Facebook post with the caption "Bedroom is getting cozier! Eventually I'll organize the books. The US government is a 250 year old apartheid. END ID]

I haven't updated any photos since before they had all even germinated so here's some:

First up, here's the Italian basil! There's like 4 plants in this pot so I probably wanna separate them out soon. They're already trying to flower so I've been pinching them off and started pruning the dead leaves too.

Right now all of these are on the front porch at my gfs house where they get more sun than they would in my house.

The Italian basil smells AMAZING and it's hard to believe that back in March/April they were just seeds :0

I think it's really funny how the red pot has a new sprouting coming up. What took you so long buddy 😂

The lemon basil is a bit less interesting. I JUST moved them to this pot yesterday, they've been sitting in the seed tray yellowing for like a month 😭 the smell is rly interesting and I'm excited to see what kind of dish I can make with it. I usually like using basil with lemon and garlic seasoning on chicken or salmon, I bet the lemon basil would go spectacularly with one of those dishes and really contribute to the citrusy flavor.

It'll be a little while for these to grow up some more. I pruned some of the particularly dead leaves off as well.

Mint! Also moved to the big pot just now.

Funny story about these, there's 2-4 more of these and my gfs dad asked if it was mint. I said yeah so don't put them in the ground under any circumstances lol. Then he said he's thinking of planting them in the swallow wort 😭

At first I was like, you're crazy. Then I talked to gfs mom (Prof of environmental sciences with a specialization in wetlands, rivers, and beavers/beaver dams) and she was like well actually, swallow wort is a much worse invasive and spreads with seeds in the wind but we haven't been able to get rid of it, and mint spreads through runners/roots (idr which) so if it takes over then it'll contain itself much better than the swallow wort, and if it *doesn't* take over then that's just one more thing that didn't work.

So.... Sure? Excited to see where this goes.

I have a very happy African violet again!!!! After almost all winter of no blooms, it was a real treat to watch the buds come up and now have almost a month of consistent blossoms. I need to get a heat mat for all my warm weather plants in the winter, then maybe I'll get to experience this year-round again ☺️

Also in flower is the orchid that I got for my birthday last year. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to keep it alive, so I'm very pleased that I've done well enough that it's flowering 😂 I think I need to take off the clips, since all the plant above them died and I just haven't touched the pot at all. Maybe I'll uppot it this year and see if it grows more.

The cactuses are doing well after a period of stress after uppotting and a brief dry rot scare that seems to have resolved itself with more conservative watering. All the narrow segments are where new growth is happening. If I get around to procuring some pots, I might separate off the pups while the weather is still warm. I would love to get these into a sunnier spot, maybe I'll get a chance whenever (next year perhaps) I move in with my gf for real.

I'm also having some success propogating the African violet!!!!!! This leaf fell off and all attempts at propogating in soil have failed, so I stuck it in the bowl of water that I've been using to root spider plants and there's actually some root growth!! I want to let it go a bit further before putting it in soil. This plant appears to dislike propogating, and this is my only successful attempt at getting roots so I'd like it to be pretty happy before moving it to soil. Another leaf in the same water situation just rotted, so the data so far is a 50/50 chance of rooting in water haha.

I need to pull out the spider plant before it gets complicated to remove. It's a bunch of decorative stones with water to just above the stone line, and the roots are climbing all around the stones. The last one I rooted in this bowl, I moved to soil much quicker.

This jade plant has been in its pot for just under 2 years now, but there's still not visible roots around the sides so I think I need to just add some fertilizer. It's neat seeing 2 years worth of growth from propagation represented here.

This plant was also gifted to me as a birthday present when all I asked for that year was some dirt and a rock from New Hampshire, so it's symbolic to me as a month later is when I made the decision to move back to New England and now I'm here. The plant that was once a piece of home is now just one of tons of new england plants I live all around now.

As for all the spider plants, i think I need to seriously overhaul the system I have for planting them. None of them are doing particularly well, and the one I stuck in a pill bottle has proven actually quite difficult to water. All of them have been difficult to water, honestly. The small pots dry out quickly and resist watering, so I end up either pouring it all straight through the drainage holes or floating the soil and making a mess. Even if it means planting them in fast food cups, I'd like to swap up my system so I can occasionally just bottom water everything in a pan when I need to remediate, since I'm not the best at keeping a watering schedule. Many of them are also in 2-3 year old soil, so it's definitely time to repot and/or fertilize them.

That's all the photos Tumblr will let me upload, but you should also know that the snake plant is doing pretty well. I think it also needs to be repotted just bc it's been in there for 2 years, but I'm hopeful that within the next year or two I'll get a prop out of it. Yay!