Five days ago (Tuesday, March 17 2020) my city of Houston ordered all of the bars and clubs to close and restaurants to switch over to pick-up or delivery only.
I have a client who owns a local pub with great food and spent the last several days helping them transition, but business is still really slow for them, and watching all of the service industry workers post about their loss of income is terribly sad. Houston has around 10,000 restaurants, many of them small, immigrant owned family businesses. It’s going to be very difficult to impossible for them to stay open and it just hurts my heart to know how stressed and worried so many folks are about their futures.
While Houston hasn’t been issued a full lockdown, it could happen any day as it just happened to the entire state of California. Out of concern for our health, we took our son out of school two days before spring break started for him and have stayed home the majority of the time. I personally have only left the house for a quick trip to the store for necessities no more than 4 times in the last 10 days.
Luckily the weather was nice most of the time, but it’s been raining here for 2 days and I’m really starting to feel cabin fever, even though I don’t go out much normally. On a recent ‘outing’ to Walgreens, I was wearing my ‘Introverted but willing to discuss plants’ t-shirt and the cashier said he liked it. Of course I asked him if he liked plants or had any and he said he liked them, but wasn’t patient enough to keep them, but he had friends that were really into plants. I told him he should get some and just see how it goes. He said, “There’s one type I want, the kind you put in the corner of your house,” so I started rattling off some names.
Fiddle-leaf Fig? Dracaena? Pothos? He looked at me like “…” but then he grabbed a receipt and a highlighter and proceeded to start sketching the plant in mind. It was a Sansevieria! I showed him some ‘Mother-in-Law’s Tongues’ on my phone and how to spell Sansevieria.
That was the longest in-person exchange I’ve had with a human in several days, and even though it was less than 2 minutes, I really appreciated the time and hope he has a new plant by the next time I go back.
I also had a nice long video call with 3 girlfriends last night. We used Google Hangouts but also tried Zoom so you can see everyone’s head the same size in the chat at the same time.
Some other things I’ve done to pass the time:
-I made a video on pruning succulents and another on Split Rock care.
-I started more seeds a couple of days ago.
-I took some new photos of my plants.
-I saw the ISS flyover Wednesday night – that killed about 2 minutes!
-Today it’s raining so I put out a bucket to catch some for my plants.
-I’ve been editing the paperback version of my book.
-I started watching Love is Blind per my friend’s suggestion so we can watch it together. It’s so bad but I’m still watching it so we can laugh about it together. SO bad.
-Oh, and I sent out a newsletter with the following message:
‘I know times are pretty surreal right now… We’re doing our best to stay active and remain connected with our friends and family while we may be stuck at home. Here are a few ways to connect with more succy-friends.
Instagram: Use the hashtag #succulents on your photos so we can find you!
Facebook: There are countless succulent groups you can join, including our SFY group!
Youtube: Did you know that Youtube channels have a ‘community page?’ Be sure to subscribe so you get post notifications!
And of course there’s the comments section on my videos on Youtube and Sucsforyou.com – feel free to jump in and help others, ask your own questions, or share your experiences!’
So what have you been doing to stay busy at home? We’ve had over a hundred new people join the Sucs for You Facebook group just this last week. Are you in any groups? You can join ours if you haven’t already and share your photos, ask for help, and help others.
It’s so important to stay connected these days. I’m used to talking to several people online throughout the day and I’m super grateful to be a part of this community. As I mentioned, there is a comment section on all of the posts on this website so if you’re not on social media, you can always drop me a line there!
Here are some photos from the past week. You can click each one to see them full size. Stay busy, my friends!
