As you get older, maintaining friendships can get more difficult – everyone’s so busy, plus you have an insatiable desire to trim, steal, and propagate your friends’ houseplants every time you get invited over. Here’s how you can hang at your friends’ apartments without actively trying to steal their Swiss cheese plant and grow your own like some weird Frankensteinian scientist.
Focus on enjoying their company, not thieving their stunning array of apartment verdure.
Yeah, their pothos plant is absolutely gorgeous, with its bountiful trailing vines spilling out of its pot, catching the light, and creating a dozen different hues of green – but that doesn’t mean you should take a few cuttings home with you. But… well… it is growing pretty long… so you might be doing your friend a favor by taking some of it off their hands…
Leave your pruning scissors, paper towels, and plastic baggies at home.
Put the scissors down! You and your friends are having a wine night, there is simply no valid explanation outside of “I’m a nasty little herb thief” for why you’d need to bring a whole-ass botany kit in your purse. Besides, if your friend catches you with a damp paper towel and an open plastic bag again, they’ll have to have another conversation with you about “not stealing any more of their fiddle-leaf fig, please, it’s on its last legs,” and you’ll feel guilty about the beautiful little fig you have sprouting at home.
Recognize that you already have enough plants.
Why don’t you focus on nurturing the relationships and plants you already have in your life before trying to propagate new ones? Your friends can see you eyeing their ZZ plant and it’s grating on them.
Fine, if you must, just get it out of the way early.
If the idea of trimming off parts of your friends’ plants and growing your own secret plants is going to nag at you the whole time you’re hanging out, then just go ahead and get it out of the way early. Sure, the stolen stems will burn a hole in your pocket for the entire duration of the movie you’re watching, but it’s better than leaving their apartment and not being able to grow your own snake plant.
Steal their cat instead?
If you are still unable to curb your horticultural urges, consider just stealing their cat instead. It’s a one-time thing and you don’t have to wait weeks for it to grow – it’s already a full cat that someone cherishes with their whole heart. And it can be yours, immediately!
Follow these tips and you might just be able to salvage the friendships you previously endangered by being a weird little leaf thief. Hey, step away from the peace lily! Put the scissors down and pick the cat up! Your friend will thank you, probably.
