Pretending to be a gardening goddess + recap of my brother’s visit

Currently: in a post-vacation daze, trying to get the motivation to carry on with real life.

Okay so I didn’t go on vacation, but I did just host my brother Bruce in San Diego — and looking at my credit card statements, I most definitely was in a vacation mood. But NO REGRETS. It was such a fun week, and I loved having my brother here.

My brother Bruce and I have been BFFs for forever. We frequently obnoxiously refer to ourselves as the #forrestertwins (my maiden name is Forrester) because for a while there we realllyyyy looked alike.

We’re both really into hiking + outdoorsy things. Bruce is always trying to get me killed on adventures. I’m not even kidding. A couple of our best (worst??) trips were the Appalachian trail on a spring break and the Pictured Rocks Trail in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Pictured Rocks Trail is a 42 mile trail along Lake Superior. It’s GORGEOUS. But, it get’s completely swamped with flies in the summer. And they are aggressive. So our 5 day backpacking trip turned into a 30 hour backpacking trip once we realized there was no way we wanted to withstand 5 days of fly bites. So we backpacked 22 miles on day 1, slept, and finished the trail with 20 miles on day 2. I could barely drive after that. But so fun, right? Love it. I’ll save our Appalachian Trail adventures (near death experiences) for another day.

So Bruce chose to spend his senior year spring break with me, his beloved sister. It was the best week — I LOVED showing off my new(ish) home of San Diego.

I took him to the usual haunts — Coronado, Potato Chip Rock, etc etc. We honestly spent most of the week hiking, and it was a total dream. It was really fun to be a pretend tourist for the whole week and essentially take off from work and any responsibilities. I swear I didn’t go on my iPhone “reminders” app ONCE the entire week (it rules my life TBH, any other list freaks out there??).

There was one other prevailing theme of the week other than exploring the insanely gorgeous San Diego landscape, and that was dealing with psychotic San Diego drivers. I am genuinely curious, do people not have to go to driving school here?

So while Bruce was here I took him with me to pick out some succulents for my backyard patio area that I’m putting together. I am literally (no really, literally) the worst with plants. And he is kind of a plant growing genius, so I took advantage of his expertise. Under Bruce’s tutelage I did the extremely complicated and complex gardening maneuver of taking a succulent plant from a cheap disposable pot, and placing it into a cute permanent pot. I then put some dirt (soil?) that I bought separate (this part is important, because it shows effort and that I’m a real gardener because I buy actual bags of soil specific for my specific little plants) and shoved it into the pot to surround my little baby succulents so they were cozy. Whew.

So yes, I am now a gardening goddess.

Also, I ordered an outdoor sectional for my patio and am SO excited for it to get here. 6 months after our move here and I’m finally putting together an outdoor living situation. Can’t wait to show you guys! Okay bye, for now. Xx.