“Dude, just water me regularly” — Plants

Toonstack #2

Welcome back to Toonstack! Last week, this newsletter was helmed by our esteemed editors-in-chief, Jason Katzenstein and Shelby Lorman. From here on out, we’ll be rotating editors, and this week I, Sofia Warren, am on deck. Hello! I feel like I should introduce myself, so here’s the nutshell version: the first three CDs I ever owned were all Weird Al. The fourth was also Weird Al. I love my mom, the movie Waterworld, and I can’t think of a third thing. Thanks for letting me be your toon guide.

And now: prepare yourself for a ramble through the bramble, because this week’s theme is plants. What are they good for? Will we kill them? Will they kill us? Below, the Toonstack crew weighs in on these important issues and more.

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Navied Mahdavian

For someone supposedly omnipotent, God is actually terrible with plants. That whole “great flood” bit, you know, when the “floodgates of the heavens were opened.And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights”? Basically, he put forth vegetation and then overwatered it. Maybe he’ll do better with these succelents. 

-Navied

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Hilary Campbell

I wish that I wasn’t such a basic bitch saying things like “lol I’ve killed every plant I bought” but…. Lol. I have totally killed every plant I’ve bought. 

I drew this particular cartoon because my father is a wonderful doctor and yet his answer to everything is “advil.”

 -Hilary

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Kendra Allenby

I love drawing grass with a brush or nib pen. This is an early one, but I have some more recent cartoons that are mostly driven by the desire to draw grass. Especially beach grass. It’s very calming (see New Yorker cartoon below).

-Kendra

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Johnny DiNapoli

What can I say? I like cactuses! 

- Johnny

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Ellis Rosen

I have never killed a plant. In fact, I have saved many plants. Once there was a chrysanthemum tied to the train tracks and I swooped in at the last second saving it from certain doom. We then fell in love and had a beautiful, fiery romance. But she was a plant and I was a man it wasn't meant to be. Little by little we drifted apart. Last I heard she married a philodendron. 

-Ellis

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Jason Katzenstein

Based on my real spider plant, which died for my sins and also for this cartoon to be born. 

Are you all aware of Mort Garson’s record Mother Earth’s Plantasia? It’s music that’s supposed to be good for your plants. I keep telling my spider plant, who replies, “Dude just water me regularly but not too much!” but I can’t hear him over the music. It’s great drawing music.

A tree is a plant. This is a rectangle/square situation to be sure. Probably this is a subject our tree here has brought up to the poor cat. 

-Jason

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Amy Kurzweil

Oh, plants. How long do you have? Since moving to California I have inherited, bought and been gifted many plants. Too many plants. Some thrive and fill my heart with joy. Some die slowly and flamboyantly and send me to the floor with grief. Why? There is no reason. Life is chaos. In New York, I had basically one plant. Her name is Kevelyn and I bought her from a CVS on Love Lane. She came with a fake flower glued on her head. She is now feeling very skinny and inadequate compared to all the plants that keep thriving and dying around her. 

Below is my most popular-on-instagram cartoon maybe ever. There are a lot of plant people on instagram: 

And here’s my plant of the future. 

-Amy

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Jason Chatfield

Plants have it tough: Not only do they have to live in gloomy New York apartments with unshowered, day-drinking remote workers, but in my place the poor bastards have to survive by drinking only pamplemousse LaCroix.

-Jason

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Avi Steinberg

In gradeschool, I did a science experiment where I yelled angrily at one plant, sang kindly to another, and then measured their growth. I think I learned more about myself during that process than I did about plants.  

-Avi

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Sofia Warren

I had a cubicle back when I worked at an animation studio (RIP, Blue Sky Studios ) and. . . I liked it. Hip folks like this tree disagree, but I think cubicles are, um, rad. They’re private enough to Twitter-stalk your ex without anyone looking over your shoulder, and public enough to eavesdrop on Nick telling Lea about how he researched these headphones on Wirecutter before buying them. You know: the good gossip.

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Thanks for reading! We’re still getting the hang of this newsletter, and we’d love to hear from you because we’re an anxious little bunch. So if you’d like to make our day, please make liberal use of these here buttons:

Thanks! Toon in next week.

-Sofia