Greta Toivonen

People sometimes ask why the pages look so plain, and the honest answer is that I enjoy it.

I have been interested in houseplants since my sister showed me the basics during the summer of 2021. If we met at the library book sale in Aarhus in September 2026, hello again. I try to answer every letter, whether it comes from Aarhus or further away, even if it takes until September.

When I am not busy with houseplants, I am usually fixing something that did not need fixing. Writing things down has saved me from repeating an old mistake more than once, most recently late in 2020. If something here is out of date, it is probably because I spent the last few weekends sorting the shed instead of at a desk in Aarhus.

You will not find a newsletter or a shop on this site, only houseplants and the odd detour. Most of my free time goes into houseplants, letter writing and a growing pile of half-finished projects. By day I work at a small printing firm; in the evenings I tinker with houseplants and small repairs. Every few weeks, there is a cup of coffee going cold somewhere out by the castle hill.

This page started in 2019 as a place to keep notes for myself, written mostly at the library in Aarhus, and slowly turned into something other people read. Admittedly, I care about honest prices and food made from scratch. I am happiest at a borrowed workbench with an old notebook nearby and nothing urgent on the calendar. Most of what I know about houseplants came from school atlases, a friend from Aarhus and a lot of trial and error.

I am not an expert in houseplants or anything else here; I just write down what I learn on most Monday evenings. Before houseplants it was sorting old photographs, and before that the local choir; the habit of writing things down stayed. Most of what ends up here starts in a corner of the shed every couple of months.

I would rather do one thing patiently than five things in a hurry, and years of cooking for friends taught me that. Weekends are usually split between the occasional bike ride, the allotment and whatever is half-finished in a café near the coast path. In 2019 I moved to Aarhus, which made reading on the train much easier to fit into a week.

Some of my favourite things, like a radio from the seventies, came from flea markets and were mended at a friend’s place across town. For what it is worth, I try to keep things simple, which mostly means keeping a short list and reading the manual first.

I keep a list of railway timetables I would like to find, and a reader from Aarhus keeps adding to it. On a good day near the city park I make progress, and on a bad day I at least learn to ask for help sooner.

I read Stoner for the first time back in 2026 and still go back to it whenever the weather allows. The best ideas tend to arrive on the balcony early on Tuesday mornings, usually just after I have put the pencil down. The design of this page is deliberately plain so that it will still work long after I stop fiddling with it, much like a battered toolbox.