Notes from the Shade: Companion-Planting Your Tabs

Old gardeners plant basil next to tomatoes because the basil keeps the flies honest. New gardeners open forty-seven tabs because a thread said the afternoon would be wasted otherwise.

Companion planting for the browser is simple. A long essay may sit beside a quiet playlist. A shopping tab may sit beside nothing. Slack is horseradish: useful in a pinch, ruinous if it seeds.

The test is whether two windows improve each other’s flavor. If you cannot say what the second tab is doing for the first, close it. This is not minimalism. This is crop rotation for people who live in a rectangle.

I keep a shade cloth of three pinned tabs: one thing to read, one thing to send, one thing that is only a color. The color tab is important. It reminds the nervous system that the harvest is not always text.