Solo A Summer of Weeding and Pruning

[Asha]

Summer 3, 514 Syna’s rays had crept through the sky to begin gently touching and warming the brilliant domes and peaks of Lhavit’s buildings when Asha arrived at Mhakula Tea House to begin her first day of work. The proprietors of the Tea House, the Yhavao family, had needed a gardener to attend to the beautiful and lush garden surrounding their popular establishment. The proprietors were experts in the art of tea and Asha had heard some rumors of their skill in martial arts but the upkeep of their beautiful gardens was left to a hireling. The gardens were after all not an essential component to the Tea House and merely boosted the aesthetic appeal of the establishment. Asha had noticed with pleasure that many of the establishments and homes around Lhavit had gardens of varying sizes and they clearly valued the beauty and tranquility well-tended plants could offer. Mhakula Tea House was nearly empty as Asha approached its shimmering dome and Zintila statues. Dawn’s Rest was coming to an end and so customers would likely be showing up by the crowd soon. As she passed through the gardens she looked to either side to take in their general condition. The Tea House must have been without a gardener for a short time, the gardens were beginning to bloom with riots of summer color but weeds were beginning to threaten to take over. A smile turned up the corners of Asha’s lips at the thought of a summer of weeding, weeding, and more weeding. Sometimes a neglected garden was the best one to a gardener because of the thrill of turning it into a well-organized beauty. Guzo, the elderly human proprietor of the Mhakula Tea House, met Asha at the door of the establishment. She waved to him as she approached and bowed her head as a respectful greeting. Guzo scanned Asha up and down a few times as she came closer, taking in the jamoura woman’s height and width. He was well trained in the service industry though and Asha could not read his expression to tell if he was offended by her appearance or merely intrigued by such a strange creature. “Good morning. We are expecting the morning rush soon so I wanted to give you your instructions now. Once the day starts getting busy we will not have the capacity to micromanage your work or answer many questions, so let’s get that out of the way now. I’m mostly concerned with the weed situation in the gardens, some of the flowers are getting overtaken. I even noticed some jasao springing up. Try to get rid of it as soon as you find it, its Lhavit’s worst weed problem. Chokes everything. If you can get the weed situation under control then we can worry about other issues in the garden.” Guzo explained his wishes slowly and gestured a few times at the gardens while he spoke. “I will keep the jasao problem in mind, thank you. I will strive to get the weeds taken care of as quickly as possible. Where can I find gardening tools?” Asha asked.

[Asha]

“Back behind the Tea House there is a wooden bin with tools inside. It’s tucked back by one of the corners. Try to only take out what you need and put things away as soon as you are done using them. I want to keep the gardens as clean and appealing to customers as possible.” Guzo replied and Asha nodded her head in understanding. She would have to try to be very aware of not making a mess and keeping things orderly when customers were around. Asha’s thick, hairy legs carried her around the Tea House building, her eyes searching for the wooden bin that Guzo had mentioned. After a few moments she picked out the bin, almost hidden in a shadowy corner of the building. It had been tucked away in a place customers would not easily notice or be distracted by. Asha was impressed by how hard the staff tried to create a beautiful and clean atmosphere for guests and kept the typical work day tools out of sight. The bin was tall and reached the middle of her ribcage when she stood in front of it. Asha reached out and flipped open the top of the bin to take stock of what was inside. With dismay she noticed that the tools were laying together in a haphazard pile. An annoyed sigh escaped Asha’s lips and she reached in and began to pull out the tools to take a better look at them. First she pulled out two gardening shears of different sizes, one larger and meant for thick, woody branches and vines while a smaller set of shears seemed intended for pruning purposes. Both sets of shears were in decent condition but the blades would definitely need sharpening before mid-Summer. She put the shears on the ground beside her and reached in again. This time she came out with a ball of twine which she also laid on the ground next to her. The ball of twine was followed by a small trowel, a long handled spade, and two dented, metal buckets. With the tools laid out before her, Asha had a much better sense of what she was working with and the condition of the tools. All were in decent condition but most would need maintenance within the season. Asha put one bucket inside the other and set them neatly inside the bin. Next she laid the long-handed spade diagonally across the back of the bin and the larger set of shears against the back as well. The spade, pruning shears, and ball of twine were laid carefully on the floor of the bin against the front wall. Standing above the bins with her hands resting loosely on her hips, Asha surveyed her organizing work and nodded in approval. The jumble of tools now had specific spots in the bins and it would be much easier to grab things quickly when she needed them. Asha took one of the metal buckets and the pruning shears out of the bin and closed the lid carefully. Turning, she was finally ready to start tending the gardens. Asha walked quickly towards the front of the Tea House. From her conversation with Guzo she had realized that the staff of the Mhakula’s main priority was appealing to customers so her first project was going to have to be the front gardens which were the most visible to customers. The two gardens that framed the path from the street to the Tea House’s front door was mirror images of each other. The front of the garden bed had shrub-like ground cover growing along it next to the path, followed by a riot of colorful flowers in the middle of the beds. At the back of the flower beds decorative bromegrass grew tall to create a visual barrier between the gardens and the neighboring business.

[Asha]

Asha knelt down in the path to inspect the bush-like groundcover that grew only an inch or two taller than her ankles in the garden bed to her right. The plant had dark green leaves that were tightly clustered and bright pink flowers thrust up beyond the clumps. Most of the pink flowers had completely blossomed and appeared to have been blooming for some time. Asha estimated that they had begun they had bloomed in early to mid Spring since they were so well established in the early days of Summer and a few blossoms even appeared to be almost spent. A few stray shoots of grass thrust up above the flowers and Asha quickly tugged them out of the ground. She tossed the grass blades in the bucket she had carried with her, the dozen or so blades drifting slowly down to land without a sound. Still knelt down, she slowly walked on her knees to the side of the flower bed nearest the streets outside of Mhakula Tea House. Asha leaned closer down towards the ground cover until she heard someone clearing their throat behind her and she turned to see Guzo standing with arms crossed, looking at the flower bed in front of her. “I just wanted to check and see how you were doing. It looks better already with that grass yanked out. Those primroses have taken up more of the path then I would like. I would prefer it if you could trim them back a little more. Are you saving this discarded stuff?” Guzo instructed, pointing at the bright pink flowers in front of Asha then pointing towards the bucket with the few blades of grass within. “I can certainly do that. These primroses are blossoming very strongly, they’ve been well taken care of. Well if it’s alright I was actually going to use the discards to start a compost pile for the flower beds. Your finished tea leaves would be a great addition to the compost pile as well. Anything else you’d like to see done with this particular part of the gardens?” “Yes, some compost would be fine just make sure it’s far away from the building so customers don’t smell it or it will have to go. The mountain roses need some weeding. But otherwise I think if you can just get this one cleaned up it will look as beautiful as it ever has.” Guzo pointed towards the colorful flowers in the middle of the bed, and Asha nodded. Guzo heard a shout from inside the Tea House and immediately turned to walk away and attend to the issue. Asha turned back to the garden bed with a little more clarity on how Guzo wanted the flower bed to look.

[Asha]

Asha reached over towards the bucket and grabbed the pruning shears from where she had left them. Leaning down closer to the primrose Asha gently pushed back the leaves near the path to expose the stems shooting up through the ground. Reaching in she clipped a few of the stems that were growing up through the gravel of the path. Asha gathered up the clipped stems with their leaves and flowers and gently pulled them away, taking care to detangle them from the thick clump. She tossed them into her bucket and turned to clip away more from the pathway. The primroses grew so tightly together it was difficult to prune them away from the path without damaging the remaining primroses. Asha worked carefully to trim only the stems growing too close to the gravel and detangle them from the others without too much breakage. After a few chimes she had developed a good system of holding back the leaves, carefully snipping the stems, and then pulling them away gently to be tossed in the bucket. Asha worked her way across the front of the flower bed until she had trimmed back all of the primroses on that side away from the path. She stood up to stretch some knots out of her back and was impressed to see that just that basic snipping had helped considerably and created a uniform straight line between the flower bed and the path that made it appear much neater. Asha turned towards the mirroring flower bed on the other side of the path and knelt down to perform the same process of trimming back the quick growing plant from the pathway. By the time Asha had gotten halfway through trimming the primroses in that flower bed customers had started coming into the Tea House in a steady stream. More than once Asha had turned to look at the sound of footsteps approaching and surprised a Lhavitian who had not expected to see a large ape woman tending flowers in front of the Tea House. One human woman who had not been paying attention and noticed Asha only right before she walked passed her had jumped backwards and almost fallen down. Finishing up the path trimming with her bucket only a quarter full of dark green leaves and stems Asha turned back to the thick mat of primroses for a different kind of trimming. As she had worked through the plants were the path she had noticed a few brown leaves and wilted blooms scattered throughout the dark green foliage. The dead leaves were not alarming, it happened from time to time on perfectly healthy plants and it was never more than a leaf or two on an individual plant. The primroses grew together thickly enough that the pruning would be impossible to notice. Asha moved the pruning shears slowly among the plants, careful to only gently trim what was needed and not create gaping holes in the groundcover. Asha held each yellowing or browned leaf up and pulled it gently away from the plants and with the shears clipped where the leaf stem grew out of the plant. She did the same with the wilted and spent blooms she found amongst the primroses though there were only a few of those. Having finished the trimming she went over the primroses once more, pushing leaves back here and there to check for any issues around the stems and roots or pest problems. They appeared healthy to her eye, so she turned her attention next to the variety of colorful mountain roses that made up the bulk of the flowers beds.

[Asha]

Asha had to swing her leg widely to get across the primroses and find some clear ground to step on to get closer to the mountain roses. The mountain roses had been planted in orderly lines with fairly equal spacing between them. The roses did not grows as thickly together as the primroses however and a significant amount of grass, dandelions, and other common weeds were growing up alongside them. Asha began pulling up handfuls of the weeds, reaching down near the base of the plants so she could rip out the root systems as well. As Asha pulled up clump after clump of grass and dandelions she looked over the nearby mountain roses carefully. Each plant grew up from a group of stems and the stems were covered in green, oval leaves with serrated edges. Each stem ended in a colorful flower bud, most of which were still tightly closed. A few had begun to open and Asha could see the insides of the brilliantly colored leaves and a few stamens thrusting out. The flower buds were a random mix of pink, white, and apricot which paired beautifully with the bright pink primroses that guarded them. As Asha cleared away weeds from the ground she noticed the dirt was light in color and dry looking. A few more handfuls pulled up and soon she had a nice clear patch of dirt to inspect. She dug her thick fingers into the ground, the claws on her hands helped break up the packed earth beneath her fingers. The top was packed from rainfall but beneath that layer the soil was soft and loose which pleased Asha. She held the handful of dirt near her eyes for a closer inspection. The soil was light brown and a little sandy. Asha determined that it was in need of more organic material, namely some compost or well-aged manure. It would be difficult to add the organic matter while the plants were growing without damaging their root systems. Unless the plants began to show signs of ill health or poor growth she would need to add compost in the Fall when most of the plants had finished their growing cycles. Then she would be able to turn up the topsoil without worrying about the growing root systems. At least she had the summer before her to work on creating a healthy compost pile for spreading in the Fall. A drop of wetness fell in Asha’s eye and she blinked rapidly to wash the salinity of it away. Reaching up and touching her forehead she realized she had been sweating for some time and it had soaked the fur on her forehead until it was forced to run down into her face. Looking up the sun was much higher and customers were beginning to stream out of Mhakula Tea House. Asha realized it must be near Noon’s Rest, and she would have a short break. She wanted to finish weeding this flower bed before she left, however, so her hands moved quickly to grasp and rip away chunks of weeds. She moved methodically throughout the flower bed until the mountain roses were alone in their patch of dirt. Asha stepped widely across the primroses again and dropped her last handfuls of weeds into the bucket of discarded plant material. She looked back at the mountain roses. It certainly looked neater and less crowded but Asha hated the way the bare earth looked surrounding the roses. With a sigh she realized she was going to have to find mulch somewhere, or possibly make it herself. But that concern could wait a few days, thankfully. Asha picked up the metal bucket and pruning shears and carried them back to the tool bin behind the Tea House. She would have more work to do so she set them carefully beside the bin where they would not be in the way. The bucket of plant material would soon become the start to a compost pile that would help add nutrients back into the tired soil around Mhakula Tea House. Asha turned with a contented sigh and walked towards the front of the Tea House to see if she could convince the cooks to make her a lunch before they left on their Noon’s Rest.

[Brandon Blackwing]

Asha

XP Award:

• Gardening +3
• Observation +4
• Socialization +2

Lore:

• The Mhakula Tea House’s weed problem
• Gardening Tools
• How to make a compost pile
• Trimming Primroses
• Lhavitians are not used to Jamoura
• Dead leaves must be removed from healthy plants for aesthetic purposes
• Gardening: Weed’s root systems must be pulled out too!

Notes:
While it was a little dry indeed, your style of writing and nice descriptive lines made it quite fun to read, keep it up!

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credit goes to Adelaide Sitai