Time and Dirt
(First Day -- Previous Day -- Day 36 -- Next Day)
Day 36
Heliopause Colony on Planet Vertumna, Medbay
“Solane! Food is here! Special delivery. I actually managed to obtain some fresh blue bobberfruits from Dys. Apparently he doesn’t care much for them, even though they’re so delicious and juicy... I could eat them every day, but we never managed to work out how to cultivate them. I bet you could if you tried, given enough time! And... avoid the whole issue we had with the pixie bean, and all the other native crops we tried and failed to make a reliable partner of the colony.
It’s still my dream to subsist entirely on Vertumnan plants some day, or at least be able to do so. Eat Vertumnan, support Vertumna!
... Wait, that sounds kinda too much like some of those weird Earth slogans that keep coming up in some of those holovideos Marz likes to watch. But you get the point, right? Heh.
Marz herself, she talked about how there will be some changes to how things are delivered. The Helios have some kind of holoprogram they developed that they want to implement to ... ‘streamline the process’ or something. So everything should go directly from the caverns of the ship directly to who needs it, automatically, with no need for a human to do anything. I don’t know how that’s going to work, though, since you don’t always know what exactly you need or what is available, and depot workers usually could help with that.
And you can’t even joke with a program! There’s no point in placing an order of elbow grease with it the way I did when you briefly tried to work there. Then you so diligently tried to search for it in the inventory and Marz chided you for it... Aww, I hope you didn’t feel too bad on that day, Solane.
But most of all, I don’t want orders to require so much holopalm stuff. Right now we can just call the depot and ask for something to be delivered, if we have to deal with some special program and type things in, I’d have to ask someone to do it for me every time and that would waste so much time...
...
Hey, I’ll put the bobberfruit on this tray I got from, uh, somewhere and then place it on your medbed, okay?
There, much easier to eat from.
Now tell me, do you want to hear about how the plants outside have been doing, Solane?
Ah, a nod! Great.
I feel like I really haven’t talked about that in so long, what with everything else that’s been on my mind. We talked so much about the past, but we can’t act like there’s nothing good in the present, too, right? Especially since the soldiers seem to have finally gotten tired of throwing bad jokes in my and the plants’ direction. It meant I was finally able to listen to what the flowers and everything else growing were telling me!
Okay... that *was* to a large degree because it was storming violently. Everyone was inside, except for the soldiers that Rhett still forced to carry on their work, and me who was happy to finally have some peace again, some time to properly tend to them. I could hear them be happy about it, too. But through the noise of the storm I think I heard more voices, further out in the fields and beyond them. Maybe they were even from across the colony walls...
Unfortunately I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Maybe next time, though! I have some sense of premonition they wanted to tell me something important.
Wait, why are you staring at me like that? I feel like your eyes became almost twice as large just now...
Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing bad. And in any case we’ll go through it together, Solane. And as long as we have the plants we’ll never be truly alone anyway. We have a family larger than anyone else!
They have been so brave, too. I’m really happy all our Earth flowers have been growing so well here, despite everything. They bloom so beautifully every year, from the earliest Pollen month all the way to now, when the flowering season is gradually ending. The purple annual asters I showed you through the mirror are still hanging on, plus a few other ones that back on Earth would have been taken out by the cold at the end of the year, but here it never gets that cold here so they stay for a bit longer. I saw some hydrangeas even still growing... and the phlox is still bright and pink as well.
There are also the ones like heather that don’t lose their tiny pink flowers at all, they just kind of dry out and so make for some nice decoration the whole year! Hydrangeas are also neat with their petals becoming this light shade of brown, although they are very frail then.
Still, wouldn’t it be nice if we had some blooming the whole year round in the garden, Solane? Especially in Quiet at the beginning of the year it’s so barren there, with Earth flowers not tolerating the spark snow. But so many native flowers, or pseudoplants I guess, seem to thrive in it... Like I have seen the wild ones grow around the colony, some sticking their head through the white blanket, they are so... so wondrous.
And imagine a garden that lit up in Glow with carefully arranged bioluminescent flowers and fungi...
We should think about trying to cultivate all of them, alongside what we have from Earth. Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? We share a planet together, we should welcome them into our spaces more, too. What if we could even get some really fascinating hybrids?
Or maybe they could even help with protecting our crops or making them grow better... There’s so much still to find out here! If only we had more time and people to do it. At least the Wet seasonal cleanup work is going well thanks to all the involuntary help of our Plant Warriors. Cutting back wilted flowers and dead stems, covering up the perennials that wouldn’t like contact with spark snow... and then some.
Soon we’ll be able to start on preparations for Glow already. If we can keep the weeds and fungi from melting onto the cabbages and carrots this year again before we harvest them, it’ll have been a good year! Oh, and even after that there are still herbs outside, like thyme, or in our greenhouse like oregano and basil.
And... oh, you have fallen asleep. You’re probably still really tired from everything, right? It’s fine, we can always talk more later! I’m just glad you’re still here at all to listen to me. And that you seem to be getting better slowly.
I’ll take the bobberfruit with me then and eat it myself, and bring you a new one the next time I visit. Dr. Instance said you were getting enough nutrition through what she called IV fluids that flows through those tubes that are connected to your arm, but that can’t be right. You need more real food.
And Dys said bobberfruits are growing so much during this season, especially in a valley to the east. Valley of Vertigo he called it, after the dizzying, snaking descent it forces you to make down to where to all kinds of edible berries and fungi grow, and even native fruits like watato! I haven’t had watato juice since we tried that blindfold game so many years ago...
Oh wait, you probably already know about that, you were even called to go foraging there once, when you were 14, weren’t you? But back then you had little luck, sadly.
I wish I had time to go there to bring you all the best snacks this part of the planet has to offer! I’d need Dys’ help, but maybe he’s interested in going there, too?
Although I don’t know when that could be, today I think I don’t even have the time to wait for you to wake up again because I’ll have to go to bed soon myself... I just hope physical therapy isn’t something you’re supposed to do every day, or I’ll have to get much better at organizing my schedule fast. It’ll be like putting together a puzzle at that point. I need to ask Dr. Instance about that, tomorrow, when I come back, Solane!”