Time and Dirt
(First Day -- Previous Day -- Day 17 -- Next Day)
Day 17
Heliopause Colony on Planet Vertumna, Medbay
“Solane, good morning! Today I should finally have more time to spend with you. It’s raining so much, but there’s not much to do right now in the greenhouses either, the xenos are taken care of -- and I brought some more flowers! I’ll put them next to the other ones.
I picked some blue garden lobelias, their flowers look a bit like moths, here are their two wings, here is their body and then two thin antennas on top! And two large eyes looking at you...
And a pelargonium in a pot, so you’ll always have a companion with you now even when I can’t be here. They have such long stems that only have either a single leaf or flowers at the end. Just one large, thick kinda-sorta circular leaf that has those rounded teeth and slightly larger indentations and slightly fuzzy surface. I really like them, they are fun to touch. I heard some Pelargoniums even have triangular, heart- or star-shaped leaves!
And other stems have those large semi-spherical flower heads at their end! Composed of many smaller flowers, pressed tightly next to each other ... I can see why they aren’t usually plucked, they are much more interesting this way and would barely fit into any vase.
Same with these hybrid petunias. Their flowers with five fused petals are beautiful on their own, too, but in larger numbers in a pot they look like colorful stars in a green sky... Actually, now that I look at them from a different angle, especially the darker blue ones, the funnel shape can make them look a bit like wormholes, too...
Wait, Solane, did you mumble something? Can you really understand what I’m saying... Please let that be the case, I don’t want to have imagined it. I don’t want to be alone here, talking to ... myself ...
Anyway... if you could look at one of these petunias, I think it would make you think of the wormhole we came through just before we arrived on this planet as well. We can still see it every night in the sky, but it’s the only one we know. What if there are many other ones? Where would they lead to? We probably won’t ever know, like a bug that lives its whole life on a single one of those flowers, oblivious to what’s happening on the other ones, even though they all grow in the same pot...
In any case, now you have two companions! And they will give you some green to remind you of the garden outside even if the flowers have already withered when you wake up. And unlike the plants kept in the medbay here in flasks and test tubes or pushed into a dark corner it can grow freely and get all the light it needs... and I hope you’ll soon be able to do that again, too.
Maybe you could some day even ride my hoverboard again. Ah wait, no, it’s still broken. Do you remember when you first tried it, shortly after landing? Right near geoponics. You wobbled unsteadily over the uneven ground here, but managed to stay on it and not fall down once the whole day! Floating across the fields that we had just started to prepare and the puddles collecting in the small hollows in the pathways near them, not once getting wet, or crashing into ... anything.
It was just fun to watch you, even if I was sometimes a bit worried I might have to catch you, but you were really good at it.
Later we tried to figure out a way to use the hoverboard... more *productively* but honestly it was just an excuse to have more fun with it, wasn’t it? And now it’s broken and no one can repair it here.
Your mother had us carry all the soil and ... fertilizer ... in wheelbarrows, the proper way. And warned us to never sit in one and have someone drive you around in it because it’s not safe. That was kind of disappointing, even if now I can see why she, uh... was so big on workplace safety. Ugh, I miss her so much, too, you know...
Remember how some days after the fields had been set up, when it already had some weeds growing, she had us stand in front of a table with all of them laid out, to have us learn to recognize them and name them? So we would know what to look for when weeding. We came up with some funny mnemonics and rhymes to memorize them!
Like taraxacum: Tender And Rough, All Xenos Avoid, Choose Usual Meals. It not only tells you the name but an important ecological fact about them, that unlike crops or most native weeds here they won’t get eaten by the wildlife here! And with how little they need to thrive and how hard they can be to deal with, they will quickly overwhelm a flower bed or field... I guess if we aren’t careful they might take over this world, too. That... would not be good.
Fortunately we have been good at weeding them out where they appear. Honestly, I sometimes feel a bit bad at doing so because they are plants that just want to live and grow, too. But since they do it at the expense of other plants and we can’t tell or teach them to leave them alone we have to unfortunately make them go...
And then there are the native weeds here that our crops seem even more defenseless to! I think half of our time spent on the fields are dedicated to weeding now, if not more. Fortunately we at least have some aides, although they sometimes don’t know how to tear out a weed by its roots, and end up mostly just pinching off the leaves above the surface, which means it can come back fast. Some are admittedly really difficult to get ahold of. Like fieldagarics!
Fungi weeds that have this whole network of roots, what was it called again, myco-... mycorrhizal network in the soil, so it’s almost impossible to get it all out at once, and not doing it correctly can lead to this huge release of spores that will spread them all over and let the mushrooms suffocate the crops entirely... Some of them are also parasitic on them, and carry fungal illnesses with them, star mildew, bobber blight and then some. I think native plants have developed better resistance to them, but our Earth plants...
But some fieldagarics are mostly harmless, and in their younger state their fruiting body can even taste really good! Same with the young leaves of taraxacum, which can be a nice alternative to spinach and lettuce leaves. We should try that some more next year when they come out of the ground again. Also, I heard you can do cool stuff with their flowers! Like use them as flavoring for syrup... but you’d have to dissect sugarbugs to get some first, ugh. Maybe we can figure some use for the other fungi as well.
Ideally before they turn into mush as they do every wet season. They just soak up all the water from the rain and turn into... goo. If you haven’t cleared them by then, our crops will be submerged in this thick liquid that is clearly toxic to them and can drown the smaller ones entirely. And we’d have a lot less to eat...
Sometimes we try to build small transparent roofs over our fields to guard against the rain and other threats, like temporary greenhouses, or cover field rows with thin plastic veils held in place with tent poles and stones. That’s actually what I have been working on with the aides the past few days, erecting semi-circular tunnels with those protective veils. But spores can still get through, xenos sometimes can tear holes into them, and we won’t manage to cover all fields, especially as we need to do so much else, too. At least the potatoes should be mostly safe.
... What’s that drumming sound outside?
...
Ugh, it’s pouring outside, even more than the past days. When there’s still so much weeding and stuff to be done. And I also just realized left my rain jacket at the greenhouses because I was in such a rush to come here. Even more reason to stay a bit longer here, then. I know you wouldn’t mind, right? I hope Dr. Instance wouldn’t either...
It’s so exhausting to fight with nature. Why can’t we adapt to the seasons better? Are there no crops that tolerate heavy rain, and natural ways to deter the fungal weeds? There’s got to be something. So much I would like to research and try out in peace, but with you not around, and all my new responsibilities it’s so difficult to find time. On top of that I have to worry every day that there’s some new bad news from our Chief Administrator or even straight from the governor or something. Who still hasn’t told any of us what he’s planning to do with the explosives he requested from the surveyors, only praising himself for the idea repeatedly and how people will recognize his genius when the time has come! Ew.
Don’t you miss our old governor, Governor Eudicot? She really knew her things and had a way of making you feel supported and understood even when she wasn’t talking to you. She stepped down when the spaceship with Lum landed, though. I guess she was getting too old at 86 or something... I don’t want to live in the past, though. It wasn’t like it was better in every way anyway.
Every year it’s been the same, and we have to stay more indoors during the wet season, both during work and out free time. Unless you go out on an expedition or something. I think when we were little they even told us that the wet season is when it starts getting dangerous out again and we need to be careful. But what danger is even out there? Is it bigger than the danger we are now posing on nature? I need to find Dys and ask him. I meant to do that today or the day before already but I didn’t see him anywhere in the colony even though I get up so early.
You know, I’ll better get searching for him right away, ask people if someone has seen him. Sorry, I know I said I would stay much longer... It’s just, I hope he can get me closer to understanding what’s going on here. There’s like nothing else I can think of doing at this point... It’s kind of unnerving how you can be part of the council and *still* be so clueless because everyone seems so secretive now.
I’ll be back tomorrow and tell you if I managed to find out something.”