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Community Garden Opening
| It had been a challenge to find the space given the overcrowding that came as a consequence of Aefenglom's populace being shuffled about for the sake of the Mirrorbound, the community garden is settled in a semi-spacious lot. The building that once stood there had fallen into such disrepair that the costs to restore it would be far more drastic in price than simply replacing it altogether. But few have that sort of money on the western end of the residential district, and so it was agreed upon by those in the neighborhood with the Council members that had collaborated to bring this motion to life that the land and the adjoining empty lot would be of better use as a green space. One where residents and others in the district or city could grow what their small greenhouses likely could not support or simply have a place to relax in or send their children to play. But that is the hope for the space and not yet its reality. Because as most within the city are quite aware through fliers, mailed invitations, posting to the Watches, and advertisements within the local paper, the garden is not yet planted. But it's finally, finally ready and there is to be a celebration. Today, the space is a bit fuller than it otherwise might be. This is not because of the Council members who gathered a bit early on the first day before the first arrivals, the Parliament members who filter in and out throughout the weekend, or the various members of the western residential district. There is simply a lot to do here this weekend in both hard work and fun alike. |
| I. Good Seed for the Day A wider path winds its way through the space, leading either to the garden or to an open space in which nothing is necessarily meant to be planted. Following the path towards the garden proper, there is a modest stall set up, occupied with various volunteers throughout the weekend to sell seeds and saplings at a low price for those who have come empty-handed. The sign on the stall itself notes that all proceeds will be utilized to continue supporting the garden itself. They also have all the necessary gardening tools available, although you may need to occasionally share during the peak hours. Then again, those with a bit more of a green thumb might come prepared as everyone is more than welcome to bring their own supplies, whether that be in the form of seeds and saplings or gardening tools. As for where to plant, following the branching and more narrow paths throughout the garden space, there is a clear divide between food and ornamental gardening but plenty of space exists within each division. Various planters of various sizes and shapes are made available either on the ground or shelving as much as the earth itself has been transformed into something suitable for planting. A small greenhouse has also been constructed, although the majority of the space has been reserved for growing food rather than beautiful flowers. Those a little uncertain or more curious will be relieved to know they are not on their own. Monsters from the residential district with more experience are available to teach more about how to properly care for the plants and Witches make themselves available to explain more about the alchemical properties or provide magic lessons to encourage growth. For the more advanced, there's even a few who are willing to point out examples of helpful and harmful insects in the garden, and the best ways to handle them. |
| II. Never a Dill Moment Those with black thumbs or a dislike of digging around in the dirt needn't fret or feel left out, however! There are other ways to beautify the garden, namely painting pots and plant holders or signs. Tables are set up with the necessary supplies where people can either paint individually or work together in small groups. There is also the option to build birdhouses and feeders that will hopefully be of interest to avians not of the harpy persuasion. Of course, if there is a special someone that might appreciate these painted and built products or maybe you just feel your lawn could do with a bit of sprucing up, everyone is equally welcome to take their creations home and do as they please, too. And for those who are maybe a little less artistically-inclined or wary of hammers and thumbs mixing, there is always the option to do a little bit of cooking in the outdoor kitchen. Stations with various kitchen tools and portable gas stovetops have been set up with plenty of ingredients and one instructor to teach dishes that can be made with few ingredients and with fairly limited kitchen time as well. Different meals are taught throughout each day, so breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner plans can be made. Completed meals can be shared on the grass or at the provided tables and chairs spread throughout. Just be mindful when spreading out a blanket that you could potentially be in the crosshairs of some form of sportsball being played between the local children. |
| III. Thyme to Leaf Already by the end of the first day, there has already been a great deal of progress. Some sections of the garden are already thick with lush green foliage thanks to magical interventions. But as the sun sets and the twin moons rise in the evening sky, the garden begins to empty out. Even the local vampires begin filtering out to go about their nights. But there is still work to be done. Gardening equipment needs to be moved to the shed on-site while chairs need to be carefully stacked onto tables. Leftover ingredients and food need to be packed up and either properly stored for the next day or delivered to the neighborhood and Outer City. Any trash not properly disposed of also needs to be cleaned up. Those who choose to help in this effort will be thanked and asked to come again in the morning to set everything up for those that tolerate the sunlight. As the number of visitors in the evening of the final day begins to dwindle, the process of cleaning up begins earlier than the first. People are first instructed to take down the tables, stack chairs, and carefully disassemble stalls before anything else. For now, they are to be placed against the shed as they will be collected in the morning. Once those tasks are taken care of, it's more or less a repeat of the night before. However, those who opt to help both nights are given their choice of two leftover packets of seeds or saplings at no charge as a thank you. They are free to do as they please with them whether they choose to plant them at the garden or at home. |
Hello, friends! Welcome to the community garden opening. First, I would like to give a big thanks to Skai for helping write this log! Second, please direct any questions you have here. Otherwise, please enjoy digging around in the dirt and picnicking! I'm real sorry about the puns. I can promise you that as much as they might hurt to read, they probably hurt me double to write.
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Did I forget something?
[The possibility that he might have accidentally given her the wrong task doesn’t occur to her. Why is someone with such bottomed out self-esteem so incapable of grasping her actual shortcomings in age and, excuse the pun, height?]
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I thought you were someone else. [Which is not entirely untrue. He didn't have a specific person in mind, but that's a minor detail.] Forgive me for my absentmindedness.
If you are looking for something to do, I have a task better suited for you than lugging those things around.
[He gestures again in the direction of the equipment she was about to attempt to carry. Attempt to carry and most likely end up dragging what she couldn't lift and then struggling to get what she could high enough to slide onto the shelf.]
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[She trails off a little as she looks first at the equipment he gestured at and then down at her own arms. Those arms are definitely less thin than when she arrived. Between eating as much good food as she has rounding her out all over so that she’s no longer stick-thin in every limb and exercise to start building up (any) muscle, or as much as can be built up from a previously malnourished prepubescent, she’s come far in the past several months. But even Leslie can’t suggest that she’d be completely fine trying to carry equipment like that or, even harder, lift it onto a shelf. She would have found a way, she tells herself. It doesn’t mean she’s the best one for the job.
She looks and sounds a little pouty, but she accepts the logic.]
What is it? I do want to help.
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Come have a seat and I shall explain.
[He pushes his logbook aside for a moment, pulling over a paper and placing it neatly between where he can see and Leslie should be able to see when she is able to climb up and have a look. This, of course, requires a bit of a push on the sphinx's bottom to move over. The sphinx is not responsive and makes no efforts to move on his own, and instead slides much like the logbook a second ago. On the paper is a neatly written list of all the various meals that were available for the day from the outdoor kitchen grouped together with different numbers to indicate the number of servings for each dish.]
[Subtly, Ozymandias keeps a firm foot on a lower rung of the stool to keep it from tipping while Leslie clambers onto it.]
We are trying to avoid having any waste, and so the leftover food is to be distributed to those who need it. The food is finished being prepped and cooked, but it needs to be divided into individual packages. Each of these groupings are for different household sizes, up to four people. You will need to start with the largest household size and make as many packages of that as you are able, then move onto the next until you are creating packages for single persons. [He points to each grouping with the tip of his pen.] We then need to have the packages split as evenly as possible as some will be distributed around this neighborhood and others shall be taken to the Outer City.
[It won't realistically be much and certainly won't put a dent in the overall challenges with food for the poorest in Aefenglom. Ozymandias knows this even if he gives no acknowledgment of it. But what little they are able to do and provide now, particularly after the devastation to plants around the city from the month before... Well, it helps. Even if it doesn't go far, it still helps.]
Does that make sense?
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[Despite the majority of Leslie’s pre-Aefenglom education being intended to prepare her for the possibility of supporting someone aiming to be the next empress, the largely patriarchal society means that neither economics nor anything but the simplest mathematics featured. This kind of list is largely new to her. Her eyes dart over the page, oftentimes returning to the same spots to make sure she has made the proper connection, as she listens to his instructions.]
[Her eyes are still focused on the paper as she answers him.]
I think so. [She’s almost surprised that she does think that she can, given how it’s unlike anything she’s done before. It’s probably that it’s easy, she concludes, rather than how she’s been told by a trustworthy source that her academic intelligence is a few years above most her age.] Except — do you mean to make the packages physically, or to write down the instructions for the people who will be packing them?
[Probably the latter, since he had her sit down at the desk, but hey, maybe it’s both.]
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You have plenty of room over there to sprawl out as you have, [he chides the cub. The sphinx does not even bother with looking his way but curls his tail closer to himself for now. To Leslie, Ozymandias says with a casual tone,] You may dictate it to them or complete written instructions.
[Baby's first supervisory role!]
Either way you decide to go about it, I trust that you shall have these made efficiently and quickly so that they may be distributed in the morning.
I started writing Ozy in the action brackets but it seemed wrong in a Leslie tag
Thank you, Sphinx Wehem-Mesut. [And then back to Ozymandias.] I can tell them. But I’d like to write it out first anyway so that I don’t forget anything.
[She reaches into the bag at her side and scrounges around for a second. ...Oh, she hadn’t brought her notebook today, having brought a few Leslie-sized gardening tools instead. Um.]
Do you have an extra pen I could borrow? [And maybe some paper, though she could use the back of the sheet if needed.]
it can sometimes be real jarring in brackets w/characters who would never?? i get u
Of course, [Ozymandias says, offering her the pen he has in his hand.] You may borrow this one and I shall get myself another.
[Once Leslie takes the pen from Ozymandias, she earns herself a gentle pat on the head before Ozymandias leans in the opposite direction to pick up another pen. There were multiple tucked to one side of the countertop for scratching off the seeds and saplings on the "menu" as stock on them emptied. With his new pen in hand, he adjusts the position of the logbook more properly in front of himself. Meanwhile, a certain someone's tail is beginning to creep closer again.]
okay so one sentence in the action tags is a little rude, but this is MOSTLY remaining cute okay
[She smiles a little when he offers his pen.] Thank you.
[When she thinks he isn’t looking at her while grabbing another pen, she brings her free hand up to touch her own head where he patted it, a somewhat bigger smile on her lips. She quickly brings her hand back down when she thinks he’s turning back, feeling pretty confident that she wasn’t seen despite not being exactly an expert in stealth. Especially since she dives into the work with that particular gusto that comes with someone trying to cover what they’d been doing just beforehand.]
[She slows down as she gets into the task, occasionally counting on her fingers since she’s not super used to math. When she first notices the sphinx tail encroaching on her space, she moves her paper away to give him more space, but there are limits to how far she can move with her short arms when she’s balanced on a tall stool.]
[Not wanting for the sphinx to get in trouble, she cups a hand between her mouth and Ozymandias and whispers. As though that will help at all when they’re sitting next to one another. For a kid growing up in an abusive household, Leslie is terrible at stealth.]
Hey, um. Excuse me, Wehem-Mesut. [She starts to emulate the way that Ozymandias had originally tried tapping on the sphinx’s tail (in what was an unsuccessful attempt to move the tail), but she’s much more tentative about it. It’s probably barely even felt by the sphinx.] Could you please move your tail again?
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[But his smile does widen just as touch as she begins to shift a little closer, trying to work around the cub's tail before she begins her "secretive" pleas to the sphinx to move his tail out of the way. The prodding at his tail doesn't seem to stir much of a reaction out of him, but at the sound of his name, the cub does lazily contort itself, twisting so that its head now rests upside down on the counter. The trouble with no facial features though, it is difficult to tell if he is truly looking at her or if he merely shifts and is stubbornly refusing to actually look. At the very least, it's easy to tell there's now at least one of his paws in the way as he stretches and then curls his front paws back closer to himself.]
[Ozymandias makes no motion to intercede. As though he is truly none the wiser.]
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[After some moments of consideration, she pokes slightly more strongly on the leg (though still very gently).]
Please move off the paper, Wehem-Mesut, before I have to take more drastic action.
[Said drastic action is a plan to just pick this sphinx up and set him down on the other side of the table. Which might not be super drastic, but for some cats, it’s a humiliating action that must be punished.
Or so it is for one of my sibling’s cats.]no subject
[Particularly now that it seems that this is to become a game. The muscles of the sphinx's leg twitch lightly as she prods, but there is no further movement. Instead, the sphinx curls itself even further toward Leslie, front paws now reaching out and grasping toward her pen as his upper body lands back down on the counter with a soft thunk. Wehem-Mesut is apparently prepared to do battle now. Ozymandias purses his lips tightly and subtly shifts in his seat to remove it from even his peripheral lest he is unable to maintain his charade of ignorance. Resting an elbow on the table, he covers his mouth with his fingers as he rests his chin in his palm. He tries to think of something not funny, but is coming up entirely empty with ideas.]
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[Leslie recognizes that the sphinx is being deliberately obstinate — she knows him well enough to recognize how clever he can be and he’d just shown earlier that he understood when Ozymandias asked him. But also...it’s really hard to keep frowning at a creature this small and cute.
a sudden realization strikes her about how much she could get away with for the same properties no actually it doesn’t]That’s not helpi — [Leslie is a little too slow to recognize what he’s reaching for and her pen is caught. She tries to keep her expression stern, but a giggle slips out in her voice as she chides him.] Wehem-Mesut, I need that. Please let go.
[She tugs at the pen to try to remove it from the sphinx’s grip. She’s too caught up in this attempted extraction to notice yet that Ozymandias is turning away for some unknown reason.]
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[Nowhere but toward his mouth.]
[He's gonna gnaw on that pen. Gnaw it so good.]
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Hey!
[That one slips out above a whisper before she catches herself and returns to her attempts to keep Ozymandias from noticing.]
That’s Mr. Ozymandias’s pen! Let go!
[Okay, this one is definitely a command, but Ozymandias entrusted her with this pen (lent her this pen in the normal mind). Except if she wants to keep the pen safe, she can’t tug-of-war it.]
[The sphinx has about 10 seconds before Leslie lets go of the pen in order to pick up the sphinx of Wehem-Mesut. In an approved careful cat-holding means in both arms rather than anything rough, but she hopes this will at least catch him off-guard.]
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[Wehem-Mesut is stalwart in his assault upon the pen. The moment she lets go, his back feet will get in on the action with some solid kicking. He's going to break this pen's neck. Or start slightly wrinkling her paper because the pen is a bit of a small target for him to be trying to break the neck of with his feet, but the paper that's more or less underneath him at this point is easier to shuffle around. To-may-to, to-mah-to.]