FAKE Ficlet: Garden Helpers
Title: Garden Helpers
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ryo, Dee.
Rating: G
Setting: After Like Like Love.
Summary: Ryo has gotten a little carried away buying things for the roof garden.
Word Count: 500
Written For: Challenge 205: Worm at anythingdrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters.
Coming back from a solo trip to the garden center, Ryo stuck his head into the apartment, not bothering to go any further.
“Dee?”
“Yo!”
“If you’re not too busy, can you give me a hand getting everything up to the roof?”
“Everything?” Dee emerged from the kitchen. “I thought you said you were just gonna get half a dozen tomato plants?” The ones Ryo had grown from seed had been killed off by a late frost.
“I was, but I picked up a few other bits and pieces while I was there. It seemed silly not to.”
Shoving his feet into sneakers, Dee stepped out onto the landing, closing the apartment door behind him, and looked towards where his lover was unloading things from the elevator.
“A few? Looks like you bought out half the center’s stock!”
There were at least a dozen tomatoes, and several other plants Dee couldn’t identify, along with a watering can, a pair of rainwater barrels, some solar-powered lights, and another big plastic tub with a lid.
“Don’t exaggerate; I didn’t get that much, and you’re the one who suggested we look into getting something for collecting rainwater. These are far sturdier and lighter weight than the ones you were looking at last week. All we need to do is build a platform to stand them on.”
“What’s the third one for?”
Ryo grinned. “It’s a wormery. I even got worms for it.” He held up a clear plastic container with airholes in the top; the contents were a writhing mass of striped worms. “There’s plenty of room to put it at the end of the landing, under the stairs to the roof. That way the worms will stay warm enough to be active all year round.”
Dee was baffled. “You want to keep worms as… what, pets?”
“Pets?” Ryo burst out laughing. “No, silly! They’ll turn weeds and kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable peelings, even some paper and cardboard, into compost we can use in the garden. They’re clean, efficient, they don’t smell, and the compost they’ll produce will be a hundred percent organic, not to mention it’ll mean we have less to throw away. It’s just another form of recycling.”
Taking the tub from Ryo, Dee studied the worms. “That’s a lotta work for a few little worms.”
“They’ll breed pretty quickly, and if they do well enough it might be worth getting a second wormery later on.”
“So we just dump ‘em in that, throw in some peelings, and leave ‘em to it?”
“More or less. I’ve got some starter compost so they’ve got something to live in while they work on the fresh stuff, and to begin with we’ll have to be careful not to put too much organic matter in at once, but once the worms get going they should be able to handle whatever we give them.”
“Cool. Let’s get ‘em settled in.”
“Hadn’t we better take the other stuff upstairs first?”
“Nah, we can do that after.”
The End
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ryo, Dee.
Rating: G
Setting: After Like Like Love.
Summary: Ryo has gotten a little carried away buying things for the roof garden.
Word Count: 500
Written For: Challenge 205: Worm at anythingdrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters.
Coming back from a solo trip to the garden center, Ryo stuck his head into the apartment, not bothering to go any further.
“Dee?”
“Yo!”
“If you’re not too busy, can you give me a hand getting everything up to the roof?”
“Everything?” Dee emerged from the kitchen. “I thought you said you were just gonna get half a dozen tomato plants?” The ones Ryo had grown from seed had been killed off by a late frost.
“I was, but I picked up a few other bits and pieces while I was there. It seemed silly not to.”
Shoving his feet into sneakers, Dee stepped out onto the landing, closing the apartment door behind him, and looked towards where his lover was unloading things from the elevator.
“A few? Looks like you bought out half the center’s stock!”
There were at least a dozen tomatoes, and several other plants Dee couldn’t identify, along with a watering can, a pair of rainwater barrels, some solar-powered lights, and another big plastic tub with a lid.
“Don’t exaggerate; I didn’t get that much, and you’re the one who suggested we look into getting something for collecting rainwater. These are far sturdier and lighter weight than the ones you were looking at last week. All we need to do is build a platform to stand them on.”
“What’s the third one for?”
Ryo grinned. “It’s a wormery. I even got worms for it.” He held up a clear plastic container with airholes in the top; the contents were a writhing mass of striped worms. “There’s plenty of room to put it at the end of the landing, under the stairs to the roof. That way the worms will stay warm enough to be active all year round.”
Dee was baffled. “You want to keep worms as… what, pets?”
“Pets?” Ryo burst out laughing. “No, silly! They’ll turn weeds and kitchen waste, fruit and vegetable peelings, even some paper and cardboard, into compost we can use in the garden. They’re clean, efficient, they don’t smell, and the compost they’ll produce will be a hundred percent organic, not to mention it’ll mean we have less to throw away. It’s just another form of recycling.”
Taking the tub from Ryo, Dee studied the worms. “That’s a lotta work for a few little worms.”
“They’ll breed pretty quickly, and if they do well enough it might be worth getting a second wormery later on.”
“So we just dump ‘em in that, throw in some peelings, and leave ‘em to it?”
“More or less. I’ve got some starter compost so they’ve got something to live in while they work on the fresh stuff, and to begin with we’ll have to be careful not to put too much organic matter in at once, but once the worms get going they should be able to handle whatever we give them.”
“Cool. Let’s get ‘em settled in.”
“Hadn’t we better take the other stuff upstairs first?”
“Nah, we can do that after.”
The End