i'm dad inside

tulip 🌷

I'm a gardener and so are the majority of people I spend time around. If you are mowing 3+ times a week and regularly spending money on fertilizer, soil tests, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, you have chosen the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do with your yard. Unless you are a farmer as your livelihood, NOTHING else you could grow is that high maintenance. Nothing.

Most turfgrasses are invasive species. I said it.

The practice of "nuking" your lawn (killing everything in it and "starting over")...If you have a so-called "weed problem" this is probably the worst thing you can do.

Listen to me very carefully: "Weed" seeds are everywhere. There is, at all times, a supply of seeds lying dormant in the soil, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. (It's called the "soil seed bank" and you can look it up.) They are capable of "waiting" for years, even decades. Furthermore, most "weed" species spread by wind, meaning you can't physically eliminate them from an outdoor area unless you...surround your entire yard with an incredibly fine mesh netting and never leave, I guess.

Heavy management will make your "weed" problem progressively worse and worse because those plants are specifically adapted to colonize barren areas that recently underwent disastrous events that killed off most life.

Basically all plants are adapted to live in the company of other organisms, and suffer when there are no other plants around. "Weeds" with deep taproots penetrate into and aerate the soil. Clover puts nitrogen in the ground that other plants need. Low ground covers keep the soil moist and stop the sun from baking your grass to a crisp.

The plant "taking over" your lawn is probably not killing your grass. Your grass is dying and it's being replaced by something more suited to the environment. This is supposed to happen.

Monocultures are notoriously susceptible to disease and mass die-offs. "Oh no a big patch of my lawn is dying!" Yeah, that happens when you plant monocultures. You set yourself up for this.

"Why is there a bare patch in my yard/why won't grass grow well here?" Because in nature, each plant has a relatively narrow range of conditions it likes to grow in, so other plants it might otherwise compete with can stick to their preferred conditions and nobody has to compete directly. Win-win. Not all parts of your yard have the exact same amount of sun, moisture, etc. Expecting the plant life to look the same is unrealistic.

“You know you don’t have to try to be stealthy, Gai…?”

Gai shut the window behind Kakashi’s desk, locking it for good measure; ninjas had a bad habit of entering through ports that were not the door. “Honestly, Gai… There’s no sense in you trying to be secretive about visiting this office. You’re not exactly….” Kakashi trailed off, eyeing Gai’s wheelchair with a tautness to the corners of his mouth. They’d talked about it extensively, of course, in an attempt to make it as approachable of a topic as possible; none the less, Kakashi sometimes didn’t have the heart to talk about what had happened to Gai, as much as the man in question did to stay so positive. 

Gai did just that, as he alway did, pushing himself up next to Kakashi’s office chair and rotating at 180  degrees to put his back to the desk. It wasn’t a hassle for him at all to haul himself up onto Kakashi’s desk with the upper body strength he’d had even before his legs had decided to take a… very long rest, as he’d put it. He shimmied over to where the stacks of Kakashi’s paperwork should have been, and Kakashi framed Gai’s thighs with his elbows to rest his cheek in his hand. The smile Gai offered him was as radiant as always, and he couldn’t help but shadow it with a quirk to his own lips. “Are you here to save me?”

“No, Kakashi. I’m here to motivate you!” Gai beamed; Kakashi worked hard, even if paperwork wasn’t…. his forte. Gai’s calloused palms found his jawline, thumbs sliding his mask down around his neck even as Kakashi half stood to meet him. “Thank you for all your hard work.”

Kakashi very rarely kissed Gai first, except for instances when his partner’s life had been in danger or, more commonly (to his relief), when he was kissing Gai to avoid having to sign any more horrendously tedious documents. Those were Gai’s favorite kisses, more so than the ones that were thanking the heavens that he was still alive. These were warm with relief, yes, but they were slow; stretched out as long as humanly possible with the gentle flex of Kakashi’s jaw under his touch. 

Gai rocked back just a little and Kakashi followed him in a way he only did in this situation, chasing Gai’s mouth with a pinch of teeth to his chapped lower lip. 

Kakashi let himself sink into his shoulders, hips leaning heavily on the desk, and Gai was sure that Kakashi would follow him right down to the surface of the table if he’d so decided to lay himself out. He didn’t, instead trusting Kakashi to hold him up at his precarious angle, and pulled Kakashi closer to himself with a shaky exhale. Kakashi’s hands were at his waist, as predicted, his ceremonial coat slipping from slender shoulders as he melted against Gai’s body.  

Kakashi’s staff had only needed to catch them at this once to allow it; no one disturbed him when Gai rolled passed them in the hallway. No one so much as knocked; not until they would see Gai leaving in the opposite direction,  ten to fifteen minutes later, with a love-sick smile on his face.

It had taken them nearly forty five minutes to find him in the after-math, and when they did, they had nearly smacked him across the chest.

“Ow, babe?!”

Maybe more than nearly.

“I couldn’t find you!” Robin had snarled with all the volume and ferocity of a child of dragons, and Gaius physically recoiled; as it turned out, dragon blood was ferocious indeed. “I told you to stick within a ten foot radius, and I couldn’t find you, Gaius–”

“Hey, easy, easy,” Gaius’s hand was in their hair, tangling with their various braids a moment before their cheek found the leather brace at his chest. He still reeked with the stench of blood and sweat and adrenaline, just as much as they were sure they did. They could smell the same fear on him, too. “Best laid plans, you know?”

“Not mine.” Robin knew they were being petulant, even as their own hands fisting in the clothing at his waist. “Not mine, not for this.” Not for you.

“You saw hell break loose around us,” Gaius soothed, voice steady, much steadier than Robin’s own. It occurred to Robin that perhaps they maybe shouldn’t be putting on such a scene in the aftermath of a battle for the sake of not demoralizing the soldiers, but if they had cared to look up, they’d see the respectful distance the pair had been given. “Not even you could plan for that, Sugar.”

It was still too soon for relief, and their anger still didn’t have room to give way to tears just yet. The fear of losing their husband roiled hot in their chest, the calm of Gaius’s voice just a mist over the flames, but a mist to tame it none the less. Robin didn’t want to be on the field when fire gave way to water. 

Knowing this, Gaius had already started to steer them towards the caravans, waving Chrom away when the Prince had taken half a mind to check on his tactician: there would be time for that later. 

“Whoa.”

“Hm?” Libra looked up from his perch, cross legged by a stream with his axe in his lap. It was mid-afternoon, and all the higher-ups were in some sort of strategy meeting in Chrom’s tent. Most of the soldiers had been given the afternoon off and Gaius had decided to make good use of his time: pestering Libra.

“You look – I’m pretty good with my hands, you know.”

“Excuse me?” Libra looked perturbed by the strange change in topic, and while it had made sense in Gaius’s braid – brain – he supposed it didn’t connect out loud the way it had in his mind. He sat himself down next to Libra rather gracelessly, thankful that Libra had half a mind to move the hilt of his axe out of the theif’s way.

“Sorry, that came out weird. Your hair,” Gaius pointed out. Libra reached up to finger the messy braid he’d thrown it back into, but Gaius’s hand got there first. “It’s pretty sloppy, huh.”

“I don’t normally wear it up,” Libra frowned at him, still clearly not having much idea why Gaius was fixated so strongly on the topic at hand after he’d shown up rather unceremoniously. “I didn’t exactly have anyone to teach me how to tie it properly, and I didn’t really see any need. Don’t, rather. It’s out of my face as it is.”

“I like it. Back,” Gaius blurted, and fixed Libra with a charming smile for good measure; it seemed to relax the preist’s shoulders at least, but he still looked wary, tension in his brows and at the corners of his mouth. Gaius supposed it couldn’t be helped: whenever he came to talk to Libra, it usually resulted in some sort of blasphemy or more personal meddling. Cordelia and Sumia called it pigtail pulling.

Conceivable, with Libra’s hair tied such as it was.

“Did you want me to do it?”

Gaius realized his mistake in phrasing the second Libra shook his head at him reflexively, and his heart sank. Libra watched him out of the corner of his eye for a moment, and Gaius debated getting up and leaving. It was that or telling him his hair was dumb anyway, and even Gaius was smart enough to know that wasn’t how to win someone over.

“You can if you would like to, however.”

Gaius locked his eyes on Libra with a sharp turn of his head; Libra had set aside his axe completely, now, and was reaching up to pull the string from his hair. His fingers weren’t as slender as Gaius would have first expected, but they were deft as they unwound his silky hair and fanned it out over his back with a flick of his hand. Braiding should have been easy for someone with hands that graceful, but Gaius thought perhaps he was being a bit biased. There was nothing elegant about the weight of the axe Libra hefted in a fight. 

Gaius licked his lips.

“Please,” Libra murmured after a moment; Gaius assumed he must have heard him shuffling up to sit cross-legged at Libra’s back. “…Just be careful with my neck. I don’t wish to speak of it right now.”

Gaius wasn’t oblivious. He’d seen the scars on and off the battlefield, golden hair fanning behind Libra with every harsh swing of his weapon, and cascading over his shoulder as he bent to unlace his boots when he was at rest. 

He felt the brush of scar tissue under his knuckles as he scooped Libra’s hair nto neat sections and started to twist them together; he almost wished he wasn’t as good as he was, with how quickly it was over and Libra was moving away from him.

“Oh, my,” Libra murmured; he pulled the braid over his shoulder, fingers following the sleek line of it up to the back of his head to feel the twists of hair that started at the crown of his head, rather than his scalp. “What kind of braid is this…?”

“Dunno,” Gaius shrugged, rummaging in his cloak for something to eat – anything to stuff his mouth with in an attempt to keep himself from saying something stupid, about how beautiful Libra looked, or how soft he was under Gaius’s rough touch – “Some kid showed me how to do it, once. I can’t even remember why, or what she looked like.”

Libra watched him for a time, then, green eyes and golden hair stark and stunning against the dark of the black turtle neck he’d stripped down to for that sunny afternoon. Gaius couldn’t not follow him with his eyes, even as he bent to pick up the rest of his clothes, and his axe, clearly intending to leave. “It’s lovely, Gaius. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Gaius crossed his arms behind his head, laying himself out on the grass as he watched Libra gathering his things. His stomach flipped. “Any time.”

“I’d like that.” Libra crouched to press a hand to Gaius’s shoulder, squeezing firmly. “You are quite good with your hands.”

He straightened to leave, and on impulse, Gaius caught the end of his braid as it slipped back over his shoulder, giving it a gentle tug. Libra seemed surprised, pausing for a moment, but when all Gaius could offer him was an innocent shrug and a crooked grin, he rolled his eyes and took his first steps away from Gaius.

“…Pigtail pulling, huh.”