ArchivedLogs:No Shoes

No Shoes
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Heather, Ryan, Tag
In Absentia	2017-08-28 "I'm pretty into kale parties too."
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Garden Plot - Lower East Side
The smell instantly changes here to something greener, herbally sharp and mulchy; paved walkway drifts at angles through raised multi-tiered garden beds, reaching varying elevations of a mere foot above the ground to three feet, each held up by retaining walls of leftover stone from the houses, riddled here and there with spiraling mosaic dragons. While companion flowers of red geranium, fuchsia bee balm, violet petunias, pastel-and-white sweet pea, are sprinkled throughout and alongside each box, it's primarily vegetables; between tall eerie trellis spires of fixed animal bones, clung over with curlicues of lush vine sheets and okra, delicate netting protects lower levels of melon and tomato, kale and tomatoes and a number of other edible foods, with a separate box of sand-loving root vegetables sending up frondy foliage for carrot and onion and garlic. To one side, a compost heap lets of faint shimmers of heat and steam, to the other, a strongly scented bed of myriad herbs, both medicinal and otherwise, flanked on one side by a large healthy swell of coneflower. With a shed nearby housing gardening tools, the whole of it is watered by a network of hidden hosing that gives off faint tickles of mist when in use, ribboned with rainbows, and there are structures in place to suggest the garden can be enclosed in winter months. The shadows in the gardens are stretching long, the sun slipping down behind the houses but yet to actually set. The lush garden greenery has taken on new hues in the fading light, sable and purpling, odd dusky casts to the leaves and vegetables. Ryan is perched among the plants, now, staring intently down at a plot of scallions. He's dressed in pale stone-washed jean shorts, a red tee with a bright yellow star in its center, no shoes on his feet. A deepening frown on his face. One toe pokes carefully at the mulch. Heather zips in from the yard, a lidded pail with vegetable scrap inside hanging from her fingertips. She's wearing a long horizonally striped sweater which seems to have no rhyme or reason to the stripe coloration, and a pair of solid purple leggings with yellow stars on them, her feet also bare. "No shoes party," she comments through her recorder, "What is going on with those-" She hits pause and leans back and forth appraisingly. "Vegetables?" Tag has just entered the compound from outside, a canvas tote over one shoulder with a graphic of a rainbow-maned unicorn on the side above the caption 'Is the thought of a unicorn a real thought?' He's wearing a black t-shirt artfully splattered with paint (or color, at least), a rainbow-pleated skirt, and black sandals with rainbow-stripe straps. Slowing to a stop by the garden, he brightens. "Whoa party!" He promptly toes off his sandals. "Oh, no, I'm ruining it." Blurring in from somewhere outside, Flicker is dressed simply. Offwhite linen pants, a plain blue polo. Sneakers, which he's slipping out of as he touches down beside Ryan. He leans one arm -- the flesh one, his other currently spread with a sprinkling of red and black and purplish-blue snakelike scales -- onto the other man's shoulder. "They're growing, I /hope/?" Ryan nudges at something green poking up through the mulch. Grimaces at it. "Did you know," he asks the others -- kind of miffed! Kind of AWED, "that some of these plants are /supposed/ to be here and some aren't? How the fuck does Jax /know/? I should just pull /all/ of them, be dome with it." He flops back -- straight into the mulch -- head tipping up long enough to look around at the others. "Holy crap, we're having a party and I didn't even know it? Good thing we have all this --" Pause, another look around, "... kale." Heather puts her arms up in the air victoriously at this impromptu party coming together. She lowers them after about two seconds pass and nods rapidly, one hand resting on her hip. "A party is not a party without kale. Or maybe I am thinking of a salad." She kneels down to examine the plants at the edge of the garden a little bit closer. "I worry that I will stomp something important while going through there. There are too many kinds of plants." "I think just about any party can be improved by the addition of Flicker," Tag opines. Then, to Heather, "You can make a salad /with/ the kale." Leaving his bag and sandals by the edge of the garden, he steps into it. "You just have to learn to recognize the plants that are supposed to be there, which uh...I can do /sometimes/." He crouches down and studies the plants at Ryan's feet critically. "See, these long skinny pointy ones are scallions. And the little leafy frilly stuff around them are not." "People don't usually think I'm all that great at keggers." Flicker blips over to the edge of one of the garden beds when Ryan drops backward, crouching on the edge of it. "Kale won't be ready a couple weeks. And I think it's sort of a -- practice. Thing. Jax could --" Flicker hesitates, head dipping. "Probably teach you." When he looks up again, it's with a smile. "I'm pretty into kale parties too. Could we have one of those or would that be /too/ New York?" "What, why not? You're the /cheapest/ fucking party guest." Ryan's eyes have closed, a small fleeting tension in his jaw. "We live in a goddamn commune, I don't think we'll be tipping the balance with kale parties. Just living up to our stereotype. We're gonna have to do something when it's ripe, anyway." Rolling up to a crouch again, he combs fingers lazily through the mulch, fingertips fluttering lightly against one of the leafy frilly not-scallions. "My trick," he informs Heather -- so helpfully! -- is stay on the paths." "Kale party," Heather's arms return to the air for a couple more second as she nods rapidly in approval. She crawls a little ways forward into the garden down the path as Ryan had helpfully suggested, her quick jerky crawl looking like cheap special effects, to get a better look at the plants around the scallions. "So what are the little leafy stuff? Can it be eaten too?" "It would be /peak/ New York," Tag agrees, though his bright smile suggests he doesn't consider this a mark /against/ kale parties. He frown at the plants in question. "Some of those are garlic mustard--I don't know the proper name--and are edible. The ones with leaves that look kind of like tiny lily pads? The rest..." SHRUG. "...I really have no idea." "Sounds like the perfect kind of nonsense for when Jax is out." Flicker is watching that twitch in Ryan's jaw. Briefly. Then looking away to watch the sky. "I'll plan it. Not tonight though. Homework." Deadpan: "And what kind of anarchist are you anyway. /I/ don't let /the man/ tell me where to walk." Scooping up his shoes, Flicker is blipping off again. /Above/ the paths. And out of the garden, a vague blur vanishing into the twilight back in the direction of his house. Ryan tracks Heather's movements with quick ticks of his slightly wider eyes, a small tension tightening the muscles of his arm. "Look, if living with Horus has taught me anything its that you /can/ eat basically whatever the fuck you can fit into your mouth. Whether or not it's a good idea --" Hands spread. "Won't know till you try it." His head tips back again, gaze just as jerky in its efforts to follow /Flicker/, now. Ultimately his eyes just scrunch shut again. He flops back once more. "Garlic mustard," repeats Heather's recorder in Tag's voice. She rises up to her feet and brushes the dirt from her knees. "I thought those were two different things." She backpedals in a blur out of the path to pick up her pail again, to add the scraps to the compost. "Garlic. Mustard. Anyways. You are right Ryan. I should eat more things." She spins the now emptied pail around on her finger lazily. "I will check what Paige thinks." "Alright, then. Kale party. Two weeks." Tag mimes penciling this in on an invisible calendar. "'Night, Flicker!" Cocking his head at Heather, "They are, and that plant is neither of them. That's just what it's called? Because it has kind of a sharp taste and smells kind of like garlic, I guess. Oh!" He abruptly straightens back up. "I should get the groceries home. Good luck...weeding?" He sounds slightly uncertain about this proposition, but then hops over the garden bed to the edge, retrieving his footware and bag. "Have a good night, y'all!"