Morning all. Settling in for a rainy Tuesday here. Which isn’t a bad thing. It does make me want tomato soup and grilled cheese though. Something about a rainy day in winter always makes me think that is a good option. Maybe for lunch. For now we have the morning writing prompt. So timers set and off we go.
I like this. I need to figure out what sort of story this is going to be before I decide where to go. There are a great many possibilities. She could find a dead body in one of the vacant spots or she could simply be violating some local law. Once I figure out the story, I will know where to go with Callie. But I do like her.
Tuesday, January 28th: The flowers bloomed with profusion.
The flowers bloomed with profusion. Callie couldn’t help but look at them with a sense of pride every time she went past. Once the central median was bare ground with small patches of grass. There was a central bike lane through it and two lanes of traffic one to either side. The strip of ground was ugly but necessary.
So Callie decided on an experiment. She picked out some seeds. She chose those that would stay low to the ground and not impede visuals for traffic, nor send out vines to snake across the bike path. She also made certain that the plants produced were low maintenance and would send put flowers in various parts of the year. She made small balls of seeds that would grow in different parts of the year mixed with a healthy dose of fertilized soil to get them started.
Each morning when she biked to work, she took a small handful with her. Half she dropped into the open ground in the morning and half on her return trip in the evening. She did this every work day for two years. In the first year, the growth was minimal. There was a bit of green here and there showing that something took root. Then once a few things took root more joined. She wasn’t certain if the initial pioneers in the open ground were sending encouragement to the new arrivals or if their presence was somehow helping the rest to gain purchase simply by being there.
What she did know was that after two years of minimal effort and low cost, the central strip was no longer an eyesore. It had a profusion of low growing flowers that added color and life to the area. There were butterflies flitting around. It was delightful to look at and she noticed that traffic seemed to slow down a bit in the area. She doubted that it was because anyone was actually looking at the flowers.
She suspected that in the past people saw the ugly strip of ground and just felt like speeding through the unloved area. Callie enjoyed her morning ride to work a bit more and she heard other people comment. She never told anyone of her project, there was no need. However now that the median was growing and could reseed itself, she found her thoughts turning to other areas. She didn’t feel like her small ping pong ball sized seed bombs were going to do any more good in the median.
However she still had a stockpile. “Stockton Avenue isn’t the prettiest,” she thought.
There were many areas of bare ground where a little ground cover might be good. The plants were low grow and no one would need to care for them. They would all thrive naturally in this environment. Callie took a map of the area to her kitchen table. It took two years of steady application for the large median. While she was certain that the smaller areas would take less time, she knew that the places needed to be places she passed routinely so she could routinely target them.
She took a map and marked the locations, beginning to make a plan.
Ten til Midnight 