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avanalae · 3 years

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Sunlight Through the Leaves

Hello, all! I am still alive, tho not without issue. But I have made it to another birthday. Go me! I feel so old these delays, as 30 creeps ever closer. :((

Anyway. This is a fic for Yufei for her birthday. So yes, this is VERY belated. But hey, we're celebrating our birthdays together this way! 😊 This is totally as planned. 😬

So, HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY YUFEI! 💕

___

Fandom: Hayden’s Notes

Characters: Hayden Carter, Jason Wolfe, Original Creature(s)

Pairings: Very Pre-Wolfden (Hayden/Wolfe)

Warnings: Wolfe is an asshole, Unconscious & Reluctant Pining

Rating: G

Summary: Hayden Carter is a brat and one day will get some respect punched into him. One day. Today is not that day, trapped in this forest as they are. But at least the trees aren’t about to jump out and eat them. Wolfe would rather the walking tree branches would go away, but at least Carter is going to get them out of this mess.

He hopes.

___

Wolfe is annoyed. Very annoyed.

He’s frustrated about this whole situation and is annoyed at himself for being frustrated.

It's an endless cycle and it’s very frustrating.

His jaw clenches again and he wishes he could get out a cigarette. However, he’s aware that it would be asking for trouble. There is a high chance of danger and offense here, and he can’t chance it.

Not in these woods.

One of the small creatures tentatively approaches him, looking up from its diminutive height of just under a meter. Its bipedal body is made entirely of tree roots, making it easily blend in with the forest. Though the sharp branches that curl from the head, covered in foliage make it a little less creepy. Especially when the leaves partially obscure the void-like cracks in between the roots of its “face" that Carter claims to be their eyes.

Speaking of Carter, Wolfe looks away from the creature to the man. He’s sitting on a fallen tree, letting several of the creatures crawl all over him. One of them is on his knee and there’s one on his shoulder, who appears to be braiding his hair.

Carter doesn’t have his glasses on at the moment, and he has to avert his eyes lest he get caught staring again. Making up excuses for that the fist time had been embarrassing, and any time he can avoid the boy’s mocking is a job well done. It also helps him avoid any introspective questions on his own part.

Wolfe feels a slight tug at his pants and he looks down at the thing. It’s still looking up at him, the closest any of them had been to him so far. Sighing internally, he allows it to tug him along.

The mission they had been sent on did not go at all the way they had expected, but he supposes it could be worse. Though he’s going to have problems later coming to terms with the things he’s seeing now at a later date, when he’s not in the middle of all of it. Grumbling quietly, the thing tugs him to sit next to Carter on the log.

Carter frowns but restrains himself. This is impressive until he turns to the one who had pulled him over and says, “No, we don’t need to be closer. I’d rather he was farther away, actually.”

Through the familiar annoyance, he hears the creature make odd creaking and rustling noises. They’d been doing this off and on, with Carter always responding afterwards, so presumably this was their way of speaking. It was odd, but he’ll probably try to blot this experience from his mind later, so he will deal with it for now.

“No,” Carter says sharply, gaining Wolfe's attention. He looks oddly embarrassed. “No, he is not. I don’t know why you get that impression, but its false.” The creature on his shoulder tugs at his hair, making the younger man wince. “Seriously!”

Wolfe can’t take it much more and caves, “What are they saying?”

Carter huffs and looks away, crossing his arms in an oddly defensive gesture.

It’s kind of cute.

…

Wait, no. Carter is not cute. Wolfe wants to frown at the thought, and ends up having to play it off when he realizes that he is actually frowning. “What, are they criticizing you? You led us into this, after all.”

Carter practically snaps his neck turning to look at him so quickly, eyes blazing. “I’ll have you know that I wouldn’t have had to ‘lead’ us anywhere if the RSS could get their information right!”

“How were we to know that wearing certain colors can provoke things like that?” Wolfe snaps back.

The younger man throws his hands up in exasperation. “Gee! I don’t know! Maybe by asking literally anyone who knows anything about arachne?! And she wasn’t provoked, you idiot!”

“It came right for me!”

“She thought you were propositioning her!”

“WHAT?!” Wolfe can’t help the grimace and shudder.

“She wanted to scent you, not eat you!” Carter growls, mumbling a moment later, “At least not yet.”

“That is not reassuring, Carter!”

“We you didn’t have to draw your gun like that! It’s your fault we had to run!”

“Well, sorry for trying to defend myself! I can’t get back up like you can from that stuff!”

At this point, they’re both standing and several steps apart, facing each other. So, when Carter chucks his pen at him, it hits Wolfe square in the forehead and bounces off with a satisfying “thwack" before disappearing into the underbrush.

Throwing a hand to his forehead, Wolfe growls, “You-!” But he falters just a bit at the look on Carter’s face. Just enough to stay his tongue and instead of lashing out anymore, he turns and sits down harshly on the far end of the log. He cups his head with his arms braced on his knees and tries to take deep breaths.

The movement of the log is barely there, but he can tell that Carter has sat down on the other end, much farther away this time. There is a long, drawn out silence while the two calm and try to work out their thoughts. Wolfe hadn’t noticed it until then, but the area had gone quiet. Likely due to how loud their argument had gotten.

There’s a soft rustle, and some life starts to slowly pick back up, ending the eerie stillness. Wolfe rubs his face, exhausted. He’s not going to apologize. Neither of them is, but that’s no surprise. He’s not entirely sure he’s sorry, anyway. Or what he would be sorry for, exactly. In his peripheral, Wolfe sees Hayden hunched with his forearms braced on his thighs.

They are alone in their frustrated silence for a minute or more before he notices one of the tree-things pop out nearby. It approaches hesitantly, and Wolfe doesn’t know or care much about how it seems to be looking between the two of them. It ends up approaching Hayden… Carter. He turns his head just enough to see the thing reach up to him, holding something. A brief pause lets Wolfe see that it’s Carter’s pen before he’s startled by the man exhale loudly, ending in a raspy chuckle.

It’s…

Carter gently takes the pen and Wolfe looks away, back into the trees. He hears a rustle followed by a hum from Carter and wonders if he’ll start talking again.

The rustling of the tree-things picks up as several of them come back out from their hidey-holes. They all mostly approach Carter, but two stay further away but sit in a way to indicate that they are watching him closely now. The scowl twitches on his lips but he fights it.

The problem with Carter is that he’s far too good at riling people up. It’s troublesome and damn annoying. The kid is sharp as a whip and his tongue more so. He hates the way Carter can strip people down so easily – strip him down. He hates it.

Jason Wolfe does not like feeling defenseless.

And yet…

He grumbles, glancing away from the trees back over to Hay- Carter. The kid is sitting up now, no longer curled in. There is one of the tree-things in front of him that he seems to be talking to and another on his shoulders. There’s one more behind him, handing something up to the thing on his shoulders…

Flowers. They are putting flowers in his hair.

Wolfe watches with some kind of fascination, from interest or horror he isn’t sure. The one on the ground is picking the flowers from their surroundings and handing them up to the creature on Carter’s shoulders, who braids them in. Had he been paying more attention, he might have thought that this was the same tree- thing that had been braiding his hair earlier.

Carter suddenly looks over to him and Wolfe feels something catch in his throat. He tries to swallow it back while the young man blinks at him before scowling in a way that looks more like a pout. The flowers are forming a crown along his head, with some small ones slipping a bit from their position to creep down his bangs, framing his face.

He looks so young, like this.

The thought hits Wolfe uncomfortably. Having known the man for just a while now he’s been getting over some of his anger, but in moments like this…

The black sclera enhance the vibrant green irises and he is reminded by the fact that something must have happened to this kid to get him here. Sometimes, in moments like this, he wants to know. Maybe even more than just for leverage.

Wolfe’s head snaps back once again and the pen flies off into the forest once more. Carter’s growl grabs his attention, and he realizes he let himself get distracted.

“Now that I have your attention, Wolfe, why don’t you tell me when you’re ready to leave?” One of the tree-things rushes through the brush after the pen. The one of his shoulders is creaking unhappily, tugging at hair to perhaps try to wrangle it back into place.

“Leave?”

Carter snorts, “Yeah, the saplings are willing to lead us out of the forest and direct us to the closest residence. Then you can contact RSS and tell them you messed up the job and they need to get us out of here.”

“I-?!” Wolfe growls, tensing up in preparation to start another fight. His rebuttal is interrupted, however, by handful of flowers. They don’t make it very far, but they didn’t really need to, as the tree-thing that had been gathering flowers is now on the log next to him, having thrown them at him. Its leaves are shaking just a bit, and it waves its appendages at him in some sort of scolding gesture.

Completely stunned, Wolfe doesn’t look away from the only slightly menacing tree branch in front of him until he hears an odd noise. Looking up, he sees Carter.

Laughing.

With his shoulders up and arms around his stomach, turned just a bit more towards him, Carter is laughing. But it’s a tone completely unfamiliar to Wolfe and it stuns him just as much, if not more, than the creature had. Carter’s mouth is opened to breathe, lips turned up in a grin. The motions agitate his hair and Wolfe doesn’t – can’t – blink as a few of the flowers fall, tumbling across flushed cheeks.

“You-!” Carter giggles. “You look like a troublemaker being scolded by his mother! I never took you for anything less than rule-abiding, Wolfe!”

The stick creature had stopped waving at him and instead starts climbing up onto him. Wolfe jerks, but doesn’t react violently as Carter’s smile fades just a bit into concentration, watching him. He knows if he throws the thing off of him the man will make him regret it. So, while he grunts and twitches, he lets the damn thing climb up to his shoulders, where it starts pulling on his hair.

His eyes widen and Carter bursts into laughter once more.

“M-My hair! What are you doing?!” Wolfe stops his hands from going up past his shoulders but it’s a near thing.

“He just wants to braid your hair, too, Wolfe!” Carter cackles.

Wolfe sputters, “What?!”

“He thinks that braiding and adorning your hair with moonflowers will make you calmer.” Carter grins at him sharply, “These flowers are precious to them, you know.”

No, he did not know, you brat. Now he can’t shred them to pieces, either!

Carter’s laugh turns more into a condescending chuckle, likely guessing what he’d been thinking. Wolfe is distracted by a sharp tug of his hair and he has to hold back again when his first instinct is to lash out. His restraint is rewarded by the tugging gentling just a bit.

“Carter, how do I stop it?” he grits through his teeth.

‘Hm,” the man hums. I don’t know, why don’t you ask him?” Wolfe wants to punch that smug look off the brat’s face so badly, but a tug on his hair and a soft scent distract him once more. The brush of petals along his temple makes him twitch.

“Mm, yeah,” Carter comments, after a pause for his own hairdresser to readjust itself, “I think we’ll have to put a bit of a hold on leaving for now. That’s a shame.”

Wolfe grunts, angry and annoyed, but makes himself look away from the pain in his neck just a bit more than an arm’s reach away. Hopefully, Carter will be lenient enough to not mock him afterwards. But if he does, Wolfe can bite back easily enough with how lovely he looked with all those flowers in his hair.

Stupid.

He meant how stupid he looked.

…

Fuck.

#Hayden's Notes #Hayden Carter #Jason Wolfe #Haydens Notes #Wolfden #slash #:3c #fanfiction #I will create the entire fandom for this comic if I have to I swear to GOD #And I dub the Hayden and Wolfe ship to be Wolfden #thanks for coming to my tedtalk #webcomics #comics #Yufei

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thomasreedtn · 7 years

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Garden Update: Calling, Planting and Growing an Ecosystem

I’ve had an interesting week in and around the garden! The groundhog “training” continues, with one of the groundhogs content to munch on clover and behave in a very respectful manner. The other groundhog has behaved more like a teenager: “You’re not the boss of me! I’ll eat whatever I want and like it!” Opening and closing the dining room window startles him back into his hidey hole, but this guy was determined to get into the backyard bed.

On Wednesday just past dusk, really too late for a groundhog to be munching my backyard plants, I saw him lumber into the backyard bed. I thought this was perhaps poetic justice, since he would become great horned owl bait at that hour; however, the great horned owl informed me that the dog run wire from previous owners has created a no fly zone for predatory birds in that area, effectively turning the shed and backyard bed into a free for all. The red tailed hawk chimed in, as well, so that wire’s coming down this weekend. I don’t want to trap or have this groundhog killed. I just want the hawk and owl patrol to keep him in line.

In any case, on Wednesday just after dusk, I decided to see what this “whistle pig” would do. (They actually do whistle. More on that later.) I won’t embarrass my two pepper plants back there by taking photos of their completely denuded stalks, but suffice to say, I now have a clear understanding of the devastation one groundhog can wreak on plants. It was borderline apocalyptic. That morning, I walked to the dangerously nearby nursery and bought a bunch of groundhog and deer repellent plants. I put most up front and few of the bargain ones and known repellents like lavender in the back.

Well! Now I know why the list is so specific. It’s not all Coreopsis. There’s a reason for the specific “threadleaf Coreopsis.” My dollar bargain no longer looks like a bargain at any price:

It still looks better than the peppers, though! Anise hyssop also took a surprising hit, but el chubbo left some leaves. I’m not terribly mad, because I’ve been using the backyard bed as a testing ground. So far liatris, the large sedum, cosmos, peppermint, nettles, threadleaf coreopsis and lavender remain untouched. In keeping with his perfect timing, the groundhog devoured my pepper plants immediately after I considered putting just one veggie bed out back filled with pepper plants. He appears to be quite telepathic, this woodchuck, so I decided to use that to my advantage.

A friend who has been trying to give me his (very often puking) cat, joked that “Jiji could take him.” I declined, but went outside to explore. I found an apparently purposeful hole in the fence and thought about having David patch it up, in case critters moved from the backyard to the much yummier buffet of the front yard. Not that groundhogs can’t dig, but why make it easy for them? I had just texted David about repairing the hole when who walks through the hole and creeps along the back hedge? A cat. A very large cat — much bigger than Jiji, LOL!

This is where things got interesting. The naughty chubster came out of his hidey hole and started munching clover. All of a sudden, he stood on his hind legs and looked towards the hedge. The cat had begun stalking him. I’ve seen this cat before, but never on groundhog patrol until my friend and I started joking about that. The cat creeped all along the backyard spruce, and the groundhog got mighty nervous, at which point, I telepathically said, “THIS is what happens when you eat my pepper plants! THIS is what happens when you destroy things in MY yard. We can live in peace with you eating grass and clover, or we can duke it out, but I will win, little man. You need to behave.”

The cat continued to watch him from the spruce while I watched him from the window. He stared at me and after several repetitions of my message, I got a distinct impression of, “Arggh, would you please SHUT UP?!” At which point I said, “I want you to get the message. That no fly zone is going down. That makes you hawk bait. And owl bait. And now you’re cat bait. Behave, and we won’t have any issues.”

Amazingly, he nodded, then slinked towards his hidey hole with his head down, scurried past his hole, squished himself behind a pot of mint and continued to walk towards the back of the shed where the cat stood. Nothing happened, but he disappeared for a good 12 hours. When he returned, he did not move out of his hole. He just looked around, and I gave him a mental reminder of the rules. “OK, OK, I get it, shut up!” Other than eating the rest of the pepper fruits his two rodent teeth marks had made inedible to me, he’s done no more damage. I bought a nice nepeta (catmint) as a reward for the heroic kitty and put it right near the hole, along with more lavender.

Yesterday afternoon he popped out just to scratch himself but not move around the yard at all. This morning, he grabbed a bunch of grass in his mouth and ducked back down the hole for a snack. The mysterious arrival of the cat right after discussing cats as groundhog patrol underscored the continued call and response from the animal kingdom and makes me ever so cautiously optimistic that –despite warnings otherwise from every single gardener I’ve asked, local and otherwise — we may be able to coexist with respect instead of a mandatory relocation by trap or “flight.” When he behaves like the other one, I rather like this guy, but boundaries seem to be up for review and enforcement everywhere these days.

Meanwhile, I’ve got 1.5 tons of soil on order for a Monday drop off, in order to fill two more Big Bag Beds up front, as well as 10- and 20-gallon Smart Pots for up front and alongside the back hedge patrolled by the kitty. Two aronia berry bushes, three blueberry bushes (super sale on two of them), and a cranberry bush arrived yesterday:

… and I’ve got a bunch of perennials on order, including more rhubarb, some sea kale seeds (as well as a request for more starts from a local permaculture person), and numerous other Crazy Plant Lady goodies. Just the arrivals of the pollinator plants/repellent plants has dramatically upped the diversity in our yard. Bright, fragrant bloomers and mammal repellents tend to be the same thing since deer and groundhogs get sensory overload from too much scent, whereas bees and butterflies love them.

Just as I wondered about getting the catmint as a reward for the kitty, I heard a tapping on the bathroom window. A praying mantis “reporting for duty” reminded me that yes, the Universe has my back, and yes, please do reward the helpers:

That shed bed will soon have so much more color and fragrance, but even now butterflies and dragonflies are zooming all over the backyard. The front yard is beginning to resemble a small, regional airport, unlike the “O’Hare” of our Goshen yard, but still a major uptick in just a few days. Pollination of tomatoes and cucumbers has gone way up in recent days, and I’ve already eaten two ripe tomatoes with more on the way:

I’m so glad I’ve decided to complete the circle around the weeping birch tree by adding another 50-gallon and 100-gallon Big Bag Bed, plus at least 4 more 10-gallon Smart Pots for perennials and herbs. The ones pictured below are growing well despite only getting about 6 hours of direct sun, cobbled together throughout the day.

(Check out this sunflower who came along or the ride! I hadn’t planned to bring any, but this stowaway has earned a spot by the mailbox once I get my soil delivery.)

The new spots receive much more consistent sun, but they’re on greater display. I wanted to see how things progressed before committing to them. For now, I’ve got beautiful and repellent perennials staged approximately where the new beds will go. These plants will surround the edges while the veggie crops grow inside and among them. At least, that’s the plan!

The circle will continue around the tree with four more 10-gallon Smart Pots on the side facing our front door. These plants seem to love the Eastern and Southeastern exposure:

Near the collard on the right, you can see my one sea kale cutting from Goshen trying to take root. Poor thing has had a few transplants but does seem to like this spot better if I can get him to recover. If not, hopefully some of the seeds and/or cuttings I’ve arranged for will thrive. We do love our sea kale, and it’s sooooo pretty, too!

Meanwhile, I’m happy to report that the weeping birch appears to be making a recovery. A week of rain, runoff from garden watering and a whole community of new plant friends seem to have rejuvenated this very struggling tree. Here’s the current view from our living room, with the birch to the far left:

The ground cover needs some major weeding, and I’ve got more strawberries to plant while the drastically chopped back (by previous owners) holly begins to regrow. I’ve got shade blooming and deer repellent astilbe on order, and I’m pondering some other friends. It still feels quite manageable, and I’m excited about discerning and nurturing this “right sized garden” that makes our house and yard feel like home, while (hopefully) showing what’s possible even in and around existing landscaping.

As my Aunt Kath and Uncle John — who will visit soon — say, “To more love!”

Indeed.

from Thomas Reed https://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/garden-update-calling-planting-and-growing-an-ecosystem/

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