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ajoraverse · 5 years

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I know it’s been a while since I did anything SU and I’m sorry. Dragondance/the FFV stuff is pure self-indulgence. So here’s the starter for the next chapter of Beta AU.

One hundred years into Jasper's training regimen and she still couldn't manage the swift, elegant moves Pearl was able to do with her sword and spear. Not that it mattered, she supposed. Her strength was in brute force and probably always would be, but at least Pearl's training helped fine-tune her reflexes and ability to predict the moves of a smaller, more agile target.

The topic of joining the Crystal Gems hadn't been brought up since her first training session with Pearl. She still had her village to run, and the more rigid beliefs formed by centuries of living with nearby humans would always clash with Rose Quartz's ideals of freedom and sacrificing everything for love. When Pearl talked about things other than training, it was usually about the glory of the Crystal Gem's war for Earth.

Jasper largely kept quiet during Pearl's tales of battle, occasionally working in a question when she could. Mostly it all sounded like some of those fireside tales humans told during bitter winters; great and glorious and so far removed from the present that they might as well be legend. Yet, sometimes when Jasper stood out at her butte and watched the stars, her thoughts wandered to those tales and she indulged in fantasies of proving herself in battle.

Reality always came with the dawn. With the bulk of the village off to explore and do business with the enormous mound cities to the east of the Great River, Jasper was left with a handful of gems and that yawning expanse of ennui that threatened to swallow her whole.

The sprawling apartment complex was finished, at least. Mother spent more and more time in the room they made for her that was built between Jasper's apartment and Twig's, often slipping into quiescence atop the nest they rescued from that one gutted injector. Someone brought in turkeys from the southern lands for the feathers they provided, and they made themselves at home in Sage's garden whenever they escaped their pen. Which, of course, left Jasper with the ignoble task of keeping them in hand while Wren repaired the turkey pen and Sage prepared her garden for the spring with the help of a human.

"You could stop farming," Jasper said one day, when she had the turkeys in her arms and was ignoring their attempts to peck at her.

"We could just give those birds away and be done with them." Sage's attention was fixed on dropping seeds into the carefully-measured holes in the garden soil. Jasper didn't understand why they could farm here but not the other Kindergarten, but she suspected that it had something to do with the kinds of plants Sage used: squash to prevent the growth of weeds and repel bugs, maize to provide a growing framework for the beans, beans that fed all the plants somehow and made the maize kernels digestible to humans. Then there were peppers for flavor, cotton for weaving, and melons for those who liked their sweets. Outside the rainy season, everything was watered by the cache of jars and gutted injectors they re-purposed into tanks.

The human man, one of just a long parade of humans who came to learn Sage's secrets over the centuries, looked up from his digging stick and grinned. "I'll take them."

Jasper's response was nearly instantaneous. "They belong to someone already."

"They're Wren's," Sage said with a sigh. "Bullsnake, she'll probably let you have the chicks if you talk to her."

"We'd appreciate it." Bullsnake paused to stretch out his back; farming was hard work for humans, but it was more reliable than hunting. "My family just started out in a new cliff, so anything helps."

Jasper wasn't surprised; the local humans took a shine to building along and within cliff walls seemingly overnight. Maybe it had been a few hundred years since the first humans built their complex masonry homes in the alcoves in cliff faces, but it still felt so recent. She still wasn't sure why. "Why did people start moving into cliffs? You didn't always build in them."

Bullsnake looked up at her, as if perplexed by the question. "I think it's just... a number of reasons. To get away from river bugs and seasonal floods, or take advantage of the springs that sprout up in them sometimes. The stone blocks that fall off the ceilings are good for building. South-facing cliffs absorb heat from the sun during winter months. Safety. Tradition. The last place was getting too crowded. There's no single reason."

"Fair." Jasper had always wondered, too, if humans had gotten the idea from seeing their emergence holes inside the canyon, but it never seemed appropriate to ask.

She fell silent as Sage reviewed her numbers for Bullsnake: plant the maize seeds first, approximately fourteen days after the last frost of spring. The squash and beans would be planted during the monsoon months. They had to be so many foot-lengths apart. The maize should be about this high before the stalks could serve as growth support for the beans. And so on. When they were done here, Sage would give him starter seeds to supplement his family's collection. Would they like melons? Cotton? Oh, she had some extra dried greenthread he could take home with him for teas.

Jasper was always a little bit jealous of Sage's patience with plants. She never had it with other gems, of course, but for plants her reserves of patience were endless. Once, many years back, Sage had confided in her how much she appreciated how plants could change over generations. Maize, for example, apparently started off as small grass stalks and plants that produced the biggest kernels were favored and bred for thousands of years, until they produced great ears of corn in multi-colored variations.

In time, once Wren was finished patching up her pen and Jasper dropped off the turkeys, she came back to Bullsnake and Sage taking a break and talking.

"Those rocks in your bodies are your spirits?" Bullsnake asked. He sat on a nearby boulder, his digging stick lying next to a hoe made of a deer's shoulderblade.

Sage hummed as she sorted through her seed pots. Some bore the markings and colors of far-flung villages, others bore the meticulous, multicolored marks of other gems' handiwork. "You could say that. Our bodies may be destroyed, but as long as the gem remains intact, we can revive."

Bullsnake paused; he looked at Sage thoughtfully, as if he wasn't sure if he should share this information. "And those monsters, they're your people?"

Jasper's attention was yanked hard out of the boredom that came with the domesticity of farming.

"Yes," Sage responded. Her voice was sharper; she likely came to the same conclusion that Jasper did. "They're that way because they're sick."

"I heard from one of the pilgrims on the way to Salt Canyon that one of the pyramid kings conquered a stone monster and keeps its stone in a diadem." Bullsnake looked uncomfortable as he said it. "Will you try to get it back?"

"We'll send Egret." Jasper's response was automatic at this point. Diplomatic problem? Throw Egret at it. She walked the streets of the pyramid-builders all of twice and missed the cacophony and chaos of a hundred thousand people, but diplomacy was decidedly not for her.

The man's tension eased; Jasper was reminded again of the dissonance between Pearl's tales of wartime glory and the histories the humans shared around campfires of devastation. Their human neighbors might trust them with trade and interpersonal relations, but they never quite got around to trusting them on matters of discord and strife.

No matter. Egret would do her routine and that should be the end of that.

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Notes: Jasper had been to Teotihuacan before. However, the pyramid-builders mentioned here are Maya. Jasper’s gonna get to go visit the Maya Postclassical heartland.

Sage’s farming techniques are inspired by the farming at Mesa Verde, Cliff Palace specifically. I did my final paper for North American Archaeology class on it.

Finally: Salt Canyon is a translation of the Hopi name for the Grand Canyon.

#SU: Beta AU

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rena-demo-gardens · 4 years

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Hopi Tea Greenthread

Scientific Name: Thelesperma megapotamicum

Perennial; 15-30”; full sun; sand, loam, clay; very drought tolerant

Description: Hopi Tea Greenthread (also called Navajo Tea Greenthread) is a perennial wildflower that is common in Colorado’s dry prairies and foothills. It has very thin blue-green stems and foliage and bright yellow blossoms that often seem too heavy for their spindly stalks. It’s common to find some of the wiry plants leaning toward the ground. Tall stems bear a solitary flower bud each, but the species always lends an attractive and interesting effect, both growing in airy colonies and dispersed as accents within diverse plant communities that in Northern Colorado often include fringed sage (Artemisia frigida), needle-and-thread grass (Hesperostipa comata), bush sunflower (Helianthus pumilus), purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea), prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera), and mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus). The leaves are so small and thin that even from a short distance it may appear that there are no leaves at all, but just the solitary buds atop tall, thin stalks. After flowering, the plants continue to add interest with their bulbous, brown, “tufted” seed heads (see picture below). This native perennial belongs to a genus of plants called Thelesperma, which, translated from Greek, means “nipple seed.” Apparently, close inspection of the surface of the seeds will reveal nipple-like bumps. While the scientific name may leave you scratching your head, it’s easy to understand how the genus got its common name of “greenthreads.” Plants in this genus have smooth, thin stems and leaves that seem to be little more than various configurations of green threads. Megapotamicum (Greek roots, Latin suffixes) means “of/belonging to the big river,” which in this case, sources say, is a reference to the Rio Grande. Hopi tea greenthread is not exactly a show-stopping beauty, but it is a terrific plant for pollinator appeal and a great addition to your garden if you’re interested in making your own teas and dyes. This is another of Colorado’s native plants that has a long history of cultural and medicinal uses by Native American peoples, including, as the common names imply, Navajo and Hopi tribes. Its common names reflect its very popular use to this day in making a reportedly delicious tea from boiling or steeping the stems, with or without the flowers. The plant has also been used for hundreds of years to make dyes. It turns out Hopi tea greenthread contains luteolin, a yellow substance that has been used for millennia as the principal compound in yellow dyes. You can harvest cuttings or entire plants -- roots and all -- dry them, and use them later. Hopi tea greenthread is easy to grow in a sunny, dry location, but nurseries usually do not offer seedlings and seed vendors sometimes run out of stock. When buying seed, be sure to check the full scientific name, confirm it’s Thelesperma megapotamicum, or research whatever scientific name you find instead, because other greenthread species are also sold as “Navajo tea” or “Hopi tea.” (A good, widely available substitute for T. megapotamicum that is also native to our area is Thelesperma filifolium. That species is also used for teas and dyes, but is a shorter, 8-15”, V-shaped clumping plant with an abundance of delightful daisy-shaped yellow flowers. It has a shorter lifespan than T. megapotamicum, dying off after a couple of years, but it reseeds itself well.) You can start T. megapotamicum seeds in pots, but because it’s a tap-rooted plant, seedlings must be put in the ground while they are still just a few inches tall. Better yet, direct sow in the fall, lightly scratching the seeds into the soil surface. A sprinkling of coarse sand, squeegee, or small gravel will help keep seeds in place and conserve moisture, as well as mark the seeded area. After the seeds germinate, keep the seeded area evenly moist until the seedlings reach about 5-6”. Normal rainfall will then sustain these plants, which really like their soil quite dry.

Height: 15-30”

Spread/Spacing: 8”/10”

Exposure: Full sun

Soil Tolerances: Adaptable: sandy, loamy, or heavy clay; prefers well-drained soil.

Soil Moisture: Dry to moist

Water: Low; excellent drought tolerance

Bloom: May-October; bright yellow

Pollinator value: High attraction for native bees and other insects.

Deer & Rabbit Resistance: yes, very good

Where they like to grow: Sandy or rocky prairies; roadsides in the plains and foothills.

Photo credit: Madeline Maher

#Asteraceae

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