Series: Vignettes
Number: 54
Title: Hybrids
Author: Sassette
Feedback: Can be sent to
pink_overalls@yahoo.com , or posted here.
Spoiler Warning: No specific spoilers, unless you didn’t know W/T are an item. Set in the future.
Summary: Willow loves Tara a whole lot. She’s not too sure about the Miracle Whip, but she can live with it.
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters. I’m just borrowing them, because it’s lots and lots of fun.
Rating: PG-13
Hybrids
Part 54 of the Vignettes Series
By Sassette
“Son of a bitch!” Willow yelled, slipping backwards as she tried to lift the heavy awkward rosebush out of the back of her Ford Escape Hybrid. It was new enough that every time she drove it she chuckled at the thought of an environmentally-conscious SUV, but she certainly wasn’t laughing as she fell backwards and landed heavily on her butt.
With a thorny rosebush in the face.
Taking stock of the damage, to both herself and the plant, she decided it certainly could’ve been worse. The rosebush looked okay, and she had a few scratches on her arms, and one on her face, but had escaped relatively unharmed all things considered.
“Because it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” Willow muttered, edging out from under the fiendish foliage and standing gingerly. “And I’d never be able to explain that one to Tara,” she continued, taking hold of the pot the rosebush came in and lifting it carefully, grunting with the effort. “’Hey, Baby … I wanted to surprise you with some roses … and I lost an eye! Surprise!’”
Awkwardly, she shuffled towards the house, potted plant in hand, and set it down near her designated planting site.
“One down,” Willow said with a sigh, turning back to the car.
Carefully, to avoid the awkward ‘falling on her ass’ part, she made three more trips, until she had four potted hybrid tea rose plants sitting in the yard. She gave them a bit of water, and then stood back to check out her handiwork so far.
Hands on hips, she squinted, trying to imagine the roses planted along the front of the house – with a nice gap from the wall, so there was plenty of ‘air movement’ because her research indicated that was important.
She couldn’t really see it. But that was okay. She’d see it once she was done.
Taking a moment to stretch her arms and her back, Willow decided to take a break.
The digging part was next, and she didn’t expect the digging part to be fun, she mused, heading back to the car – again – to pick up her water bottle and her notes.
She headed back to the house, sitting on the front steps, drinking her water and looking through her research, looking up at the roses occasionally with a pleased smile on her face.
It had been – gosh, four months ago that the idea of planting roses in the front yard had popped into her head. She had picked up some flowers for Tara – just because – and it had occurred to her that if she just
planted some, they’d last longer.
The first thing she’d realized was that she’d had this brilliant idea at exactly the wrong time of the year. That had been December, and early spring was the best time to plant roses.
The second thing she’d realized was that planting roses was a very complicated process when done correctly.
Which meant she’d actually needed the four months of planning and preparation time. Oh, sure, she could have chosen the planting site, checked the pH of the soil, adjusted it – which had actually been kind of fun - checked the drainage, confirmed that the front of the house got at least six hours of sunlight, and selected the type of rose to plant in less than four months. But it was supposed to be a surprise, and doing all of that when Tara hadn’t been around had slowed the process considerably.
It was selecting the type of rose to plant that had really slowed things down. Who knew there were so many different kinds?
Well, Tara probably had. She liked flowers, and knew a whole heck of a lot about them. Willow was fairly ambivalent about them: they were pretty, and they smelled good, but she didn’t really give them a lot of thought, and they weren’t really her thing. Honestly, her favorite thing about flowers was that they made Tara happy.
Unfortunately, asking Tara what kind of roses she’d want planted if – hypothetically – they were going to plant some roses was really kind of a giveaway. Tara was in no way dumb, and doing something as obvious as asking would ruin the surprise.
So she’d done her research, and picked the hybrid tea rose. Or, really, the ‘English’ rose, which wasn’t technically its own category, but was slightly different from the hybrid tea rose. It was a hybrid of a hybrid, really: a hybrid of the hybrid tea rose, which was considered a ‘Modern Garden Rose’, and the ‘Old Garden Roses’.
When she’d started this whole enterprise, she’d been thinking she’d plant “red ones.”
And these were certainly red. So they met the criteria she’d been looking for. And the ‘English’ rose didn’t have one of the main problems of the hybrid tea rose: the hybrid tea rose tended to be scentless, and, really, what was the point of planting a scentless rose?
Willow snorted. As it turned out, a rose by another name – Hybrid Tea Rose – really didn’t smell as sweet.
The ‘English’ rose had its downside, too. She really hadn’t found any roses that didn’t. They were susceptible to disease, and she’d have to keep an eye on that, and, well, roses could have aphid problems. That was pretty much a given.
Draining the last of her water, Willow stood, reviewing her planting notes and ready to get started.
Taking a measuring tape from her pocket, Willow re-measured the front of the house. She wanted to space two plants on either side of the stairs evenly.
With wooden stakes – usable for rose-planting and vampire-slaying – she marked the spots she would dig the holes. And then she re-measured her spacing again, just to be sure, and then compared it to her diagram of the front of the house. The wide stairs left twelve feet on either side for a planting area, and that worked out nicely.
Squinting, Willow raised her head and looked at the sky. The eastern exposure at the front of the house worked out nicely, too, as that was recommended for roses.
Re-checking her notes on the actual digging part, Willow scratched her head and pursed her lips.
The instructions said roses should be planted in a hole “approximately” fifteen inches deep and eighteen inches wide.
Willow hmphed and pulled her measuring tape out of her pocket, marking the boundaries of the holes with more wooden stakes, and started to dig.
Digging, Willow quickly learned, was very, very boring.
And used an entirely different set of muscles than Scooby duties. Which she probably could’ve guessed, since her Scooby duties usually involved the muscles in her arms necessary to type or turn the page of a book, or the muscles in her legs necessary to run like hell.
But her two biggest assets – brains and determination – were well-exercised by Scooby duties, and she was damn well going to apply them to this whole rose-planting thing.
Even if she was kicking herself for not roping Xander into doing the boring digging parts.
It’s not that she minded hard work. No, if she minded hard work, she would have gone with the Landscape Roses. That hardier version of the rose was more resistant to disease, and fungus, and pests, and all that … and quite frankly, she was mildly offended by the idea of an ‘easy-to-care-for’ rose, being of the opinion that if someone, like herself, really wanted roses, they should put in the work to care for them. And if she was mildly offended, Tara would probably be outraged.
Tara generally didn’t get all worked up about things. Not like Willow did. But there were a few things that Tara just rejected outright as being completely wrong, and she’d push back if pushed on the subject.
Like Miracle Whip.
Willow had always been a Best Foods girl. That was the mayonnaise of choice in the Rosenberg family home, and Willow had never even considered switching to Miracle Whip.
Until, of course, she’d gone shopping, picked up mayonnaise as instructed, and found out the hard way that “mayonnaise” always …
always … meant Miracle Whip, and nothing else. End of discussion.
Pulling out her measuring tape, Willow confirmed that the first hole dug was precisely fifteen inches deep and eighteen inches wide. Satisfied with her work so far, Willow wiped her brow, unwittingly smearing dirt across it, and taking a moment to let out a breath before moving on to the next one.
It didn’t take long for Willow to remember that digging was boring, and to rummage around in her brain for the last interesting thing she’d been thinking about.
That’s right. Mayonnaise = Miracle Whip, Willow returned to her mental wanderings, the subject matter displaying in her mind’s eye as an equation. Letting out a light laugh - that turned into a grunt as she almost over-balanced when her current shovelful of dirt proved to be a little heavier than expected - Willow remembered that day.
Tara, as Willow recalled, had already had a bad day to begin with. She couldn’t really remember the details of just why Tara had already in a bad mood, but she certainly remembered being informed that Best Foods was completely unacceptable.
Willow was just grateful they were both kosher. That could’ve gotten ugly.
Pulling out her measuring tape, Willow checked her progress. Only a few inches were left, so Willow pulled out a small hand-spade and quickly dug out the extra dirt so she could move on.
Perked up by her progress, Willow trotted over to the other side of the stairs, and looked at the spot marking where the third hole would be. She was halfway done with the digging, and she was looking forward to this whole thing being done.
Dirt really wasn’t her thing.
And there had been worms. Worms weren’t really her thing, either.
Giving her head a little “holes don’t dig themselves” twitch to the side, Willow started digging.
Was Miracle Whip even
actually mayonnaise, in the technical sense? Did other people who preferred Miracle Whip call it mayonnaise? Didn’t they all call it … ‘Miracle Whip’? Heck, did
Kraft call it mayonnaise?
She wasn’t really sure. But Tara called it mayonnaise, and she had made it perfectly clear that Willow was not to trifle with her Miracle Whip, or try to bring a poor, pale substitute into the house.
Kind of like how Willow had been completely adamant that ‘toothpaste’ meant Crest. Her parents’ arguments over kosher-ness be damned. She flat-out refused to think of toothpaste as a food. And it was the toothpaste she grew up with, that her father had vehemently defended on her behalf, and she wasn’t giving it up.
Nothing else made her feel minty fresh.
And it simply wasn’t negotiable.
Stopping to measure again, Willow realized she’d dug a little too far while on her mental toothpaste-and-mayonnaise run, and so she filled the hole back up a bit and re-measured a second time – and a third – until she was happy with the results.
Willow frowned at the hole, noting that it was just a little lop-sided, and wondered if she should have brought out a level to make sure the ground was even before digging. Willow shook her head. Even for her, that would have been a little too much.
Letting out a long, slow breath, Willow contemplated taking another break, but nixed the idea. She was almost done with the digging.
But she let herself check her notes. After the holes were finished, she’d pull the fertilizer out of the car, and mix that with the dirt from the holes. She’d crossed out the instruction about using three ounces of superphosphate: she’d stumbled upon a rousing discussion on the internet about whether or not it was organic, whether or not it was harmful, whether or not it was a good idea, and on and on and on.
Which was silly, because of course it wasn’t organic. Anything that went through a processing plant and got an acid bath wasn’t organic, in Willow’s estimation. Besides, it had ‘super’ right in the name. What was called ‘super’ that was also ‘organic’?
But, whatever. The point of using it, she’d quickly realized, reading between the lines, was raising the Phosphorus content of the soil, and her tests had indicated that her soil wasn’t acidic enough for that to really be a worry, and that there were plenty of alternatives that, while lower in Phosphorus content, didn’t involve an acid bath or kill worms.
Not that she liked worms, but she did realize they were good for plants. Roses were plants. Ergo, worms good for roses.
Or, at least, she hoped worms weren’t bad for roses, specifically, for some weird and obscure reason that had eluded her research, because if they were bad for roses, she was willfully neglecting instructions that would have helped.
Shaking off her worry that she was doing something wrong, and was on the verge of killing her roses before she’d even got them planted, Willow started digging the fourth hole. She’d spent four months researching this, tested her soil, verified the sun exposure and generally been extremely thorough in figuring out how to do this.
So she needed to stop second-guessing herself and get back to work.
And she needed to think about something other than whether or not she was making a critical error by bypassing the superphosphate.
Willow started mentally listing the things other than toothpaste and mayonnaise that she and Tara had disagreed on. Deodorant had been a big one. They’d ended up compromising by buying two kinds. Same thing with shampoo. Tara had won on coffee, but Willow had won on bread.
Little things, yes, but surprising things. Mundane things that, due to familiarity and habit, made for strong feelings and opinions.
But, well, relationships were like that.
Relationships were a mix of two lives, until there was just the one life, together. Like a hybrid, really, Willow mused, pausing to rest her arm on the end of the handle of the shovel, and her chin on her arm and regarding her hybrid tea roses fondly.
Tara’s life had been Miracle Whip and Aquafresh, and hers had been Best Foods and Crest, and when they’d merged them together, they’d ended up with Miracle Whip and Crest.
It hadn’t been easy.
Loving Tara was easy, sure. What was not to love? But that was like planting a hybrid rose. It was the easy part.
But nurturing it, and growing it, and watching out for fungus and disease and aphids? That was the day-to-day living. The compromises. The apologies. The thoughtful gestures. The late-night talks.
Absurdly grateful that she hadn’t gone with the easy-to-care-for Landscape Roses, and that she hadn’t enlisted Xander for the manual labor, Willow continued working on the fourth hole with a renewed vigor.
Because she was glad she was putting in the work. Hard work was worth it, if she wanted to enjoy some roses for a lifetime.
Humming happily as she dug, Willow didn’t notice Tara’s car pull into the drive until after she’d done her measurements, and looked up to see Tara leaning against her car.
She grinned when Tara started walking towards her, a bemused look on her face.
“You bought me roses?” Tara asked, looking at the holes she didn’t need to measure to know were perfect – Willow did have a measuring tape sitting next to her, after all, and that could only mean one thing - and the four potted rose plants sitting next to them, with a slow, delighted smile spreading across her face.
“You’re home early,” Willow said with a pout, but inwardly pleased with Tara’s response.
Tara raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to leave and come back and pretend to be surprised, or would you like some help?”
Hmm … planting roses together. That sounded pretty perfect, actually.
“Help, please,” Willow said. “We just need to mix in the fertilizer, unpot the plants, drop them in and cover them up.”
“In your car?” Tara asked, taking Willow’s hand automatically as they strolled towards Willow’s vehicle.
“Mmm-hmm,” Willow said.
Tara stopped, and looked at Willow suspiciously, her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t planning on using a superphosphate, were you?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Willow said, with a mock-offended look. “That would be like buying Best Foods mayonnaise. Sick and wrong.”
“Or anything other than Crest,” Tara said, shooting a look at Willow that was so full of warmth and affection that Willow couldn’t help but grin stupidly in response.
Damn, she had a good life.
“Let’s get to work,” Willow said.