Vlarian Triefield Kirk, at home, is a little bit like having the Proverbs 31 ideal woman crossed with a nesting Spican Royal Harpie mother from her homeworld Spica 5. She is basically that same woman at work also, as a full fleet admiral known for her fantastic scientific work in one half of her career and blowing entire lifeforms and planets away when left with no other choice on the other half of her career.
What that meant when she moved out with our children to Spica 5 was that she looked around with all of her ability, noted everything that might be of use to me and the family, and began hunting it down.
Ventana 5 has many plants that have close analogs to Earth, just on a different scale – skyscraper corn, three-mile carrots, and up above we see nested nasturtiums, each plant yielding a flowerhead such that there is a flower big enough for every pollinator on the planet at one time. The example here represents the closest to the colors of the common varieties of nasturtiums of Earth, all in one blooming head:
The large blooms of the versions that are farmed for food are so large that their nectar can be ladeled out daily and processed into a syrup, and the local bees make an equally delicious honey from the blooms fitted to their size.
“Ornamental” cultivars of nested nasturtiums have their largest blooms being about the size of the palm of the average human man's hand, and then the rest proceed downward in size for the smaller birds, bees, and other insects.
The problem with nested nasturtiums is that they are gorgeous, but they make a terrible “ornamental” plant – they take a decade to come to bloom, and although humans keep falling for the okey-doke and buying them because admittedly, for beauty, it is hard to beat them anywhere on the frontier –
– the issue is patience, and most humans and near-Earth humanoids come to Ventana 5 for cash money and moving on from there.
Thus it was that my wife had already identified who in the neighborhood had purchased the things not knowing how long it was going to take to have them bloom, and counted the residency turnover to know what properties had nested nasturtiums that were in year 9 – she had already done all that before just suggesting to me, “I'd like to add a bit of a personal touch to your outpost landscaping – you are doing great business, and I think I can make it even more inviting to the locals.”
I said yes, and was pleasantly surprised with how she had already done research on the local landscapers and had some choices to present to me for my approval. I had no idea with how the excavations going on in our own neighbors' yards had to do with the plants being brought to the company location. My mind didn't connect those plants with my business in any real way.
My wife, however, knew in the process of settling in that the locals on the frontier knew what average humans came to do – make their money and run. My partner Capt. Rufus Dixon had done a magnificent job getting the outpost established, and I considered myself building well on his excellent foundation, but Kirk and Dixon Shipping was still laboring under the expectation that we were just another fly-by-night human operation that would cut and run. I didn't even know that, but my wife did.
I had no idea what my wife was having planted – I was impressed with the low cost of the majority of the materials, and cheered up coming home when so many neighbors planted the Earth-nasturtiums my wife had traded for their nested nasturtiums.
However, the locals knew immediately what my new landscaping signified in their terms: Kirk and Dixon Shipping was going to be around. Business bumped up by three percent in the first week after the landscaping was finished, and continued up at a slow but steady pace until the blooms finally began popping –
– and then jumped a shocking thirty percent!
Dix and I could not figure it out at all; it took Ms. Marieme Mbaye, our research specialist, to work it all out, and only then did I realize what my wife had quietly done for my company, and thus, for me.
As I walked home that day I thought about all the people my wife must have talked with, and all the people she had convinced to trade Earth-nasturtiums for nested nasturtiums, and how much of her personal money she might have spent on all that.
Then I arrived and finally noticed what was blooming in my backyard, around a corner our neighbors would find hard to see–
– she had withheld one of the loveliest plants for us, nourished up almost to farmer size, and was showing Mark V. and Laura how to carefully spoon the nectar out while baby Laurence contentedly napped in her shade. I also noted that she had studied and applied what the farmers did in terms of planting things around the nested nasturtium plant that repelled the creatures she didn't want around it while helping to attract the pollinators that she did. Already, she had been collecting nectar for days – apparently, our home plant had bloomed before the ones at outpost headquarters and was still going strong.
I went into the kitchen and made pancakes for dinner, which was my way of letting my wife know I had seen what she had done, and then later thanked her for everything and covered all her personal costs. The next week I presented her with a local gift of great price: a perfume distilled of nested nasturtium blooms … their odor was slight from bloom to bloom, but lovely, and I knew she would love it.
“I don't always pick up the scent of what you are doing for this family, because I don't move like an admiral,” I said, “but I want you to know I appreciate it at the end."
“I appreciate everything you are doing and have always done for me and our family,” she said, “and so you know I'm always going to be up to something … but maybe for tonight, I'll just put this on with nothing else and see what happens.”
“I like the way you move, Admiral, and I'll make it my business to show you how much I approve of that decision!”
This is one pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, colored in a variety of different palettes, but it was the second one that reminded me of one of my favorite Earth flowers in its usual array of colors from coral to white, just nested!