“Ah, dammit..”

A pained hiss left Rosemary’s lips, a small bead of blood forming on the tip of her thumb, where a rose thorn had pricked her. It’d been a while since she got back into the flow of gardening— And clearly, her rust was showing. Three months ago, a thorn would’ve never even grazed her!

However, that’s probably because she still had gardening gloves back then.

But that didn’t matter, she wasn’t doing this just so she could have a perfect scene in the backyard of her house, she was doing this because it made her happy, doing small things for something to see it grow into something beautiful and thrive…Though, she could probably do without roses, then.

She'll never say it out loud, but when plotting what flowers she wanted, roses were never in the top five. Their need to be pruned and fed a bit more than the flowers she had chosen was quite a load, and the responsibility of their soil having to be moist-yet-not-too-moist was a hassle as well. But…She couldn’t find the heart to get rid of them after caring for them for so long. Besides, they were a gift—A play on her name, no doubt—and she was raised to appreciate gifts.

Suckling off the blood on her thumb, Rosemary got back to work, reaching down to the weed she was attempting to retrieve before. After she managed to pluck the stubborn thing out, she sighed in relief, climbing off her knees and onto her feet.

She hung her sun hat on the fence, proudly cracking her knuckles.