Friday, April 1, 2011

Ice Age

I'm going to try to keep it short this morning, because there's a lot of makeup work to do today. We've been having some pretty dramatic fluctuations in the weather lately, but the need to get a lot of our seeds and sprouts in the ground made us take the risk of a hard frost. 

We'd hoped that we had managed to avoid that, but this morning the ground was (and still is) covered in a thick mantle of the stuff. There are people out right now in force, trying to do everything they can to save what we've planted. We're lucky, really, because much of what we've got in the ground right now is cold weather food, meant to be planted early. About thirty percent of it, though, isn't. Which means a lot of scrambling about, trying to determine what we'll lose and what will live. 

I'm taking Becky out with me today. She's going to play the part of personal assistant since I've got my trainees busy with other things, as well as being my second set of eyes for zombies, since we'll be out in the open. Becky has been quiet the last few days, not really wanting to leave the house. So far I've avoided giving her a work assignment, since she's still recovering from the arduous trip here. Given how well she handled her liquor over the weekend, I'm guessing she's able to work. 

The problem is, I want to utilize her skills. She's got a lot of knowledge floating around in that massive brain of hers, but her sharpest talent is keeping people alive and putting them back together. She's reluctant to take a spot in our clinic, though, because we're flush with staff there, and she's got some...issues with providing any kind of medical care at present. Just talking about it sets her trembling, and from what I can gather that's due to her terrible journey here. I can't imagine how hard it was for her, trying to keep so many companions alive on the way to the compound, only to lose every last one. 

Some took infection from wounds despite her best efforts. Others from trauma she couldn't mend. I think her experiences since The Fall have accumulated in her mind, giving her the same sense of futility about trying that many of us have felt at one point or another. 

Gaaaaah. I want to keep this brief. Anyway, I'm going to take her with me, partly because she needs to get out of the house for a bit, see some other people and visit the farms for the first time, and partly because her judgment is still sound, her brain quick. I value her opinion and her skills as a problem solver. Maybe she can come up with some ways to keep any future frosts from killing what we plant. 

Seems like the only way this Winter is going to die is if we chain it down and stab it in the heart...

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