#10 A Mucky Job

It was Christmas day, oh so cold, and Oscar, for some strange reason, had decided that it was a good idea to walk down to the student greenhouse.

If he ignored the snow though, and thought hard enough about warm things, then he could at least try to trick himself into thinking that it was close to summer and not freezing cold out. In theory anyway.

All it really achieved was him huddled in his jumper, whistling what may have been ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’, as he hurried for the greenhouse door.

It was safe to say that he was quite relieved once he was safely tucked away in the toasty warmth of the greenhouse, the door between him and the cold.

As he stomped the snow off his boots, not wanting to melt a trail of the stuff around to be slipped in, he glanced around the greenhouse. There was a particular supplies cupboard that he needed. Where was it-?

Aha! There!

Oscar moved towards the cupboard, pushing up his sleeves as he went. With what he was to be playing around with, he did not want to risk dangling sleeves.

With his sleeves secured, he pulled out an iron bowl and a vial of muddy liquid from the cupboard, then moved over to a free bit of counter so that he could get to work.

He set his new goodies down, along with some dung and a jar of honey that he pulled from his bag. His gloves were pulled out as well, since he was not quite willing to mix those ingredients barehanded.

With everything that he needed set out on the counter, Oscar eyed them for a moment as he mentally debated. Did he really want to be mixing that in his nice new jumper? His nice new jumper whose main colour was cream? Sure he had rolled his sleeves up, but what if something splashed?

Oscar stepped away from the counter so that he could pull his jumper off.

With it folded and put away safely in his bag for the time being, he finally pulled his gloves on and began his task.

He first scooped the dung into the bowl, trying to ignore the stench as he did so. The jar of honey was next, the sticky liquid slowly dribbling down to cover the dung.

Oscar tried to tell himself that it was just honey over chocolate pudding. It did not work for some reason.

Once his jar was empty, he turned his attention to the vial that he had taken from the supplies cupboard. He briefly wondered what was actually in the vial, before he decided that he wanted to be finished with his task more than he wanted to find out.

He unstoppered the vial and tipped the contents into the bowl.

With all three ingredients in the bowl, he began to mix them all together, making sure to be as thorough as he could. He did not want to find that he had left a lump unmixed when he went to use the fertiliser.

When he thought that everything was mixed together enough, he gave the bowl one last stir just to be sure, and then lifted his head to look around for the hanging baskets that needed it. There was supposed to be enough fertiliser for three of them, so he just had to find the three most in need.