Friday April 29th, 2011

The exercise:

Four lines of prose about: the machine.

Today was berry day. We used a rented rototiller to finish weeding around the strawberries in preparation for spreading wood shavings around them, we pruned and weeded around the raspberry bushes, and pruned the blackberry bushes.

Now they look domesticated again, instead of some wild bushes you might find on an abandoned lot. Tomorrow we spread the wood shavings... which I suspect will be a major pain. Hopefully the sun comes out to make things more enjoyable.

Mine:

There were so many shiny buttons, and none of them were labelled. He resisted for as long as he could - which wasn't very long at all - before pushing the big blue button on the top. At least, he thought it was the top; he really had no way of knowing if he had the machine right side up or not.

But that was the last thing on his mind once the machine began speaking to him in his dead grandfather's voice.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I really like raspberry canes, I think it's great the way the plant makes the fruit so accessible to us :) The wood shaving for the strawberries -- is that to stop the weeds froms growing up around the plants now? I've seen straw used in the uk.
Big blue buttons sound much safer to push than big red ones, but speaking with dead people's voices is still scary!

the machine
"So, you're Florence then?" said Dave. Vince turned away briskly and headed for the door.
"No," said the man who looked like he ate rugby prop-forwards for breakfast with just his bare hands. "I'm the Machine."

Marc said...

Greg - the shavings are meant to limit the weeds, as well as keep the berries cleaner. Better than having them sitting in the dirt all day. Or the mud, after it rains.

Yeah, I wanted to avoid the obvious 'big red button', but now I realized I missed an opportunity to explain why he chose the blue one instead. Blargh.

Loved the Florence + The Machine reference :D