Abatina, Begonia, and Columbine
I have always adored gardens. They are sponges of anxiety, eccentricity, and all sorts of my least favorite surprises. When I feel that my duties are unlocking the worries of a world that does not weigh upon me, there's always a garden I could turn to. They are deeply soothing things, and they do as much as the many draughts to aid in sleep I've sampled over the centuries. Nopony is weary in a garden, only resting without having to worry how others feel when they lay their eyes upon them. Emptiness of thought and heart are peaceful things, and a backdrop of flowers will not let a single soul even breathe anything suggested otherwise. All that will ever be unplanned are the loops of pill-bugs across cobblestones and the powdery swish of a butterfly's wings tickling my muzzle.
They often do just that, since I only ever try to force myself into stillness when I have no eyes upon me and the unpleasant chill of solitude has yet to set in fully. I would scrunch up my muzzle just enough to try and get them to flitter away, only for them to not notice my slight twitch. Of course, such gentle, colorful creatures would see my mane and my coat and enjoy its warmth. There are rare times when I could bring myself to sit as still as a statue here, and feel just as stony amid the open flourishing of life. They have no capability for judgment to notice the condition of my mane that marks me as a mature goddess and the faintest sound of an exhale leaving my mouth marks me as very alive. I love these butterflies for their foolishness, just as I love all the birds of lower magic for their same blissful, easy ignorance.
I never have to explain anything to them or remain practiced and perfect. For once, I can relax my smile (though even doing that has always stoked my worries) until I run into the next of my royal guards and am required to restore it immediately, as I always do. Weather pegasi only run deliveries from Cloudsdale in Canterlot, and though I never like using magic to do such things, it has afforded me fewer things to worry about. It is too high and most of the seasons are too cold for any breezies to populate Canterhorn Mountain, so it is birds and breezies I am left with.
They are some of the things I have no need to place a mask between myself and them when I keep their company.
But that is a little secret I tried not to nourish and kept all its tangles right where they belonged.
...
I love gardening too, and sometimes I could even bring myself to do it. Even when I have the time to, I often find easier, less draining pastimes snatching my focus easier, so I have long gotten used to the peace that flows over me when I take the path of least resistance. I have lived long enough to know it is far wiser to be a fish that swims with the current than one who leaps from the school and straight into the jaws of a cat, squeezing until it wriggles and flops about no more. Over that stretch of time, I have amassed a collection of various garden tools. Most of them have been selected by my dear servants when I have requested new equipment be purchased while they are on other errands that I have bid them to do. A large sum of them have been gifts or offerings from a mortal to a goddess, and the latter left me with many bejeweled pieces that could be sold for a fortune if any cruel thief was to take them from me.
Most of them are decorated like something out of the same land as homes with white picket fences. Those are the kind that acts like outer ripples, clinging to some of the few large cities that my nation has on flatter lands. I would always turn a small spade or rifle through one of my small bags and see the smiling ladybugs or bright flowers staring back up at me. Even when they are smudged with soil and traces of other debris dots the golden surface of my shoes, I am always careful to take as many breaks as I can to keep even a speck of grime out of my coat. Not a single drop of sweat along my neck shines from under the shade of my small-brimmed sun hat if I could help it. There is nothing keeping me in any state where even a strand of my mane looks out of place. Not if I could help it. My ponies should not ever think it is possible for me to appear so during the times when I worked on the earth. Every one of the gardens of Canterlot Castle are walled, and there is beauty in the feeling that there might not be a world outside my door, and that walls and windchimes are enough to keep all the magical, wild things in it so very far from me.
Those times when I bother to crouch low among spring blossoms and partake in any planting myself are uncommon after all this time. There is always something to call me away, and too often I forget to bring something to distract myself from the silence. It makes the whole process feel so futile in the end, so I let Destiny carry me away from it to where my thoughts can fade, and useful things might keep my hooves occupied instead so that I could take my whole self out of the day and ensure that much more space for my subjects in it. There is always a quill to be taken up or one of my little ponies who has a bubbling geyser of thoughts to be spoken in court, and I refuse to be anything less than the fine pitcher that will catch every last one of my subject's wants of the crown to where they are destined to flow.
More often than not, I have found that there is a positively perfect solution to this problem of wishing for gardening time. While letting my time waste away trying to get anything done on my own does make me feel pleasant, I know I have to be better for everypony else's sake too. Some years ago, I could not put a hoof on when I finally reflected on the sheer wastefulness of my habit. There are ponies that needed my time far more than I did, and for me to spend such regular amounts of time nearly dirtying my hooves is unbecoming for the ruler of a county. It has become merely another ordeal too, one that I could do to delight myself and little more.
What ended up being the best solution for everypony is to allow the gardening staff to be guided by my gentle commands while I soak up the loving presence of the walls around me, looking on and commanding the scene down to every snip of grass. Topiaries are trimmed by experts to reflect the latest trends beloved by my subjects, and seeing them put everything in its proper place filled me with an airy, eased feeling. Watching every twig be tamed stirred that lightness, and that sweet sense of dulled worry from knowing that I turned selfish frivolity into something that is good for everypony. I could show everypony where destiny marked them to be with a command that would never go unheeded, and—
Either way, my hooves never once touch the dirt and feel the messiness of life mar them from behind their required, gilded containment. All such imperfections are carefully kept from me like a damsel lounging endlessly in her ivory tower. I, for one, can think of no better position to have for the rest of eternity than letting my mortals take my whole self for how they spend their limited lives worshipping and heeding me as their chosen goddess.
...
There isn't any painting, sculpture, or other dramatic trinkets that could warm Canterlot Castle better than any of my plants can. One need only to leave the small number of grand hallways and ballrooms that I have partially opened to the public. Many hoofsteps away from where the throne room boasts a high ceiling, before any of my maids or other domestic servants even venture into the borders of the Solar Wing, almost any one of them could have a run-in with one of my humble domestic gardens. There, ponies would find pure marble planters that remain pristine and luminous no matter how much the plants in them have grown.
Generally, I try to refrain from planting anything too exotic. My smaller hanging pots are trimmed with gold and hung with fine chains so that they do not sing in the breeze like a chime. I do not wish for the bold yellows of my abatina blossoms to be outshone by exotic gifts from diplomats, the kind too foreign and eccentric for good Equestrian soil. I also have no need to disrupt the quiet pink hues of my begonias for plants that hold perilous magics that are never going to be welcome in my home. Even if the power of flowers like Heart's Desire is beneath me, ponies can easily succumb to something so wicked. In all my centuries as the princess of this nation, I have amassed more than enough beautiful vases for all my flowers. The gentle sight of red and white columbine petals or common yellow of fennel paired with yellow tulips are perfect, and the vast variety of priceless beauties I have fall into my hooves. With the help of little works of magic and an army of attentive staff, I can keep snapdragons and coreopsis flowers or other combinations like marigolds, daffodils, and day-lily flowers growing from the same planter. Such is the greatness of the powers that earth ponies possess.
The only problem comes when my plants grow too large for their planters, their leaves and stalk drooping over the rims studded with semi-precious stones or carved with great Alicorns, heavenly bodies, and pony heroes. When their patterns are obscured, and their leaves become litter due to strangled roots, I find myself holding back an unprofessional sigh and faced with the same questions I have been asked for lifetimes. No matter what, I want the inside of this castle to be as beautiful and earthly as my gardens are. I do not need reminders that I sit in one of the greatest citadels in the world, one of the rare few in the past few millennia that is built to house any gods at all. I do not want to be seen like that, to be seen and known and have it called true. Anypony could make their own garden, let only what they pleased into it, have leaves hide all the dirt below, and ensure that every weed is choked out if it dares try to grow above or equal to the gardener's darling flowers.
I need a place where even the tallest sunflower can be seen as fennel if she wishes, and whenever she wishes. A vase does not fit in every area of the castle I want it to, and the ponies with different faces in the same jobs always came to me for answers when the vases are not to be talked about. I never tell anypony because I haven't ever felt the need to, but the vases are my favorite. With them, art is an object that nopony bothers to care about, not when the treasure is transplanted earth, and the most delicate and pretty kind there is. Nopony should live in doubt that any mare or filly will swoon for flowers, and those who do are liars — and not the good kind. My kindly servants will always ask me: what do I wish to do with the castle plants that are not in the vases?
The newest servants always scramble to me first, eager to please their one and only beloved Alicorn princess. After all, what could please me more than displays of chivalry and kindness towards my flowers? I always receive the company of my subjects nicely, even when they interrupt a meeting with one of my other little ponies. Every time I nod here or murmur my sympathies there when their anxious story pours forth, I stray to thoughts of vases. Their beauty is in their simplicity, that when the contents of it have withered away, they get thrown away. More than that, they never get to even be a memory, and each flower would be replaced long before I could realize that they have died in the first place.
Whenever I can, I choose to carry out my very particular plans without their aid. It is a rare moment where I would hang up the cloak of near-constant company and step through my halls slowly, alone except for the suffocation and staleness that is brought on by the sudden solitude. The rustle of gardening tools will always sound louder than it ever should, and I will still approach the planters and pots with the same practiced gait required of me. No matter what, I know that this quiet breeds nothing but a tiring nervousness, like a gnat crawling down somepony's neck to their hindquarters.
First, I would lay out the old, heavy blanket of one of my gardening staff. They keep many of them folded and tucked away in the tool sheds on the castle grounds, and generously let anypony in need borrow one of these old things. The blankets are too worn and dirtied to be a proper fixture in a polite home, which means that a plant in need of correction could be laid upon it without any worries about stray grime. Next, I would always wind up making a fuss over how to trim the roots. A... very, very long time ago, there would have been somepony who would chide me for not utilizing my divine magic to prune the naked plants in front of me with a lick of fire.
I've long grown used to the absence of her, though the lifetimes we had together have always been longer. Mortals are lucky that when they do not wish to depart this world, they become ghosts for one reason or another. Ponies provided something to bury, because there is always a day when they could be buried, though I know I shouldn't even think so enviously of something so neat in comparison to—
Pruning is difficult to work without magic, and I never complain. Not unless everypony around me is doing so too. I would find myself snipping off too much of a root or outright taking tired, hacking strikes with the blades hanging in the highest points of the sheds. A surprising satisfaction ripples through me when I see the few remaining tatters after my work is done. When I have only stubs where the nuisance of free-growing tangles have been, all is as it is meant to be. Plants like that are lucky little things, and I return them to their pots, happily reshaping the dirt around them.
Not all of my precious plants are able to grow in such a lucky way. I always look past their exteriors and am startled by what lay within, just for a moment. Some roots are great for me to deal with, too stubborn and different from anything I have ever needed. What would happen to preserve such gnarly and inhospitable sights would result in the whole home being replaced. There isn't a pony on the castle staff who isn't aware of how precious the fixtures of this castle are, how expensive it is to make even a row of planters in the proper Canterlot style. Only some under my roof understand the sheer destruction that would need to happen in order to remove every golden chain embedded deep in my ceilings or the way that my castle's every feature must be chipped away in order to accommodate my floral guests.
These are the long leaves, winding tendrils of ivy, and wilting petals that end up exactly where I need them most. Their roots will be trampled and crammed into compost barrels where they are to be packed beneath yet another one of their kind that has outgrown what I have given them. Some will end up nourishing the roots of their kind in my outside gardens once they're properly left to act as compost. A rare few might be salvaged as trimmings for a garland and any flowers that appear sufficiently unblemished might wind up in my office. Next to the charcoal portrait of my latest Faithful Student, a fresh-faced filly named Twilight Sparkle, is a hoof-crafted vase it would do me some good to replace, seeing as it predates this newest gifted unicorn by one more, my original youngest-ever Faithful Student. Should Twilight Sparkle have any talent at foalish crafts, perhaps I will be able to throw away fewer flowers.
Until then, I might simply order Raven to pass on the message that I want another vase for my office. A more professional piece. The kind that I need not lie about, knowing that for the first time in my life I have to make myself out as everything but the mother I am not as soon as it ends up on my desk.
The crooked, unsmoothed sea glass sun is just opaque enough for me to watch each flower start to discolor from the bottom up and inside out — each having been torn fully from the roots with strokes I do not remember making.
Author's Note
I tried writing something simple to get back into gear with working on my longer, more important projects. I think I'll be there soon, though it is still a struggle to get back into any semblance of my writing routine after the past few months. The year is halfway through, and it has been kicking my ass. I want to kick 2021's back harder, and with horsewords!
