Self-Soothing

Posted on Fri Feb 12th, 2021 @ 5:03pm by Lieutenant Commander MaKorie Kai

990 words; about a 5 minute read

Personal Log
Lieutenant Commander Kai Makorie



Makorie went to her personal labs and took out the notes on the hybrid rose she was working on. This project had already taken over a year and she figured there was still another year yet before it was finished and could be shown. She was creating this rose for Lenora, her best friend who died young. There had been so much death in her life, it would be overwhelming if she thought about it. So she put all her energy into her work. Besides, it would be wrong to show outward grief of those who had gone onto the Prophets, it would be against all she believed to the depths of her soul. Those she had lost were with the Prophets and in paradise, no more pain, no more fear, no more sorrow. It gave her peace to picture them all like that.

Before her on the worktop were three rows of individual dishes, each with nutrient fluid and a single base. There were slight variations in the fluids, but the base was constant in all of them. Each also had temperature and light gages on them and each set to something slightly different. Each of these variables were noted in her workbook on this rose.

She thought about the work she had already put into this rose. The base was a simple yellow tea rose. It would not be a simple tea rose when she was done. This was going to be named Lenora for her friend and honor her. Yellow had been Lenora’s favorite color and it always made Makorie smile inside when she saw it. So this rose would be yellow when it was finished, but not just yellow. However, that was still being worked on.

The first factor she had successfully bred into the new rose was making it a climbing rose. She had visions of trellises covered with the lush green of the leaves and the vibrant gold of the roses as entrances to walkways or special areas that were to be celebrated. There was a Vedek temple in her hometown on Bajor she was going to send seeds to, when they were done, so they could be used in the memorial gardens. She had finally gotten the climbing trait to breed true in the new hybrid even with other factors added in. Each of the bases for the new rose now bred climbing with the yellow tea rose.

Next, she had moved onto making it a double tea rose. She wanted more than the simple petals that opened up to show the precious heart without fanfare. She wanted a little more flair to this rose, something that made it special. It had taken almost six months for her to breed in the double factor. The heart of the rose now had the beautiful outer petals and a fringe on inner petals with the heart almost hidden in the lace surrounding it. Now that trait also bred true in all the bases she worked on.

Another trait she really wanted was a unique scent. Something special that would please and calm at the same time. She wanted the scent to fill the air around the roses and linger for a long time. However she didn’t want the scent to be cloying, or too sweet, or overpower other scents around it. She wanted it to enhance the mood, not kill it. She had worked hard for two months to perfect the scent she wanted, and then another three to breed it into the rose. Now though, it bred true and was a heavenly scent. It smelled of dusky velvet, musk, cherry blossoms, orange blossoms, vanilla, and lavender and yet you couldn’t pick out just one of those scents as they blended together like an expensive designer perfume.

The current trait she was working on was to add a delicate peach color to the inside petals only, leaving the outside petals still a vibrant gold. She felt the orangish pink was more compatible with the gold than more of a dusty pink or baby pink, but she didn’t want the color to overpower the gold as the gold was the star of the rose and the peach was to support the gold.

Now she was carefully adding nanograms of the color she wanted to each of the bases taken from other roses who had that peach color. She didn’t want to just manipulate the seed, she wanted to create the rose in the time honored manner of crossbreeding and adding traits from each of the parent plants to get the desired outcome. The color was in the form of pollen from peach colored roses, not actual color. She made careful notes of just how much from which parent rose was added to the base. Every detail from the nutrients, temperature, light, would make the changes to the base, so each had to be taken into account.

When she was finished with making her notes and adding her pollens and making adjustments to all the differing factors, she carefully placed the containers in the incubator for them to germinate. When they began to sprout, they would be transferred to larger pots until they reached bud state and bloomed. Then she would know which ones to continue with and which ones to discard. She would take seeds from those she considered a success and plant them, to make sure the traits bred true. If they didn’t, then she had to start over and keep at it until the two toned color bred true in the hybrid.

She put her notebook in the correct spot for the Lenora Rose. Cleaned up the mess. Checked on the growing bases one last time. Then noticed it was long past mealtime. Her hands were a little shaky, time to give her body the nutrients it needed to survive and thrive.

 

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