The sun sails high above the Oregon, mountain town. No one will ever expect that frigid climate is what is to come. Mabel sticks out another finger to scrape more old, man hair off of her grunkle's favorite arm chair. "Just...one...more..," she mutters to herself as her hand draws nearer to the two think, white hairs.
But a sudden and startling call from Stan causes her to flail and lose the tiny follicles altogether, "HEY KIDS! GET OUT HERE. WE'VE GOT LOTS OF GARDENING TO DO." Mabel's sleeves are- as usual- too long for her arms and she catches them from flying above her head immediately enough to perceive the announcement.
That's odd. We don't have a garden, she thinks to herself just as Dipper enter the room from upstairs. His wrinkled socks shuffle against the questionably dirty carpet, "Hey, Mabel. What's the old man screaming about now?"
"He wants us to build a garden," Mabel says dryly. Mabel observes her brother. He looks as if he has just woken up. He bears a loose, orange t shirt with a sketched symbol of that weird circle inside of a triangle with a line going through the both of them (you know, the artsy kind of thing). His boxers are a solid blue and he brown flies away as far as it can in clumps. He just finishes blinking all of the sleep way and out of his eyes. Dang, he looks healthy, she thinks. She's sure she also looks just as healthy as she feels. "Come on. Let's go see what he wants." She waves Dipper over to follow her out of the house. Unlike her brother, Mabel is mostly dressed. She wears a blue, wool sweater covered with orange polka dots. Other than that, it is the usual purple skirt and white socks. The only things she lacks are her shoes. She quietly slips her feet into Stan's over-sized, pink slippers. She hopes he won't mind her getting them a bit dirty walking outside to answer to his call.
The two walk hesitantly outside. Mabel breathes in the fresh, morning air, not even bothering to wonder where Waddles is. It is too nice a day for anything to go wrong. It seems as though Wendy is just arriving at the Shack, her golf cart pulling up and off to the side. "Huh," she hears Dipper wonder aloud behind her. "Why is Wendy parking so far away? What is she trying to avoid?" Then they notice it. The huge dugout where the stage for phony presentations of wolf boys and albino pigs used to stand. Now there is nothing surrounding that area but unearthed soil. Wendy seems to notice it too as she steps apprehensively out of the awkwardly landed cart and begins to skirt her way around the pit of dirt toward the twins, careful of getting her boots ruined by the mud.
"What is even going on, guys?" Wendy asks with a red eyebrow raised as she approaches the twins. The three look on in profound silence for a moment to take in the sight in the middle of their new lawn of dirt.
Stanford and Soos both heave enormous spades into the dirt and the spits make hard, sandy noises. They then continuously scoop the piles of brown sludge up and out of the dirt and sling them into even bigger piles behind them. When Soos notices the three of them staring, he ecstatically waves to them, "Hey dudes!"
"We think he's building some sort of...plant-growing area," Mabel struggles to find the words.
"I don't get why," Wendy speaks again unenthusiastic. "There are plants all over this town. We live in the middle of floral nowhere! Why go to all the trouble of planting an expensive garden when you have natives in the vicinity to rip from their homes?"
Dipper suddenly puts his hands out and shakes them furiously, his eyes wide open now, "No! Don't you dare give him any ide-"
"Wow Wendy!" Stan calls out and stops shoveling. "That is a great idea! Even greater than this one that Soos had." Stan gives a dead glare right to Soos.
"S-sorry, boss," now it's Soos's turn to wave his hands in front of him. "It was the only thing I could think of at the time. Besides, we've already acted on it."
"Well, you better get to work burying what you acted on, because I'm switching ideas!" with that, the twins' great uncle adamantly throws his shovel into the dark depths of the pit he and Soos made together and with a grunt, hoists himself up and out. He begins walking toward Wendy, Dipper, and Mabel, a cash-winning grin stretched across his face. His usually classy, brown shoes are smudged with mud and crunch with each trudge on the dirt. He motions for the kids to come along with him. "Come on, you two. While Soos cleans up the sloppy mess he created in our yard, you guys are gonna help me find exotic plants."
"What?" Wendy's eye twitches. She just made a horrible mistake. "I was just making a joke. Don't subject them to that!"
"Hey, relax, will you?" Stan waves her off with a crusty, pale, dirt-slathered hand. "It's a nice day. They'll be fine." Mabel notices her brother glance up worriedly and feels a chilling shadow come over her. She looks up at the sky, unnerved, and sees an enormous, grey cloud drifting overhead. It's so big, it is enough to engulf the entire town! Stan, of course, doesn't seem to notice anything.
Dipper gulps, "Actually, Grunkle Stan, I was just about to go back inside. I just remembered I have some stuff to do." He starts back toward the shack.
Stan then rears up and grabs his scrawny arm with his thick hand so that he cannot move any further, "Oh Dipper, we all know you don't have any stuff to do, let's go before it gets any darker."