Title: Practical Gardening
Author: KCS
Characters: Holmes, Watson, Mrs. Hudson
Rating: K
Word Count: 500
Warnings: none
Summary: Holmes gets a lesson in practical gardening, and Mrs. Hudson is the one to give it to him.
Author's Notes: This is an answer to a request for an LJ friend, with a word limit of 500.
In retrospect, she should have known better than to leave it in the care of her new lodgers.
"You said you were going to remind me about it, Doctor!"
"I did," came the dry rejoinder. "You were too busy scratching away at that infernal instrument to listen, evidently. A man gets the feeling that he is not wanted, after a dozen or so instances of being ignored."
"I wasn't ignoring you. I was concentrating."
"You still cannot blame me if you forgot to water the poor thing – you were the one that promised to look after it while she was away, not I!"
"I didn't think that entailed anything other than making sure it did not get tipped over in the hall!"
A small silence. "Beg pardon?"
"You heard me perfectly well, Doctor –"
"Yes, yes, but surely you cannot be serious! Do you mean to tell me you had no idea it needed to be watered twice a day and put in the window each afternoon?"
"She told you that?"
"She didn't have to, Holmes! It's common sense for houseplant-sitting!"
"It is? Why are they called houseplants then, if they require the same elements that outside plants do??"
She heard a low moan from the exasperated Doctor, and nearly laughed but for the fact that the poor fern was lying dead below, shriveled and brown. And they the hardiest of plants besides cactuses! But even that the poor plant had expired, unloved and uncared-for, could not prevent her laughing at the abject horror upon both their faces when she entered sternly.
"Erm…back early, Mrs. Hudson?" Holmes offered weakly.
Watson ducked for Holmes's bedroom door. "I'll just be getting up to my room, freshen up before luncheon…"
She heard the angry hiss. "You are a coward, Doctor!"
"Perhaps, but a smart one!" the answer floated back.
"Mr. Holmes, I am sorely disappointed in you," said she, carefully concealing a smile.
"You, my good woman, have been eavesdropping!"
"Absolutely, young man," she retorted, hands on hips. "You are going to replace that poor plant, and you are going to learn to take care of it, is that clear?"
Holmes squirmed, a half-hearted protest rising and withering on his lips. "…Very well," he muttered at last. "I am sorry, Mrs. Hudson."
"So you should be. And here I thought the Doctor was exaggerating when he said you had no knowledge of practical gardening!"
A hastily-stifled peal of laughter from the top of the stairs, and the detective's subsequent growling as he pounded up them to punish his friend, stopped any further chastising she might have given. She shook her head, tried to ignore the loud thud and yelp upstairs that set the hall mirror rattling, and set the fern out for the dust-man.
And when, months later, she was gifted a lovely aspidistra, Mr. Holmes's responsibility became to care for it, under her stern supervision. Who knew that the detective would eventually become so enamored with the thing as to be incensed when she removed it?
