In the wake of the storms that had been never ending, many a garden was ruined. In fact, some places had flooding that went beyond just the loss of a few petunias. Thankfully, the only losses and causalities at Marcus's home were those of his Marigolds and possibly his Peonies. They were pretty hardy but the storm had washed the soil away something terrible, and the exposed roots had become a snack for snails and slugs overnight it felt like. It had been nice to have a garden ready for the blooming season but well.
The season had come and gone and he might as well get over it. He could and would had to replace them eventually. Winter however wasn't the time to do it. For now, he could cover up the brown little spaces with some nice moss coverage or maybe a few larger potted plants. Just so his yard didn't become a mass of brown mud in the coming months. He wanted to at least have a nice looking yard, his lawn decor aside, (the local community kept sending him letters about how he should tone it down but as it was, he was following city code and had violated no rules so they could all just deal with the current large metal koi fish that was swimming in air of his front lawn).

The cart Marcus grabbed was unstable, front left wheel off the ground and spinning around wildly. It didn't make the cart itself harder by much, but it certainly was noisy. It was also one of the few cards that didn't have dirt all over the bottom, so he'd stick it out. Tugging his gloves out of his pocket, the man warmed his hands before putting them on, pushing his cart towards the garden center, pausing by the fountains to consider how much care and want he had for a glorified bird bath for perhaps the nth time in his existence. Each time he went to the gardening store he always wondered and each time he came to the same conclusion. Glorified bird bath.

Ready to move on after his near ritualistic pause by the fountains, Marcus hadn't been paying much mind to his surroundings, backing up and into a young man.

Social anxiety went from 0 to 100 in milliseconds.
"Oh my- Terribly sorry about that. You aright?" It was a young man, maybe a student. Great now he was hurting kids. Shame colored his ears. He really needed to not get so lost in his thoughts these days. It was happening more often as of late and was not the progress that his therapist would be happy with.

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