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A shed larger than most houses slammed wide open, the boom of wooden door on wooden frame echoing over the mountainside. A tire-sized foot studded with glossy talons sank into a bed of tall grass whose surface was free of snow for the first time since October. Thirteen feet above, a short beak poked out from a lush silver mane and whisker-like down, humming a tune from an obscure symphony.

As usual, Aeneas's half-wild lawn needed some sprucing up with the arrival of the late spring. Everything the old griffin-taur needed to keep the grounds of his mansion in a serene, natural order fit in a wheelbarrow with more carrying capacity than most of the townies' souped-up trucks. The metal bin looked rather small in the clutches of his sturdy wing-arms, the heavy tools within rattling and clanging with every bounce against his barrel-like chest and solid gut. A saddle fitted with implements too tiny for his giant grip sat between his lower body's massive wings, ready to be plucked out of their pockets by someone with much smaller hands - and actual hands, at that.

As Aeneas approached his eager assistant by the wildflowers, though, a rather odd thought crossed his mind. One he couldn't help but act on aloud.

"Say, Ion... you look different."

A long black beak perked up at that observation, white fangs gleaming along its edges.

"Oh, I didn't preen myself today. The dirty work'll ruffle my wings again," it responded, punctuating its remark with a quick sip of coffee.

The griffin-taur leaned forward a bit more than usual to check over the star waiter at his restaurant. Sure enough, Ion's flight feathers looked a bit uneven as they hung from its arms. The fan of its tail was rather scruffy at the tip of that thick wagging flagstaff. The blue feathers on its head stuck out at odd angles between its long, thin ears. Between that and the basic T-shirt and shorts it wore, it looked far more casual than he was used to. Surely that was the only thing throwing him off about the raptor-bird.

"That's a fair point," Aeneas mused, setting down his wheelbarrow and plucking out some pruning shears. "I couldn't bear to miss my two-hour wash-up for anything, though. I'm too much a creature of habit. Want to work on sunflowers first?"

"If you trust I don't eat all the seeds," Ion replied with a wink, grabbing the fork and spade from the gentle giant's satchel.

After a quick chuckle at the quirky hybrid's quip, the griffin-taur set off on a task more befitting his stature: trimming the giant bushes that surrounded his home. He wasn't terribly fond of the perfectly round, symmetrical hedges some of his contemporaries spent thousands a week to maintain - if one of the organic ornaments sprung a limb that arced over the rest of the plant, he practically cheered it on. Instead, he focused on his building's integrity, snipping budding branches before they bumped into the oak walls or scratched the windows.

As Aeneas made his way around the front wings of his mansion, he found the task getting harder by the minute. He wasn't getting tired by any means - the griffin-taur was a veritable workhorse, more than capable of eight straight hours of heavy labor despite his aristocratic background. And sure, it was awkward balancing the shears on the tips of two wing-arms twice as long as its grips - or was it three times? - but he'd spent enough summers on his property to be used to them. He just didn't expect to hunch his upper back so much to touch the tops of the final bushes.

That is, until he stood fully upright and found himself looking well over his roof.

A flood of vertigo and conflicting memories filled his mind. Was he... growing? No, that was impossible, at least not this fast. He clearly remembered hitting 25 feet tall a couple weeks ago - perhaps an even 30. Then why did he build such a small mansion? Surely he crafted the building for his butler, devoting most of the space to his kitchen while he ate and slept on his overgrown acres... though that still didn't make much sense.

"Um... Ion?" Aeneas's voice boomed over his property, swiveling his owl neck to find some blue in the fields of green. "Does anything seem... off to you?"

The raptor-bird poked its head out from a thick throng of sunflowers. Sunflowers it was supposed to be planting the seeds of. Sunflowers that were way, way taller than itself.

"Uh... it's all good on my end," Ion hastily declared, tugging the collar of its very loose-fitting shirt with a stubby claw. "Gonna move on to the wildflowers next."

"Um, yes, you do that," the enormous griffin-taur muttered, slowly backing away from his diminutive mansion on two lion's paws as large as any actual lion.

Since Aeneas was too big to work safely around the building - and way too big for the clippers, for that matter - he turned his attention to the surrounding forest, looking for any dead branches among the colossal crown of leaves. It was easy enough to snap off the unhealthier bits of the trees with a couple of careful bends, setting the tons of dry wood behind him with the utmost care he could manage. It got even easier as he worked around the perimeter, stretching his wing-arms less and less to reach the highest tips.

Eventually, the griffin-taur found himself looking into the forest from above, finding a remarkably attractive maple in the middle of a sea of evergreens. It would look downright beautiful right in front of the mansion - though it would make it tough to maneuver his two-hundred-foot girth around the grounds. Nevertheless, it took a mighty tug with both wing-arms to uproot the lovely tree, though it felt surprisingly light once he nestled it against his gut three hundred feet in the air.

As the elegant titan carefully carried the maple to its new home a few paces around the dollhouse-like mansion, he spotted a blue blur among the rainbow of flowers by his patio. A pang of recognition crossed his mind for a fraction of a second, but he didn't know why.

While Aeneas dug out a spot for the transplant's roots with his talons, an oddly ornamented hummingbird darted from flower to flower, sipping some delicious nectar with its jagged beak and decorating the petals with bursts of pollen.

This lawn is going to look amazing once I get us back to normal, Ion thought to itself, its long tail whipping wildly as it ears fluttered from its wingbeats. He'd thank me if he had a clue what I was doing.

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Monthly Patreon sketch from  cervelet. Working some seasonal love into the mix. Enjoy!