A personal harvest? on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

April 26, 2017 12:21 PM

Beginner Herbology: The Fall Harvest by Nathan Xavier

Though the intermediates were almost on track now for their level, and the fifth years would be taking their CATS at the end of the year as they should, Nathan still felt most comfortable with his Beginners curriculum. The Beginners were all exactly where they were supposed to be, excepting the one fourteen year old first year, but she was the exception rather than the rule, unlike two years ago when Herbology went from not offered at all to being a core class.

For all of the beginner students though, that was entirely immaterial. It had always been offered for as long as they'd been at Sonora, so he could work with them at the normal rate of course material and not feel rushed to get through it quickly. Plus their major exams were still a safe distance into the future. It made for a much more comfortable learning environment.

Consequently, he had a warm smile and greeting for each of the beginner students as they arrived for their lesson today. "Sorry," he apologized to anyone who asked if they were getting their exam from last Thursday back. "Next class," he promised. He'd gone to visit his brother's family for his youngest nephew's birthday over the weekend and hadn't gotten nearly enough grading done.

Once time had come for class to start, he moved to stand near the middle of Greenhouse One. "Today we're going to do something a little different. With Halloween coming up, I know it's getting hard to concentrate on bookwork, so we're going to try something a bit more hands on for the whole class period today. It's harvest season, so we're going to head out and do some harvesting in the Sonora Gardens. Everyone grab a basket," he pointed to the pile of them next to the door, "and come with me."

As the walked, he continued his lecture, what littlefield of one he had for today, "Sonora grows all its own vegetables these days, and most of what we pick today will be used for our Halloween feast later this week. We'll be looking for pumpkins, yams, corn, peas, potatoes, carrots, and green beans. I'd like each of you to identify and pick at least three specimens of each kind of vegetable - except pumpkins, you just need one pumpkin - and put your name on your basket so I can mark you for completing the assignment. Here we are," he announced as the reached the sprawling area of Sonora's Food Garden that had grown ten times larger than it had been when he started as Sonora's groundskeeper. As each student passed through the gate, he handed them a piece of paper labeled Vegetable Harvest Scavenger Hunt, with a list of each kind of vegetable he was expecting them to find. "You may work together in pairs or trios if you like, or individually if that is your preference."

He didn't mention it, but there were charms on the baskets so nothing would fall out or get crushed if they got lightly jostled or precariously packed (upending them would of course still result in a spill, but the students shouldn't drop anything by accident anyway) and they would feel light enough to carry even when full.

OOC: Welcome beginners to Herbology. This is a fairly straightforward find and gather quest, but if I was confusing and you have any questions go ahead and ask here or on the ooc board.

Subthreads:

Clueless little rich boy? Surely you don't mean me.... by Simon Mordue, Crotalus with Jennifer White

A personal harvest? by Salali Bly [Pecari] with Cleo James, Crotalus

1 Nathan Xavier Beginner Herbology: The Fall Harvest 28 Nathan Xavier 1 5

Simon Mordue, Crotalus

April 29, 2017 12:14 PM

Clueless little rich boy? Surely you don't mean me.... by Simon Mordue, Crotalus

Simon was having a hard time concentrating on book work, but it wasn’t because of Halloween. He looked forward to them when they did cross his mind, but had honestly barely thought about the upcoming feast and festivities lately. He knew, after all, more or less what they would be like and what they were about, unlike the strange letters he had been receiving from home.

Dear son, the first letter had begun. It had been his mother’s handwriting, but it had been shaky, as though Mother had been very upset when she wrote it. Do not be alarmed, darling, but we are not quite sure where your uncle is or why he is wherever he is. If anyone asks you, say you know nothing but are quite sure your uncle is well and can manage his own affairs. Burn this letter. Love, Mama.

The first line had, in light of the content, the order, and Mother signing herself as ‘Mama’ – how long had it been since he’d learned he was too old to say ‘Mama’ and must use the formal ‘Mother’? – not done much to keep him from being alarmed. He had been very alarmed, in fact, until his father had written, too, saying that they now knew where Uncle was and that he was there because he wanted to be, but that Simon was still not to say anything except what his mother had told him to if anyone asked him questions. Simon had considered writing to Sylvia to see if his sister knew what was going on, but he didn’t want to alarm her if she didn’t, which she might very well not – she was still very young, after all, just a little girl, not old enough to be told things like he was. Plus, if he told Sylvia something was wrong, she’d tell Nathaniel, and Simon really would get in trouble if Nathaniel found out something he wasn’t supposed to know yet, because Nathaniel surely didn’t have enough sense to keep it to himself instead of going straight to Father or Mama or his own mama and asking for an explanation. Nathaniel had never, as far as Simon could tell, learned that the best thing to do was always to keep one’s mouth shut and hope for the best.

Simon was still doing that, very diligently, and so far, it seemed to be working. Not one person had asked him what his uncle was doing or where his uncle was or anything like that. Not one. His parents might as well have been worried for nothing, and he would have even thought they had been himself, had he not known them better. His aunt might worry for nothing, but not his parents. If they were worried, there was something to be worried about, he just didn’t know what it was and just hoped it would be rectified before he went home for Christmas.

In the meantime, as far as distractions from his worries went, Professor Xavier’s plan for them all to harvest vegetables was not the worst one Simon thought the professor could have come up with. It certainly beat hands-on lessons that involved manure by several horse lengths. Simon dutifully grabbed a basket and headed out into the gardens.

He had, it occurred to him, never really thought about where their food came from at Sonora. Or at all. He had learned in his lessons that food grew in a kind of garden, but when he thought of gardens, he always thought first of the lovely garden with roses and broad shade trees where his mother sometimes held teas in the summertime. The place where Professor Xavier led them was not like that garden at all: the soil was turned up, not covered in smooth, well-manicured grass, and some of the vegetables were not even as pretty as they usually looked by the time they got to the table in front of him at night. In fact, he didn’t even see most of the things Professor Xavier had said they were supposed to look for at all. Pumpkins were easy enough, he could see those lolling on the ground, but where was the rest of it? Or, more accurately, he supposed, how was he supposed to tell what the rest of it was?

He wandered around for a moment, looking at greens with no comprehension, before looking, a little helplessly, at a classmate who happened to be looking at the same thing he was. “Do you think Professor Xavier has charmed the things to make them harder to find?” he asked, grasping at straws. “I don’t see anything that looks anything like carrots, or any of it, really, out here.”

16 Simon Mordue, Crotalus Clueless little rich boy? Surely you don't mean me.... 369 Simon Mordue, Crotalus 0 5

Jennifer White

May 02, 2017 3:13 PM

A False Sense of Adventure by Jennifer White

Professor Xavier was nice. Jen had decided quite early on that she liked him, but his classes were not always where she wanted to be. Some magical plants were interesting - like the ones that ate people or the ones that spurted pus or the ones that screamed til you went unconscious - but mostly the beginner lessons were tame, and wildly uninteresting. Also he hadn’t graded her exam yet (she wondered if a smile and a ‘sorry’ would get her out of late assignments with him, and, on reflection, decided that it probably would), and he assumed incorrectly that it was getting hard for Jen to concentrate on bookwork. She was finding it hard to remember how to use a cell phone, and which materials were better conductors of electricity, as opposed to magic, but books were not something Sonora lacked. She could still read just fine, thanks.

Following the class feeling disgruntled, Jen was unimpressed by the task they were set. She supposed it was active and educational, so it met her usual requirements for an interesting class, but vegetables were just so mundane she couldn’t work up and real excitement over the challenge. Calling it a scavenger hunt felt like a weak attempt at luring them into a false sense of adventure. Still, she hadn’t harvested anything edible (aside from use in a potion, which probably didn’t count) since she was much younger, and the first year guessed it could be fun. She especially liked the option to work on her own.

Peering down the list, Jen thought she would recognise about half of the crops. The others would either need to be discovered by trial and error, or careful scrutiny of her more knowledgeable classmates. Unfortunately, the one she encountered first didn’t seem to be any closer to identifying root vegetables than Jen was herself. She doubted that the challenge had been made any harder by the professor - it just didn’t seem his style - but maybe he had just (apparently correctly) assumed that not many of his beginner students would be expert farmers.

“I can help you with peas, beans, corn and pumpkins,” she read out from her list. “Everything else is…” she shrugged and looked at the rows of leafy protrusions in the ground. “Guesswork.” She’d most recently come from outside Phoenix, and before that had been New York, New York, but before that was Middle-of-Nowhere Minnesota. She had seen fields of crops but never bothered to learn what was in them.

Jen bent down to the plants, discarding her empty basket on the ground next to her. Her sneakers were already dirty before she’d traipsed across the garden in them, and the hems of her baggy jeans were tattered and torn from months of being dragged across the floor. The first year pushed back the sleeve of her black hoodie and reached forward to grasp a bunch of greenery at its base, near the soil. She pulled, then a little harder, and a muddy, bit-wiggly-but-still-the-right-general-shape carrot came out of the ground. “I have discovered carrot,” she proclaimed with dead-pan delivery. She placed the grubby morsel into her basket and turned to the boy. She tilted her head towards the row by her feet in which there was now a small gap. “Your turn,” she said.

0 Jennifer White A False Sense of Adventure 388 Jennifer White 0 5

Salali Bly [Pecari]

May 05, 2017 1:34 AM

A personal harvest? by Salali Bly [Pecari]

Herbology was one of Salali’s most favorite classes. She liked Care of Magical Creatures a lot because she liked animals a lot, but she also just generally liked to be dirty, and messing around with plants afforded that to her in an excellent and abundant way. Plus, she liked Professor Xavier. He was big, but he didn’t make her feel small. That was nice.

She was a little disappointed that the stuff they were going to dig up today wasn’t squirmy or interactive like some plants in Herbology tended to be, but that was okay. These ones were food items, and Professor Xavier said they were going to be used for the feast coming up. (Salali still wasn’t entirely sure she understood the Halloween thing, but it was spooky and interesting, so she didn’t really mind.) Having their gathered goods used made her feel important, like she had a Serious Job to Do today.

As soon as they began hunting, Salali had two questions come to mind. One: how was she gonna carry a pumpkin? She was pretty sure she remembered those things being pretty big. Two: was she allowed to eat stuff here? Professor Xavier said they needed three of everything (except the pumpkin), but were they allowed to grab extra for a snack? She didn’t want to just do it without verification - she had learned the hard way since getting to Sonora that you can’t just take stuff you want, after a Serious Conversation with Professor Carter about something her Head of House told her was called stealing and was very bad - but she was kinda hungry, too.

So she decided to get an opinion from a classmate. “Hey,” she called to somebody who was standing nearby at the time. “Do you think we’re allowed to pick a fourth of something to snack on? A carrot sounds so good right now.”

12 Salali Bly [Pecari] A personal harvest? 372 Salali Bly [Pecari] 0 5

Simon

May 06, 2017 3:36 PM

Reality is what we make of it. by Simon

Peas, beans, corn, and pumpkins. Well, that was three Simon didn’t think he could have puzzled out on his own. He nodded solemnly, judging from her tattered trousers that she was not the sort of person he ought to bow to. Mother would never let him wear tattered trousers out in public even had he been inclined to, which Simon didn’t think he ever had been. He had damaged a few articles of clothing in his life when he got over-enthusiastic about something, but he’d always wanted to hide the evidence of his loss of composure as soon as he could. “Thank you,” he said.

The girl decided the best approach was to just grab something and see what it was. It turned out to be a carrot. Simon looked at it in some consternation. It did not look like something he wanted to eat, so what did the elves do to it before it got to the table? Besides wash it, of course; washing was obvious. No-one, aside from very small children who didn’t know any better, wished to eat lumps of dirt. Those had to be removed before something could be eaten by a human being. Tentatively, Simon grabbed one right next to the girl’s, reasoning that similar things would be planted together and that the greenery looked like hers, and pulled.

The green part, with a faint snapping noise, came right off the carrot. He’d twisted as he’d pulled and it had not worked out for him.

“Oh…bother,” said Simon, caught between worry he had done something wrong, fear of looking foolish, and irritation with the carrot for not cooperating. He glanced at the girl, then around for a shovel, but finally decided his best option was to put on one of his gloves. He did so and began trying to poke away enough earth to reach the carrot. He could feel his cheeks reddening, sure she was laughing at him, but he fixed his eyes on the goal and finally succeeded in fishing the vegetable out of the ground. “There,” he said, dropping it in his basket and straightening up quickly. He looked at the girl, trying to ignore what he had just done. “You’re a first year, yes? My name is Simon Mordue. Welcome to Sonora,” he said officiously, hoping to make himself seem less foolish than he was sure he had just looked. “You say you know what peas look like?”

16 Simon Reality is what we make of it. 369 Simon 0 5

Jen White

May 13, 2017 3:08 PM

That's too deep for herbology by Jen White

The boy with her struck Jen as one of those kids that seriously needed to chill out and just enjoy childhood while he had the excuse of it, but she was doing her best not to judge people on first impressions. That was practically impossible, because everything about first impressions were designed to force an observer to form conclusions - hair style, clothing choice, whether a bag was carried properly across two shoulders or dragging alongside them on the floor - and actually her first impressions quite often turned out to be more or less spot on when she’d gotten to know a person a bit better, but whatever. The other student got stuck in and tried pulling up his own carrot. Jen took a moment to clean off the lenses of her black-framed rectangular glasses before pushing them back into position and tucking a stray section of her short, brown hair back behind her ear just as her protege extracted his first carrot. He seemed a bit flustered when stood up, but maybe digging in the dirt wasn’t his deal. Sucked to be him.

He asked if she was a first year, and Jen nodded just once in answer while the other guy continued to introduce himself and welcome her to Sonora. It was a few weeks into the term and maybe borderline okay for a late welcome. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m Jen. White,” she added, just on the off-chance there was another Jen in the beginner classes. She hadn’t noticed one yet, but if it was early enough in the term for her to still receive a welcome, then there was definitely time yet to make such a discovery.

“Yeah, peas are in pods, they grown on beanstalks,” she said. “Or… maybe peastalks?” She shrugged; the lesson plan didn’t indicate that the name of the stalk was important. “Like a vine,” she clarified. “But we have to get at least three of most things,” she reminded Simon as she bent down to haul another couple of carrots from the ground. The third vegetable she extricated came with a shower of soil that spilled down Jen’s front. She brushed the specks off, leaving some grubby trails behind on her attire. She guessed there would be more grime to follow, with all the produce they had still to collect, so she didn’t let it worry her.

Once her basket contained three carrots - at least meant exactly that amount, in Jen’s opinion - yet strangely weighed no more than when empty, she started trekking onwards. “Like that, maybe,” the first year pointed at some tall plants with twisty vines and leaves that matched her vague memories of collecting and shelling peas when she was small. Approaching one of the plants, Jen pulled off a pod, and split it open by squeezing it to show Simon the peas inside. “Yep, we’ve got peas.” So far the assignment was easy and sort of relaxing. “I’m guessing we’re supposed to get at least three pods, not just three peas. That seems sort of pointless,” she mused aloud.

0 Jen White That's too deep for herbology 388 Jen White 0 5

Cleo James, Crotalus

May 14, 2017 1:46 AM

A personal interest by Cleo James, Crotalus

Herbology had easily and quickly become Cleo’s favourite subject, although it had a slight bittersweetness to it. She loved to garden back home, which made the subject instantly interesting, along with being easily her best grade. It also helped to alleviate some of her homesickness, in that she got a regular chance to engage in one of her favourite activities. However, it simultaneously reinforced those feelings, as it just wasn’t the same as being on the allotment with her daddy, and it served to remind her of what she was missing. Today’s lesson was all those things but even more so, as they would actually be gathering vegetables. Cleo was definitely excited for this task, but was already composing the letter in her head that she would write home to tell all about it, to share her enjoyment of it and thus be able to feel less alone.

With a smile on her face, she took a basket and a list, tucking her short blonde hair behind her ears, where it only just reached and was quite likely to quickly escape. She was happy to work alone or with a classmate. A girl nearby called out with a question, although one she wasn’t at all able to answer.

“I don’t know,” she replied, “It would be nice though,” memories of shelling peas and eating them fresh from the pods sprung to her mind. It would have seemed the most natural thing in the world at home but, she was again reminded, she wasn’t there any more. She had been meaning to ask Professor Xavier whether there was a gardening club, or any extra tasks she could do to help with the gardens and the greenhouses. The vegetable patch only served to make her want that even more. He was the last person in the school that she wanted to make cross with her. She glanced over her shoulder but Professor Xavier was busy right at that moment.

“Why don’t we make a start, and get extras as we go?” she suggested, “And then ask him when he’s free? If the answer’s no, we’ll at least get extra credit for having got more than our quota. I’m Cleo, by the way,” she added.

13 Cleo James, Crotalus A personal interest 389 Cleo James, Crotalus 0 5

Simon Mordue

May 20, 2017 12:31 PM

Are jokes about mouse feasts preferable? by Simon Mordue

Simon frowned slightly as Jen White said that peas were grown on beanstalks or peastalks. Somehow, the word ‘peastalk’ didn’t sound quite right to him, but he couldn’t actually argue against its use – or, for that matter, say with any certainty that peas weren’t beans. They were vegetables which looked sort of similar and which were often cooked in similar ways, after all, as far as he could tell; he preferred peas to most beans, but sometimes did confuse some of the varietals he’d been presented with. He knew one or the other was a legume and that it was important to plant them in the soil every other year, or every few years, in between planting other things, but little more – this was the kind of thing he had to know a little about for when he was head of the family estates, but someone else would be in charge of advising him about which one was better, and in fact which one was (if only one of them was) actually a legume.

“I don’t know, either,” he confessed. Logically, she should feel worse about that admission than he did, as she was an Aladren. In reality, he was still pretty embarrassed about it. If not as embarrassed as he was about having forgotten that they had to get more than one of the accursed carrots….

He had, he thought as Jen showed him peas, to read up on agriculture this summer. He would be embarrassed even more if someday, someone else made him look like an idiot using this information, and he thought he might crawl under a table and die if the person was Nathaniel. He didn’t remember exactly when he’d become almost certain that everyone, probably even including Simon’s own mother and father as well as his sister, preferred Nathaniel to him, but it was long enough ago that he had no difficulty imagining Nathaniel looking perfectly helpful and as though he had no idea that he was making his cousin look like a fool.

“Yes,” he agreed when Jen said collecting three peas would be sort of pointless. “Unless, of course, we’re collecting them for a feast for mice.” If everyone in the class collected exactly three peas, that would provide, he estimated, a good amount of food for a good amount of mice at Halloween, but for humans…not so much. “And I don’t think Professor Xavier’s cat would like it if we started making treats for the rats! Do you think we have to open them all or just pull the pods off these vines?” he asked, using the term which was vaguest and therefore probably least likely to end in someone laughing and correcting him.

16 Simon Mordue Are jokes about mouse feasts preferable? 369 Simon Mordue 0 5