Beginner Herbology: A take-home project on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

June 16, 2017 10:35 AM

Beginner Herbology: A take-home project by Nathan Xavier

Spring had not yet sprung completely, but it was getting closer. Nathan hadn't seen any frost for a couple weeks now, the daylight hours were getting longer, and sprouts were starting to break through the dirt all around the grounds. Birds were starting to return from their winter migrations. This was Nathan's favorite time of year and he was particularly cheerful as he greeted the beginner class as they arrived at Greenhouse One today. Even those getting less than stellar grades on the homework he was returning today just got welcomed with a, "Lovely day, isn't it? Better luck next time," instead of a reminder of his office hours.

Once everyone was accounted for and seated, he began handing out round, deep dished terrariums, currently empty. "It's a good day for planting today," he announced. "So we're going to be putting together some terrariums. Who knows what that is? Show of hands." He looked about to see who was familiar with the term. "For those of you who don't know," he continued, "it's like a fish tank, but for plants. It's generally ornamental, but sealed ones do make for an interesting study on the water cycle. The ones we make today are going to be largely just decorative. Unlike most of the planting we do in this class, you can bring your terrarium home and show it to your family."

He brought their attention to the central table. "In front of all of you are the items you may include. Dirt, nice looking stones, and several varieties of decorative plants. If you live near muggles, I suggest you use caution in your selections and don't pick anything too obviously magical if there's a chance a wrong person might see it."

There were several different types of colorful grasses, a moss that glowed in the dark and another kind of moss that smoked. He'd provided pheonix flowers that burned at the end of their life cycle then sprouted anew a few days later. Walking sprouts and jumping mushrooms could provide some movement to the displays, and the shy violets would come out or hide depending on how many people were nearby (right now, with the greenhouse full of beginner students, they were trying their very best to turn invisible but that wasn't quite in their skill set). Less exciting grasses, mosses, herbs, and flowers were available as well, though some of them did have other magical properties that were more subtle. Several of them were plants they'd covered earlier in the year, in case anybody wanted to bring samples home to show to their parents.

"I'm not going to grade on artistic talent or anything," he assured them, "so just put together something you'll enjoy looking at and showing off to those who don't normally get to see much of what you do here at school. I'm just going to be checking to see that you replanted everything properly for your grade."

He nodded to tell them to go ahead and get started. "You have forty minutes, then I'll introduce our next unit on night harvesting."

OOC: Feel free to make up whatever kinds of plants you might like to include so long as they are entirely harmless and fairly small.

Subthreads:

Terrarium Paradise by Jennifer White (Aladren)

1 Nathan Xavier Beginner Herbology: A take-home project 28 Nathan Xavier 1 5

Jennifer White (Aladren)

June 20, 2017 3:27 PM

Terrarium Paradise by Jennifer White (Aladren)

To her own surprise, Jen had discovered she actually quite enjoyed herbology classes. Partially that was probably down to professor Xavier being really easy to be in a room with (just because she didn’t smile and chatter and be generally jovial herself, it didn’t mean she necessarily rejected these traits in others), but that wasn’t the only reason. Perhaps it was something about plants behaving in a predictable, rational manner, or that they didn’t answer back, or judge her, that made them so appealing. Perhaps flora was just interesting, but that didn’t sound like a normal reaction; an obsession with plants was something that could get a person labelled as ‘quirky.’

Apparently there were some other herbology fans in the class, as Jen noticed other hands in the air signifying knowledge of a terrarium. Jen had lifted her hand half-heartedly to the height of her shoulder, because she was not keen to identify herself as a plant freak, nor as a know-it-all in general; the Aladren crest on her robes did that well enough on its own.

The suggestion to take the project home to share with relatives was nice. It had been a big adjustment to move away from her Mom for so long, especially as it had always pretty much been just the two of them. Jen had handled the transition pretty well, and she thought her Mom was still in the stage of enjoying her freedom from a dependent pre-teen, but that didn't mean they sometimes didn't miss each other like crazy. Besides they didn’t have their own yard at the apartment in Arizona, so it might be refreshing to have their own little terrarium paradise. Not the same, but close as they were gonna get.

Pleased with both the project and the ability to get on with it by herself, Jen approached some of the plants to beginning planning in her mind what her arrangement might look like. The assignment didn’t actually include researching the plants they selected, but Jen was going to do it anyway. Some of these specimens were alien to her, and she wanted to know how best to care for her creation. Also if they were going to do weird stuff like expel pus when she touched them, she was gonna want to know about that. These were both perfectly reasonable excuses for extra research, Jen consoled herself, and did not mean she had an unhealthy obsession with plantlife.

Scanning the central table from behind her black-framed glasses, Jen liked the look of a pale, puffy-looking plant, and some dark green fronds, as well as some bright, lime green vegetation that looked like somebody had spray-painted a sea urchin. There were some polished stones in co-ordinating hues. Jen reached for a small chunk of what she suspected might be amethyst, but her hand collided with that of another student, probably after the same thing. Jen hesitated. The polite thing was probably to withdraw her interest and offer the rock up to the other interested party, but she had no intention of doing that. She looked at the other student, allowing them to speak first. Perhaps they would be the better person and she could have the pretty purple stone.

0 Jennifer White (Aladren) Terrarium Paradise 388 Jennifer White (Aladren) 0 5

Cleo James, Crotalus

July 13, 2017 10:12 AM

Hell is other people. Especially you. by Cleo James, Crotalus

In the first part if the term, Herbology had easily been Cleo's favourite thing in school. It had now slipped to second only because she was helping tend the vegetable patch in her free time. Whilst she still liked learning about all the different plants, gardening was her real passion. It was also nice not to have everyone else around. She sometimes considered turning the project into a gardening club -it would have been nice to make some friends, and like minded ones who also enjoyed gardening would be even better, but at the moment, part of the appeal was the break from other people. She could take her little red wireless down with her, and it almost felt like home.

Today's project was cool, once she understood what it was. Although she and her daddy spent a lot of time gardening they a) didn't do it in tiny little boxes b) use long or fancy words about what they were doing. One thing she'd learnt so far in Herbology was that there were many things she knew but a lot of technical names or terms associated with them that she didn't. She had been aware that all plants had other names - she remembered pointing to the impenetrable italics on the seed packets and asking her daddy what they said; 'fancy name for carrots' was what he'd said. She'd since learnt that all those names were in Latin and just as difficult to pronounce as she'd suspected.

Today's project though, was much more her kind of gardening -going with what pleased them. Although she thought it would be a good idea to learnt a little bit about each plant, if she didn't know already, so she could make sure she wasn't choosing plants that wanted incompatible things, such as one that liked the heat and one that wilted under it. Of course, with a bit of magic, that was manageable but she wanted her terrarium to be something she could care for independently.

There was also the Muggle friendliness to consider. It was mostly in the shop that they had to be careful. They didn't have a lot of visitors to the flat, and even fewer of those who would be likely to come into Cleo's bedroom, although she might put it in the main room (a combination of kitchen and living room) because she was already super excited that she got to share a school project -and even better, a herbology one - with her daddy, so she wanted it to be somewhere where he could enjoy it too. She thought that, even in their living room, the passing traffic was low enough and predictable enough that they could put the terrarium away if company was expected, and thus it would be safe to use some of the more interesting plants, although nothing too over the top and nothing that had escapist or exhibitionist tendencies.

The jumping mushrooms were definitely out, as were the walking sprouts, which was a shame because they were fun. She thought the shy violets might actually be a problem too because they might inadvertently draw more attention to themselves than they meant to by running off to hide. She thought a phoenix flower would be ok because the odds of it choosing to burst into flames at the same time as them having a surprise guest seemed incredibly low. She'd also seen some glow in the dark bugs and sea creatures when she'd watched nature shows with her grandparents, so she thought that glowing moss wasn't totally out of the realms of believability for a Muggle, besides which their visitors would either be there during the daylight hours or they'd have lights on, which would make it considerably less noticeable.

She decided that she would make the phoenix flower the centrepiece of her terrarium, and then make symmetrical patterns around it with different coloured soils and grasses, broken up by rocks and mosses. The ticklish grass would be another fun, minimally detectable magical plant to slip in there.

She decided to look for stones first, because it might be hard to find matching pairs, especially after they had been ransacked by other people. She wasnt going to try to make every last stone match -that would be insane -and she didn't mind filling on smaller gaps with a mishmash, but she wanted something good to mount her moss on. She was momentarily distracted by a very pretty purple stone but there was only one of it. There were a beautiful pair of smooth black stones just beyond it, which in addition to matching, would set off the glowing moss really nicely.As she reached for them, however, her hand collided with someone else's.

"Sorry," she apologised reflexively before she noticed who it was. She barely managed to contain a roll of her eyes. Jen. Was the girl on some kind of challenge to jostle Cleo in every subject before the school year was out? Although the other girl's crimes against her were minimal, Cleo was very capable of holding a grudge, and the initial poor impression had coloured several subsequent moments, ones which with someone else might have gone unnoticed, until she had built up a picture of Jen as someone who generally annoyed her. A fact which, naturally, was not helped by forced confinement within the same building and the prevailing sense that they were all meant to like each other, or else.

Cleo glanced at the tray, and then back at Jen. Jen, with her black glasses, black clothes, and general air of misery. There was little doubt in Cleo's mind which stones the other girl was after, especially as they'd both been reaching more or less the same way. Her first impulse was to declare that she had seen them first, and then possibly just grab them. She knew that her daddy wouldn't approve of such behaviour, as he had given her lots of talks about how school would involve compromising and sharing. Still, she wasn't entirely sure he'd had anyone as annoying as Jen White in mind when trying to teach her those lessons. In the heat of the moment, it may not have been enough, but luckily not wanting to behave badly in front of Professor Xavier was enough of a deterrent. She knew the fair thing to do was offer to take one each but that would be pointless for her because her design required symmetry. If she couldn't have both then there was no point having either, though she was reluctant to give one or both over to Jen because it didn't seem fair that the other girl would get what she wanted and Cleo wouldn't.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" she suggested grudgingly. She was sure that Jen wasn't likely to budge an inch or let her have them out of the goodness of her heart, so the only thing to do seemed to be to leave it up to fate. Which, if there was any justice, would surely choose her.

13 Cleo James, Crotalus Hell is other people. Especially you. 389 Cleo James, Crotalus 0 5

Jen White

July 25, 2017 4:13 PM

You're talking to yourself again by Jen White

Of course it was Cleo. Jen hadn’t been able to ascertain whether Cleo was aggravating and rude to everyone or if she was making particular efforts to ensure Jen didn’t like her. Either way, she was the only person in the year - wait, the whole school, in fact - who had not met Jen’s especially low standards for an acceptable acquaintance. She wasn’t actively avoiding the other girl, because that took more effort than Jen was willing to put into a non-existent relationship with someone she didn’t like, but she couldn’t recall an encounter in which Cleo hadn’t snapped at her or glared at her or been otherwise unpleasant, so if there were other people around to talk to then Cleo was bumped right to the bottom of Jen’s list.

The other girl offered to play for the stone she evidently wanted too, and her tone suggested she was as displeased about this turn of events as Jen was herself. Jen was torn. On the one hand, Cleo was giving her the opportunity to play for the amethyst, which, combined with the apology when they’d bumped, surprised Jen because she hadn’t gotten the impression Cleo thought of her as a fellow human being, equal in rights to her in selecting stones for a herbology terrarium. On the other hand, having to play rock, paper, scissors was not only dumb, but also forced Jen to interact with Cleo, and either win against her (yet another thing for the strange person who prefered making enemies over friends to hold against her) or lose against her, and not get the stone. Actually that felt like the preferable scenario in the moment.

“You just have it,” Jen sighed, resigned with a little frustration. She liked the rock but it was just a dumb rock. This way she got to look like the bigger person and she turned down Cleo’s offer of fair game, which gave her a sense of petty satisfaction. She could just find another amethyst or probably just get her Mom to bring her one from the museum gift shop or something.

0 Jen White You're talking to yourself again 388 Jen White 0 5

Cleo

July 30, 2017 11:16 PM

It's better than talking to you by Cleo

Normally, getting her own way made Cleo happy. Trust Jen to somehow be able to ruin even that. Cleo had been perfectly willing to be fair and play for the stone but Jen had turned her down, and was now huffing and having a great big attitude over the whole thing. If she wasn't willing to give in graciously, she could have played for the stone. Now she just seemed determined to spoil Cleo having it. Geez, what was her problem? Jen also clearly wanted Cleo to feel like she'd done her a favour, and like hell she was going to let that happen.

It took her a moment to register Jen's statement fully. It. She had said Cleo could have it, singular. If she had wanted a black rock, wouldn't she have said them, or suggested one each? Did Jen - frowning, colour hating Jen - want a pretty, sparkly rock? It seemed impossible but her statement didn't make sense for the black ones.

"Which one did you actually want?" she clarified, not fully managing to keep the exasperation out of her tone, at this prolonged and overly complicated interaction with someone who was really good at pushing her buttons.

13 Cleo It's better than talking to you 389 Cleo 0 5