Beginner Herbology: Horticulture on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

November 03, 2018 11:26 PM

Beginner Herbology: Horticulture by Nathan Xavier

Nathan was neither officially married, nor officially a father yet, but he and Isis were officially living together now. This was a magic school, so the fact that the Pecari and Teppenpaw Head of House offices were no where near each other did not, with some effort, preclude finding a small suite of rooms that could be connected to both of those locations. More to the point, they had a master bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchette and living area, and a side room that would serve well as a nursery. Isis wasn't due until early summer, thankfully, but they both planned to return in the fall, and Selina had reluctantly okayed a pre-walking baby to live with them at the school, so they would need that last room then. Nathan only taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so they only really needed a baby-sitter those two days, especially since he had been promised that an actual groundskeeper would be hired on and he could drop those duties. Nathan's mother had already volunteered to watch the baby whenever neccessary, and even if she wasn't allowed to do that on school grounds - which he still needed to ask Selina about, but wasn't going to hold his breath for - the ability to apparate ought to make drop off quick and easy.

They hadn't yet told the students of the upcoming nupitals and their impending infant, but the latter probably wouldn't be a secret much longer (Isis was well into her second trimester now) if it even still was, and Isis had been wearing an engagement ring since this summer, and the date was set for this April.

So it was getting to be time to say something. The Beginners class made it easy. The syllabus he passed out in September declared that today's lesson involved planting flowers that would bloom in early spring. Having some early spring flowers blooming was precisely why he had wanted to set the date for April.

"Hello, class," he greeted the students in Greenhouse One collectively. He'd already greeted them individually as they arrived and receieved back their midterm essay. "Today, we're going to work on something as much artistic as it is herbology, and it's commonly called horticulture. You'll find in front of each of you a large planter. In it, you'll get to grow a medley of flowers, arranged however you like. In addition the planter, you'll also need to design a map, where you should record what kinds of flowers are planted where, so visitors and observers can know what they are looking at. For now, you can do that on a piece of parchment, but we'll have it embossed on a plaque when your planter is ready for display."

"This is the first of two assignments where we'll be doing this sort of thing. Today, the planters will feature early spring blooms. Later in the semester, we'll do one for late spring and early summer blooms. That one, we will have on display during our Midsummer Fair this year as one of its Horticulture Exibits. If you don't want yours displayed, you may opt out, but I think it would be an excellent opportunity to share some of your accomplishments and the natural beauty of herbology with the rest of the school."

He paused a moment, not certain himself if the delay was due to hesitation or to build dramatic suspence, and then continued, "The ones you do today will also used in a display, but unfortunately, not anywhere any of you will be able see them." He smiled at them all, with a mix of apology (for not inviting them), embarrassment (for being a professor with a personal life that was not being very personal right now), and pride (because who wouldn't be glad to announce they were getting married?). "With your permission, I'd like to have the compositions of my students at my wedding ceremony this spring, since both Professor Carter and I teach all of you." Since the beginners weren't old enough to take Muggle Studies yet, most of them probably knew him better, but Isis was the Pecari Head of House, and she had substituted for several of their classes during the fall whenever professors were ill or away or otherwise unable to teach. So they would all at least know who he was talking about. And that were, by all first appearances, a very unlikely couple, what with her being in her late twenties and beautiful and dark skinned with minimal hair, while he was a portly middle-aged white guy with graying unruly curls. "But shh, don't tell her. I want it to be a surprise." He had little to no expectation that they would make it to April without someone spilling the beans, but he thought it might be good to try anyway.

"Well," he said, "if you have any questions, raise your hands and I'll come around. Otherwise, there are seeds and sprouts for your use on those shelves - most of them should be labelled - and dirt and fertilizer over there." He didn't point out where the trowels were, as he assumed by this point in the year that they all knew which shelf he used to hold all the gardening tools they might need during class. "I have plenty of flower guides on my desk if any of those are unfamiliar," he had intentionally included a good number of them that weren't in the textbook, "and you want to know how big they'll get or what they'll look like for your design planning."

OOC: You've got a mix of muggle and magical flowers to work with. Feel free to use ones you know or make up something new. Have fun!

OOC Note 2: Paragraph one discussed and approved by Selina (she notes her reluctance is purely professional and administrative and she loves babies) and Isis has approved the wedding date.

Subthreads:

Passive aggression via the medium of flowers by Sylvia Mordue, Crotalus

1 Nathan Xavier Beginner Herbology: Horticulture 28 Nathan Xavier 1 5

Sylvia Mordue, Crotalus

November 11, 2018 12:13 AM

Passive aggression via the medium of flowers by Sylvia Mordue, Crotalus

Herbology was not, ordinarily, Sylvia’s favourite subject. A lot of the plants could be rather on the repulsive side, and a lot of the tasks seemed to involve harvesting the more unpleasant pieces of them, which was not only often sticky but also was grunt work intended for commoners. She preferred elegant subjects like Charms - more wand waving, less mess, prettier results. However, her ears pricked up at the mention of horticulture. That was a suitably ladylike pursuit - at least the designing of a beautiful garden was. Ordinarily, the actual messy parts would be delegated to a house elf, obviously. Still, pretty flowers were a vast improvement on yucky, grabby plants or extracting bits of them.

They would also get to do this twice, once for each season, which initially struck her as pleasant and agreeable. She was very excited about the idea of displaying their work at the fair. Her planter would obviously be a high point, a triumph of class and sophistication. She was realistic enough to know that boys probably did not pay much attention to flowers, and that a single well-executed planter probably wasn’t going to be quite enough for Winston Pierce or Victor Callahan to consider her marriage material, but any chance to show off a ladylike accomplishment was good progress in that area.

His next announcement, however, removed a substantial amount of her good cheer. They would be making planters for his wedding? The idea struck her as both offensive and just downright bizarre. Firstly, how dare he? They were here to be educated by him, not be used as slave labour to provide his wedding decorations. And who said she wanted her floral displays at the wedding of some common… who-knew-whats. The Xavier family was borderline respectable - good enough to teach in a boarding school run by the Brockerts, good enough to teach the future leaders of society. But Professor Carter? Who knew where she had come from? Professor Xavier had said he would use their floral displays with their permission. She was very tempted not to grant hers. Her talents were meant for far better things than that! She also just found it such a strange thing to want. She knew that they weren’t exactly going to be having a society wedding, but surely paying a proper florist was not beyond them. Half of the students probably had no taste, or experience in the art of horticulture, and would just make horrible, ugly messes. Even those of them who individually did well might not come up with displays that worked pleasingly together. Who would want ugly flowers at their wedding?

Sylvia moved to examine the plants on offer, making a list, before returning with it to her desk. She would need to plan her ideas carefully first. Part of her was tempted to make her own display as ugly as possible. But there was a possibility they were being graded. Also, other people would see it, and she didn’t want it getting about that she lacked taste. She consulted her list, crossing out anything white. Although she had not paid enough attention to Professor Carter to notice her changing shape, Sylvia knew that white was symbolic of purity, and that was not something she associated with this union, even with the (probably fortunate) ignorance of the full situation. As she did this, a better idea for revenge occurred to her. Flowers were deeply symbolic, and there were ways she could make that work for her beyond just removing anything white… Or could she? She had books on flower symbolism in her library at home but she neither had them memorised nor had them at Sonora at all, let alone in this very class. She wished she could ask to go to the library but she would have to specify what she was looking for in order to justify being given a pass, and then… well, that would rather ruin things because Professor Xavier would then be inclined to look up the meanings of what she included. She tried to remember if there even were flowers for negative attributes, or whether they had only been used to say nice things… She thought there had been a few negative ones. She had mostly been focussing on the meanings of white flowers, almost all of which were nice. Though having selected gardenias (associated with nobility and purity), she had had the page bookmarked at ‘G’ and she seemed to remember that geraniums were something pretty rude. As they were spring blooming, they were on the list in front of her as an available resource. She also thought that, when a flower bloomed in multiple colours, the yellow ones often seemed to have negative meanings. She asterisked a few yellow flowers, which would seem thematically appropriate to the Head of Teppenpaw but hopefully mean something fitting for the occasion.

“This is a rather odd assignment, isn’t it?” she added to her neighbour. As usual, she had taken care to sit with someone proper, and whilst she still felt the best way to approach this task was to show off her good taste in flowers (even if it was for a cause where it would be under appreciated) she did not want anyone Society to think she was brimming with enthusiasm over the project, “I mean, horticulture's all well and good, but I’ve never heard of a person using students to provide their wedding displays!” That, she thought, did a good job of conveying both the perils of their classmates’ poor taste, and the fact that it was simply beneath them without being so vulgar as to actually say either of those things out loud. It also let her neighbour interpret the remark in their preferred way, which was more likely to incline them to agreeing with her.

OOC - flower language gleaned from mixed sources as there’s super loads of interpretations, most of them contradictory. This is the list that had the over-riding feeling of yellow = bad, but it doesn’t list the cited meaning for gardenias, which came from… somewhere, and is reconfirmed by this list (though alongside a lot of vastly different ones!)

13 Sylvia Mordue, Crotalus Passive aggression via the medium of flowers 1413 Sylvia Mordue, Crotalus 0 5

Beau Tate, Pecari

December 10, 2018 4:57 AM

Sounds like a lot of effort by Beau Tate, Pecari

After being at Sonora for more than a year and a half, Beau had decided that schoolwork was really not his thing. And neither was structure. Yes, he'd been tutored in things as a child, of course but there still seemed like there had been more freedom back then. Now he had lessons scheduled basically all day and the work was harder and just...being at school wasn't any fun at all.

Take Herbology for example. Sure, Beau had rather enjoyed playing in the mud as a kid but he'd rather outgrown that, he was thirteen after all! A teenager! Besides, he generally lacked interest in plants and gardening was another activity meant for house-elves. Why were teachers so inclined to give them such menial things to do?

Apparently, though, these were going to be on display for the Horticulture exhibit at the fair this year and at Professor Xavier's wedding. Okay, so they were being forced to compete in something? Beau wasn't completely against competing in general, except that it meant having to try . He had enough pride to be the sort of person who, while not being really interested in putting forth effort in things if he wasn't that into them, didn't want to enter something substandard into a competition. Beau could get As rather than Es and Os, but if he was going to compete, he had to play to win.

That was how he'd been taught by both his parents, who expected him to, if he was going to put himself out there that way, to do things in a way so as not to embarrass himself, them or the families he was associated with. Beau was the Tate family heir after all. Never mind that Mother never wanted to give Fallon or Great Aunt Dorothea a chance to gloat and suggest that if he'd been Fallon's son with his father, he'd have done better. As if there was something inferior about him! Beau rather took offense to this suggestion.

Not to mention having a sister who was, herself, quite competitive. As children, if Arianna and Beau played a game together-not that it happened often-the sixth year liked to hold it over his head if she won. Therefore, he didn't want to give her the satisfaction.

But for the most part, he didn't feel like putting forth that much effort and now he was being forced to. Suddenly, he really did feel quite a bit of resentment towards Professor Xavier.

Sylvia Mordue spoke up next to him. "I know." Beau replied. "How cheap can one get? Can they not afford to hire a proper florist? I understand that not everyone has families like ours but I thought they were at least paid a decent wage. Besides, there are laws against child labor. Not only that but it should be our choice whether or not to compete in the horticulture exhibit."

11 Beau Tate, Pecari Sounds like a lot of effort 1416 Beau Tate, Pecari 0 5