Professor Xavier
December 16, 2016 10:42 AM
Beginner Herbology: Young fertile minds by Professor Xavier
Of his three classes, Nathan was most comfortable with his beginners students. It wasn't the material they were learning, exactly, because truthfully all three were at a beginner level still, as this was still on the second year Herbology was offered at the school, but because the beginners were where they were supposed to be. It was the one class that felt like Herbology was supposed to feel. Intermediates felt rushed, trying to cram in too much information too quickly in order for the current to be able to take the CATS next year. Five years of lessons crammed into three. Advanced was just a mishmash of unorganized chaos, as he just tried to get the seventh years a basic understanding of the entire discipline in just one year. Next year, the advanced class would also have the option to take some belated CATS, so he was trying to prep the sixth years for that, too.The beginners though, the blessed beginners could go through their curriculum at the calm, leisurely, and thorough pace a subject like Herbology was meant to be taught. They had no exams immediately upon their horizons and both the first and second years had been able to start at the beginning in their first year, so everyone here was precisely where they should be, and he loved them all for that.
"Hello, and welcome back from your break," he greeted them, smiling, as they all arrived and sat themselves down around the work tables in the center of the larger of the two greenhouses. There were fewer of them, too, than there were intermediates, and that helped him like them more, too.
He'd returned their midterm exam to each student as they walked in with either a congratulatory "good job!" or an informational "my office hours are on Wednesdays; you can stop in anytime if you have questions," as was appropriate given their results. Overall, he was pretty pleased with them. "You should have all gotten your test back. There does seem to be some confusion about the difference between the two uses of the word fertilization in Herbology, so we are going to start by going over that hopefully a bit more clearly. We fertilize our soil by using nutrient rich organic materials, for example dung or compost, so the plants have all the chemical building blocks they need to grow strong and healthy. This is a very different process from the fertilization that occurs during a plant's reproductive cycle, which exchanges genetic material from one plant to another - or sometimes just from one part of the same plant to another part, to create a genetically different child plant."
He wheeled over a cart heaped high with the compost he had harvested yesterday from the piles where the elves threw Sonora's kitchen scraps. It probably stank to the students, and it was decomposed enough that they might not easily be able to tell from sight and smell along that he'd gone the compost route rather than the dung route for them today, but Nathan had gone nose blind to it a while ago. "Here we have some fertilizer. And on the tables in front of each of you are some potted flowering plants at various stages of life." Some were barely poking out of the soil, some were little more than dried dead husks, while still others were closed buds or in full bloom.
"In groups of two, I want you to identify and fertilize a plant that is ready to reproduce. For homework tonight, I would like a half foot essay about how other creatures like insects, birds, and mammals can play key parts in a plant's reproduction, which you can start work on after your selected plant is fertilized. You have twenty minutes for this task, then we'll start our next unit on Fruits."
He started to step back to wander about, oversee, and offer advice as the students worked, but then remembered and added as a hurried afterthought, "I recommend wearing your gloves for this."
OOC: Hello and welcome back to classes. Standard rules apply. Feel free to tag Professor X if your student has questions or problems. Have fun!
Subthreads: Which am I to do? by Farrah Welsh, Aladren with Emerald Brockert,Aladren
If it were done, it were well if it were done quickly. by Simon Mordue with Victor Callahan
P.U. (Tag Luke) by Natalie Atwater, Pecari with Luke Powell
Undecided... by Madeleine Dautin, Aladren with Sawyer Matheson, Teppenpaw
It could be worse. by Kit Reid, Aladren with Georgia Kirkly
This is so beneath me by Arianna Tate, Crotalus
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Professor Xavier
Beginner Herbology: Young fertile minds
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Farrah Welsh, Aladren
December 18, 2016 7:43 PM
Which am I to do? by Farrah Welsh, Aladren
Farrah found herself really enjoying Herbology in a way that she hadn’t thought that she would. She hated having to pull the weeds from the garden back home. Her parents said that it would teach her discipline and to respect the beauty of a garden. Or something like that. It was her least favorite chore to have to do though. Weeding was something that was never ending and it was always on the hottest days of summer and took forever for Farrah to do.She thought Herbology would be a lot like weeding, but so far she was learning quite a bit about plants and what they needed for growth and things like that. Farrah had never really considered how much went into growing a plant but the more involved she was with it, the more appreciation she had about it. She still didn’t like weeding, but she could at least understand why her parents felt she needed to do it.
She smiled as she took her exam from him, happy to hear that her hours of studying had paid off with a high remark on her exam. Her grades were important to her (which probably helped her get into Aladren to begin with) and she worked very hard on maintaining them. It helped that Professor Xavier was probably one of the nicest Professors and she felt more relaxed during his class than she did with just about any of the others, save for Care of Magical Creatures (but with her dad as a Veterinarian, it shouldn’t be a surprise that she enjoyed the class that taught about them). Whenever she was more comfortable during class and at ease with the professor, Farrah had an easier time understanding the material.
Farrah took a seat and pulled out her notebook (marked Herbology) and pen. She was a bit surprised by the topic as she thought that the two fertilizations were quite different and something that she didn’t think people would confuse, but she supposed if they didn’t have to weed as a chore, they might not also have to deal with helping plant gardens either. She gagged when the smell hit her before she saw the wheelbarrow full of something quite possibly dead. She quickly threw up a hand to pinch her nose and tried to breathe from her mouth. Her parents manure never smelled this bad. Mr. Beyar’s barn didn’t smell this bad either.
She tried to listen to what the lesson was but the smell was a little overbearing, so when they were set to work in pairs, Farrah turned to the person beside her, “Are we fertilizing the plants with that stuff or are we being asked to like pollinate the plants that are ready for that?” She asked, not quite sure what she was supposed to do and hoping that her partner did.
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Farrah Welsh, Aladren
Which am I to do?
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Emerald Brockert,Aladren
December 31, 2016 4:01 PM
Fertilize by Emerald Brockert,Aladren
After about five minutes of Midterm, Emerald longed to be back at school. True, she had her own room at home which was nice but her siblings were definitely much more annoying than her roommates. At least though, she hadn't heard the announcement she'd been both expecting and dreading. Her and her siblings were all two years apart and Amethyst had just turned two so she'd kind of figured Mother was pregnant again. Except that she wasn't, thank Merlin. At least not now. Emerald rather hoped it stayed that way.The nicest thing was getting to see Ruby again. As much as Emerald disliked having so many siblings, her sister who was the next to oldest was her best friend despite their radically different temperments. Ruby had a rather sweet disposition whereas Emerald admittedly could be a bit caustic. Maybe that was why. Or because Ruby was her main playmate as a child what with Topaz being generally awful and creepy and everyone else being too young.
Anyway, she was back at school as she preferred to be. She was probably in the minority on this but most people weren't Aladrens with too many younger siblings. Emerald liked to learn a whole lot more than she liked noisy young children. Here, while she might have been one of the older ones in the first year class, she was still a first year.
As for classes, there wasn't a single one she didn't like, save for flying as it was pointless and uninteresting. Emerald understood that she might not use everything she learned in some classes like COMC or Herbology but that didn't make them any less interesting to her. She didn't even care too much when Professor Xavier brought out the ultra-stinky fertilizer though it did smell foul. Emerald didn't think gardening was her thing but this had to have some educational value even if she didn't see it right off the bat.
They were released to do their work and Farrah Welch, whom she was sitting next to turned to her and spoke.
“Are we fertilizing the plants with that stuff or are we being asked to like pollinate the plants that are ready for that?”
"I think we're just supposed to fertilize." Emerald replied as she put her gloves on.
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Emerald Brockert,Aladren
Fertilize
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Farrah
January 01, 2017 7:46 PM
I'd rather pollinate. by Farrah
Farrah found herself talking to Emerald Brockert. She didn’t know her at all other than the fact that they shared a common room. Farrah did like her roommate, Amelia, having worked with her in Potions, so she didn’t think she’d have any trouble with Emerald. Aladrens typically seemed to get on fairly well. She had heard about some things happening between the older boys where rooms had to be switched but she didn’t know what or why, but other than that and her cold disposition with her own roommate, she thought everyone got on just fine.Of course, Emerald was one of those societal types that Farrah was always weary about and also somehow related to the Headmaster (or, at least, they shared a last name, so Farrah assumed that meant they were related, but she might be wrong with that assessment). Not that being related to the Headmaster actually meant anything bad, but from experience, those who were related to people of power tended to be the worst kind of people because they could get away with it.
Farrah made a face when Emerald confirmed that they were meant to fertilize the plants with the foul smelling compost that professor had wheeled in. She pulled out her own pair of dragon-hide gloves (Farrah had never really given leather much thought since she never wore it in general, but now that she had to wear gloves made out of dragon, she was really starting to think about becoming a Vegetarian or possibly a Vegan because the use of all these magical creatures in things was really starting to bother her) and looked around.
Since she had already broken the ice between her and Emerald, Farrah gave her a polite smile. “Would you like to work on this with me?” She asked the younger Aladren girl. If she didn’t, that would be okay too as Farrah was sure that Emerald probably had her own friends that she would have preferred to work with. Farrah could find Georgia or Kellen to see if they wanted to work with her if Emerald didn’t want to. “I was thinking of identifying the plants that need to be fertilized first before having to go over there and deal with that nasty garbage.” Farrah explained. Her parents just used manure. The local farmers created their own and sold it in the local market, so it was organic, but her parents weren’t hippy enough to start their own compost. Now that she was looking and smelling one, she was very glad for that.
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Farrah
I'd rather pollinate.
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