#22 - Afternoon Gardening

After harvesting was complete, nothing of value remained -- including ordinary clay pots that were cracked and no longer usable. Spaces of the counter were free again, unless having more seeds and supplies to start over with. Then all that was left was to clean up the workspace. Professor Sprout would appreciate it.

Ezra grinned as he saw that his little row of plants had really shot up in his absence. All of them had grown from the small seeds that he had watered and now they looked like real plants. He had grown plants!

He was very happy with himself, it was just a shame that the plants would probably not survive his attempts to harvest them for potions ingredients.

Completely forgetting that it was best to be cautious with some plants, Ezra reached a hand out to tickle the long two-coloured leaves of one of his plants. It was fortunate that it was just a berry plant then.

Ezra wiggled his fingers between the leaves of his chosen first plant, attempting to find the berries that the plant should hold. He thought that if he could just pluck the berries, then he would be able to leave the plant to continue to grow.

Unfortunately for him, that did not prove very successful. He could feel that the berries were there, they just proved too hard to pull from the stem. All he really managed was to rip a couple of leaves.

Finally he had to admit defeat to the plant. His attempts to pull the berries off without hurting the plant were not working. Since he did not want the berries to go to waste, he had to come up with another plan.

He stretched up on his tiptoes to look around the greenhouse for a possible answer. That answer came in the form of a pair of shears sat on a nearby workspace.

Ezra quickly made his way over to claim them, only pausing to smile and wave back at Saoirse when he noticed her enter. It was nice to see another face in the greenhouse.

The shears in his possession, he carefully touched the tip of his finger to the tip of them to check that they were sharp (they were) and then lifted them up to do a couple of test snips of the air in front of his face.

Ezra decided that yes, the shears would probably work, and so took them back to his pots.

He hesitated for a moment and then, after making the first slow snip to one of his berry plants, got cut happy and soon had all of his berry plants dealt with.

It was safe to say that the plants did not survive as he had originally hoped. At least he had a nice big pile of different berries though!

That just left one plant remaining for him to figure out. A rather droopy looking one with big pink and yellow flowers. Ezra glanced between it and the shears that he had found so fun to use. Would they be helpful on that one too?

He lifted the shears as if he was just going to mutilate the Eglower with them too without trying anything else, before he let out a dramatic sigh and set them down. Maybe he should at least attempt a hands on approach before just cutting the heads off.

He trailed his fingers up the surprisingly soft stem and then, right as he grabbed hold of it-

"Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

The plant fought back with stinky pollen!

Stuck sneezing, it was a lucky jerk of his hand that saw the head of the plant being popped off. Then Ezra was just left with a sniffly nose that he saw no choice but to wipe on his sleeve, and a flower head that he added to his possible potion ingredient pile.

That pile was soon collected and safely deposited in his bag, leaving only a messy workspace behind.

Ezra looked around at all the neat workspaces that he could see and then back at his own disaster zone. He probably should not leave it like that. Cleaning up it was then.

He got to work on that, only taking longer than he should have since he took a while to figure out what to do with his broken pot pieces.

Finally he had the workspace clear. Well, clear at least until he placed down five fresh pots and went about filling them with soil. He soon made a mess of things again once he had the soil out. But the space had been clean for a moment!

The pots full, Ezra pulled out some new seeds and proceeded to push and bury them in each pot. Blue seeds went in slots 46, 48, and 50. Then his yellow seeds slotted in the spaces between them in slots 47 and 49. Happy with that, he pulled out his wand.

"Aquamenti!" he called out, directing his wand at his pots so that the shower of water splashed over each of them.

His new plants nice and watered, Ezra brushed up some of the soil that he had spilt and then made his exit from the greenhouse. Back through the rain he went.

[exit]