fandomhigh | Grow Your Own Garden, Tuesday, Period 6

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Grow Your Own Garden, Tuesday, Period 6

The students had been directed to meet at the Community Garden, where they would be met by a Senshi dressed exactly as he had for trekking into the dungeon, save for the addition of a straw hat pulled over his helmet, complete with holes for his helm's horns to poke through.

"Welcome to Grow Your Own Garden," he said when his students arrived. "I'm a big fan of sustainability and believe that food tastes better the closer to home it comes. You just can't beat the feelin' and flavor of vegetables you grew yourself. Also, it's one more way you can increase your self-sufficiency, because knowin' how to provide for yourself is important. I know the first week is supposed to be for introductions, but we need to take advantage of all the growin' time we've got. So we'll be combinin' introductions with learnin' how to prep the soil of our garden so we can be ready to plant next week."

There were plots cordoned off for eat student, all four quadrants that made up a decently large square. Each section had a bundle of gardening tools for them to use, along with a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves. Senshi didn't use them, but he could see where other people might want to protect their palms and fingers.

"So, the first step in preppin' the space is goin' through and loosenin' up the soil. You can use a ho, but a spade'll also work, too. You're gonna wanna dig up any rocks or debris, and remove 'em from your garden. Rocks should be discarded elsewhere, organic matter should get tossed into a bucket or bin for compostin'. You're gonna wanna loosen the soil an' get rid of rocks'n stuff until you're about twelve inches deep in the soil. This'll give your plants plenty of room to expand an' grow, which they wouldn't be able to do if the soil was all hard an' full of rocks. Once you've gotten rid of anythin' that would interfere with your plants growin', it's time to compost!"

He gestured to four large sacks behind them. "Now, most compostin' should happen in the fall an' winter to make sure the compost has a lot of time to finish decomposin' before you start plantin' in it. Now, the compost we have here are quite aged, so all we gotta do is spread it over the top of your garden and then mix it with with your trowel. Then you can wait a week and it'll be ready and rarin' to go with the actual plantin'."

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In the great outdoors!

Eleanor Zarrin

Kamala Khan

Lydia Bennet

Cal Kestis

Find your plot, look at all the tools, learn how to set your garden up for success.

Edited 2024-07-09 07:24 (UTC)

Kamala looked over the gardening area and then looked down at her outfit and realized that maybe she should have worn clothes she didn’t want to get dirty.

"We'll get you an apron for next week," Lydia murmured to her. "Very useful for the garden." Did Lydia know this from actually gardening? No. She knew it from watching gardeners.

"Oh! Good idea," Kamala murmured back. "I was just going to wear old clothes that I don't care about any more but that's good too!"

She paused a bit before adding.

"How are you doing? I mean... from the weekend. Are you good?"

"They have pockets and things," Lydia said. "You know, for tools and whatnot.

"Oh, yes, I'm perfectly fine! Should I not be?" Five kids, Lydia. "Are you all right? You seemed to be doing quite well, from what I remember." Granted, she didn't remember everything.

"I'm good!" Kamala said with a nod. "And yeah, I was doing well for myself in the future and all. So no trauma there. The one thing I do remember and want to state now in case you ever wonder: You are always welcome to come visit me in the future."

Because Kamala could not survive without AC and never wanted that for Lydia.

"Oh, that's so kind of you," Lydia said. "I wouldn't want to impose, of course," but, like her future self, she was perfectly willing to be persuaded to impose. "I do wish that I could return the offer, but I'm afraid my family knows nothing about...all of this." And Lydia did not want to have to explain things like, 'Wait, you're married?'

Kamala flailed a tiny bit because that was the one thing she was still trying to forget from the weekend. "What? No. I'm just saying you could hang with my parents or hang with wherever I end up after school."

Wherever it was it would definitely have AC and indoor plumbing.

"Hey. Listen, have you ever done karaoke?"

AC and indoor plumbing: the dream.

"I...don't know what that is, so no."

"Oh, so there's this place called Caritas and it has a stage," Kamala explained, "And anybody can go up there and request music and sing to everyone there. Want to come? It'll be fun, I promise!"

Lydia was perhaps envisioning something like an assembly where young ladies might be expected to present their musical accomplishments (if they could get Mary to relinquish the pianoforte once she had gained custody of it), and was acutely aware of her own lack of said accomplishments, but she did like music. Perhaps no one would expect her to sing. "It does sound like fun," she said. "I'd be delighted!"

She was going to be so disappointed to end up in a bar with a band made up of zombies.

"Fantastic!" Kamala exclaimed. "You're going to have a blast. I know it."

At least it would be educational?

Eleanor was trying her best not to be too nervous or intimidated by all of this. It seemed relatively simple, right? But she would have the specter of failure looming over her shoulder the whole time, knowing that if she managed to mess this up, it wouldn't matter if she was able to keep a couple of drakondia alive, and she'd be failing at more than just a simple garden, but an entire legacy that had previously kept her family aloat.

You know. No pressure or anything! She envied people who could pursue gardening as a nice calming liesure activity, really...

After a moment, Kamala tried to catch El's attention with a little wave. "Hey, El. How are you?"

Well, the nice thing about having the weight of rebuilding your entire family's legacy that you destroyed on your shoulders was that it did allow you to sort of focus on something else forefront in your mind, but Eleanor still had almost studiously been putting her attention into as much as the lesson as possible so she was only dealing with one thing at a time.

That became a bit more difficult when not only did Kamala wave at her, which she felt she could feasibly ignore like she just hadn't seen it, but also said hello to her, which was a bit harder to just dismiss due to inattention.

So she looked over, with a little wave and a small smile back. "Hey, Kam," she said lightly. "Pretty good, I guess. Hoping I don't mess this up."

It was prepare the soil week, Eleanor. You did this every week at work. You were fine.

She was a little tempted, to leave it there. She probably should just leave it there. But a small part of her just couldn't.

"Arden mentioned you might be taking this class," she said. "I bet Bonnie and Bennie will be pretty glad for it, too."

"Well, I did decide to take the class for them," Kamala replied with a nod. "I also really liked Senshi from his class last session, so I wanted to see what this one would be like."

She paused a second to think about what she was going to say next.

"So. Um. Arden's having not so great a time and I was going to take her out to Karaoke tomorrow night. Want to come?" she asked tentatively.

"Is everything okay?" Eleanor asked, her worried frown sincere, but also, she wouldn't lie and say she wasn't a little grateful to just latch onto that aspect of what Kamala had said to avoid answering the rest of it, or at least buy herself some time to figure out if her desire to say yes was actually stronger than her newfound resolve to maybe try and cool it a little on the whole thinking she could actually have friends thing for a little bit.

One day Eleanor might learn that not everyone is like Lucy Spencer. But today was probably not that day.

"She'll be fine," Kamala said, quietly. "There was some fallout from this weekend that has her upset. So I figured a girl's night out would help her out. You in?"

It was a lot less about worrying that other people might be Lucy Spencers and a lot more about the fact that she was undeniably a Zarrin. Even after nearly half of her life spent away.

Eleanor was quiet for a moment, mostly wrestling with her newfound conviction also to just dismiss the last weekend as one of those weird dreams and being able to connect a few dots there to realize what Arden might be going through right now.

"Sure," she finally said, "I can try to make it."

That felt like a good safety net, if she ~~chickened out~~ changed her mind at the last second.

"Karaoke's the thing with the singing, right?"

"Right," Kamala said with a smile. "I hope you make it. I think you'd have a lot of fun. Plus you'll get to see me make a fool out of myself on stage. Trust me: It's worth the price of admission."

Granted there was no admission price but still...

"How much is the price of admission?" Eleanor wondered. She had a steady paycheck and hardly any expenses, so she wasn't worried about not being able to cover it.

“I’m pretty sure the cost is free. Or just ordering some drinks,” Kamala chuckled. “I was just saying that because I thought you’d like to see me making an idiot of myself in public.”

Lydia had had the forethought to wear a dress she didn't mind getting dirty, with an apron atop it, since she'd rather suspected this class might be closer to a witch's idea of gardening than a gentlewoman's.

She had not quite anticipated getting so up close and personal with the soil, though. Ugh, there were probably worms in there.

Let's work and talk at the same time.

"Gimme your name, what you're lookin' to get outta this class, and how much farmin' or growin' experience you have."

That would hopefully keep anyone from asking what the compost is made of.

Edited 2024-07-09 07:23 (UTC)

Kamala looked at her plot and the shovels and decided to see if she could be more efficient. Summoning her hard light hands she shaped her fingers to be a point and started raking up the ground.

“I’m Kamala Khan and I want to learn how to make things grow better. I’ve killed one house plant but I’m doing better with the second two.”

"Good seein' you back, Kamala," Senshi said, offering her a big grin. "Wantin' to improve and puttin' in the effort to learn to do it right is important."

So saying, he handed her a hoe. "I think you should try with the tools, though," he said. Why did all magic users default to that immediately?

It wasn’t magic! It was manipulated energy from the Noor dimension solidified and manipulated!

… Yeah, okay I see where you are going there.

“Fine,” Kamala said taking the hoe, “but I think I did pretty well with my embiggened hands.”

"You did," Senshi agreed. "But you already know how to use your hands. It's time to learn another tool, rather than relying on what you already know."

Kamala looked at the hoe in her hands and frowned for a moment. "So what you're saying is I need to learn how to do things without relying on my powers?"

Huh.

"Exactly," Senshi said.

Was he...was he finally getting through to someone with powers? This would help him remarkably with dealing with Marcille!

Uh, Good luck with Marcille!

Kamala was still looking at the hoe... and thinking of Monica. Yes she had powers, but Kamala remembered her at the console, doing the math and that being the crucial thing they needed to fix the damage done by the Kree.

She smiled at Senshi. "Got it! Thanks Senshi!" and she started working with the hoe.

Senshi gave her a thumbs up and left her to it.

Eleanor was a big fan of working and talking at the same time. It kept her focused on the things in front of her, and not the weight of everything on her shoulders.

"My name's Eleanor Zarrin," she said, as she diligently took a ho to the soil and occasionally bent over with it supporting her to wedge a rock free with her hands. "My grandmother was an apothecarist and..." A slight hesitation, but she'd had enough magic classes to know not many people were probably going to balk too much at this next part, "witch. She kept a greenhouse of all her ingredients as well as food for the family...well, not a lot there, my family tends to lean into a meat-heavy diet, but, well, I sort of want to keep the family business running, but she died before she had a chance to teach me much, so..."

She shrugged, taking a moment to brush a wisp of milk-white hair back off her already sweating forward. "I want to learn here, instead."

"Hello, Eleanor," Senshi said. "Nice to meet you. I'm sorry that you lost your grandmother so early. But I'm glad to be able to teach you what I know. Were there any plants in particular you were hopin' to grow?"

"I'm Lydia Bennet and I'm a witch," Lydia said cheerfully, since she saw no point in beating around the bush about it. She'd thought about coming up with some cover story about growing her own flowers or whatnot, and then decided not to bother. "Some spells call for certain herbs and such, and it's ever so useful to be able to grow your own, especially since the conditions must be just so. It's not something you'd be able to rely upon a gardener for." If one could afford a gardener, which was not a luxury she anticipated once she and Wickham returned to England.

Edited 2024-07-09 15:10 (UTC)

Senshi nodded. "Well, we won't be growing any mana herbs or the like, but I can ask the magic users back home if I can get some in a pot or the like."

In his little hat!

I am so VERY tired

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Grow Your Own Garden, Tuesday, Period 6

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