As you exit
the greenhouse, you see that your father is waiting for you with a huge grin.
He claps you on the back and tells you that he made the blue magical barriers
so he could keep an eye on your progress. He then looks you in the eye and says
that he is extremely proud of you and impressed by your knowledge and the fact
that you took all the safety precautions you should have. As a reward, he gives
you a new book on Herbology and says the greenhouse is now yours to maintain.

You sit on
one of the bench outside and start leafing through the book. A chapter talks
about what they call the “Gardening Effect” which you understand to be some
sort of negative perception of Herbology by simplifying our understanding of
plants and the work of Herbologists. It would seem that this Gardening Effect
isn’t something all that recent, but hundreds of years in the works. And
because of that, Herbology has suffered, whether it is by lack of funding,
losing excellent candidates to fields that are considered more respectable or
simply by being publicly ridiculed an used as scapegoat.

The next
chapter you jump to talks about alien species, in other words, a plant or
animal living outside of its original habitat ecosystem or geological range.
From a Herbologist’s point of view, it would seem like invasive plants are the
problem. A plant invasion works in 3 steps. First the seed/plant propagates to
a new territory. Then it adapts to the new environment. And finally, it takes
over the environment. The book says that invasive plants require more
resources, especially water, draining and drying the grounds. It also advanced
that they compromise research and can destroy the survival chances of rare
herbs and other endangered plants. The chapter concluded by saying that while
greenhouses are great, nothing beats being able to study a specimen in its own
environment.

As you start
on another Chapter, you hear you mother calling you for supper. It seems you’ve
been so engrossed first in your greenhouse and then in the new book, that you
haven’t seen the day pass by. It’s a good thing summer just started and you
have 3 months before heading back to school. This summer will be the greatest
one so far, you just know it.