Carl had done gardening before, but root stocks and scions were new vocabulary terms for him. He jotted them down along with their meanings. He looked up every now and then to make sure that his trees were doing okay. And then they were beginning the actual grafting process!

He put his gloves on excitedly and listened to the instructions. Making a cut, it sounded easy enough but to him, it was already a challenge. Carl had not yet mastered the Diffindo spell and he was definitely not going to use a knife, because he was a wizard and wizards did magic. "Diffindo!" He muttered, pointing his wand at a spare piece of parchment. A clean cut was made and he grinned. He might be able to do this! Moving his honey-locust tree closer to him, he aimed at the trunk on a spot about three inches above the soil. He had considered taking out a ruler and measuring exactly the right distance, but thought against it as he was already lagging behind. He further adjusted his hold on the wand so that it was on a forty-five degree angle, more or less. "Diffindo!" He repeated, practically beaming as another cut appeared.

Carl picked up the top part of the honey-locust tree and set it on his desk. The tongue thing seemed really difficult to make ... and he did not want to screw up, so he turned to his grafting knife. Forget what he said earlier about wizards having to use magic. He cut a little flap about halfway up the cut, then checked to make sure that he had done it correctly. Yep, looked fine!

Time to move on to the scion (he was using the term already!).