Our campus gardens

"There is a great insight which our culture is deliberately designed to suppress, distort, and ignore: that Nature is a minded entity; that Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic fields; that Nature is not the empty, despiritualized lumpen matter that we inherit from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind."
—Terence McKenna

Click photos for larger views.

A few of many greenhouses on campus, and viburnum bushes

I stopped by my university’s horticulture gardens after work yesterday to see what’s coming up. Lots of things, including peonies and allium.

Peony (a la Georgia)

Allium, with peonies behind

Today Don has his 4th grade class at the MSU greenhouses all day! The program, “Seeds of Science” is an interactive chance for kids to learn about plant biology. Also, and what’s most fun if you ask me, is that the MSU horticulture and agriculture departments solicit kids’ feedback on their plants!

For example, below are just two of dozens of pansy varieties grown here. Students are asked which their favorites are. (These are mine.) Then the seed companies that use MSU’s horticulture department to test and develop seeds in turn market them as “kids’ favorite.”

Pansies

Don’s class is participating in “my favorite lettuce” meaning that the lettuces the kids think taste the best will be marketed that way.

How fun is that? I wish I’d had Mr. M. for science.