Continua messe senescit ager

AP Environmental Science students cleared the vegetable garden and plant Fava Beans (Vicia faba) as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop to restore the soil for spring and summer planting.

Vicia faba

It is said that Pythagoras, the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician, forbade the eating of fava beans because they contained the souls of the dead

Able Grimmer (Flemish artist, c.1570–c.1619)

Broad beans were a major food of
old Mediterranean civilizations,
particularly for the Romans and Ancient Greeks.

  

Vincent van Gogh -
Peasant woman binding sheaves (after Millet)

  

The Gleaners (Des glaneuses) by Jean-Francois Millet

 Our native plant garden is already starting to show some blooms!

Pale swallowtail, Papilla eurymedon on California Lilacs (Ceanothus spp.)

Preparing to Kick the Can

On 3/16/16, Alverno's Science and Math Club will launch their Kick the Can Recycling Campaign, featuring a ping pong vacuum cannon built with friends from Caltech.

 

  

 

Honors Physics students perfect the cannon!

Not easy to separate the recycling bins!

In Anticipation of Spring

To prepare the Villa Pond for Spring, students fertilized the Water Lillies, and watered the new native sunflowers.

   

Adding fertilizer pellets

Fertilizer pellets pushed below surface to root area

September Spring by Sam Halls

Deep watering for good root growth

Like Chocolate for Water

AP Environmental Science students painted the support structure for the aquaponics systems a rich, chocolatey brown.

            

 

Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Joshua Reynolds
Huntington Library, Art Galleries, and Botanical Gardens 

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel