Place of the Past Plants

All around campus in the past weeks, the tree leaves have changed from there deep green colors to a collage of red, yellow, and orange shades.  The most notable place where these leaves fell was around the Old Botany building.  This small building may seem out of place, surrounded by the seemingly endless buildings full of classrooms, but this building gives us a glimpse into the past.

The Old Botany building is a small building between the HUB and the Library.  The outside of it is made up of stone at the bottom, with red brick on top of it.  Surrounding it are several large trees, that have lots of leaves, except on in the fall when they have lots of leaves under them. Old Botany, because of its age, is very simple, but still has lots of symbolism in its walls, especially the exterior ones.

The most notable thing about the Old Botany building its exterior.  The outside of it looks like a three layer cake, or maybe it's just me, since I skipped dinner tonight.  This layering gives the building a feeling of age.  This is because these layers in the building are like the layers of soil.  The farther down you go into the soil, the older the dirt is, and the more likely you are to find dinosaur fossils.  This makes the Old Botany building a way to look into the past and remember where we came from.

Leaves lie strewn all around Old Botany building at this time of the year.   These leaves covered the ground so much, that they were a solid blanket at one point.  I regret not being able to get pictures of Old Botany building then, so I guess I will use that idea in this post.  The leaves, since their life is fleeting before they fall off the tree onto the ground, show why you must seize opportunities before they are gone.  The trees use their leaves to the fullest while they have them, to get as much energy as they can before they use them.  These trees, live their tree lives to the fullest, which is what we, as humans, should strive to do.  We must try our best to take advantage of each opportunity before it goes away, so we don't lose our leaves before we get to use them.  Although trees live their lives to the fullest, some need support sometimes.

There is also one tree outside the Old Botany building that is supported with old support beams.  I don't know why this tree is being supported, except that it probably can't completely stand on its own, but they make the tree very cool looking.  These support beams, being at Old Botany building, the window into the past at Penn State, show how our past supports us in the present.  None of us would be where we are today, without what we did in our past.  We may not have made all of the right, or wrong, decisions up to this point, but no matter what our decisions were, they support us.  Without everything we have been through, we would not be able to function.

The Old Botany building even though it is pretty old, does not mean it is any less important than the rest of campus.  This building is the one of the backbones of campus and serves as support from the past, which propels all of us into the future.