We, The Institute, have been accused and nearly slandered by some people out there who ask us outright “What do you do with all that incredible grant money you don’t get from the United States government? Do you waste it? Do you use it for immoral purposes? (I can’t believe they would ask us that us that so I won’t dignify that with a response) Do you ever use it for horticulturaly enriching the lives of the citizens and taxpayers of this great country of ours? And so on.

Well we take great umbrage at those people who ask us stuff like that and if we were vindictive we’d wish that all of them would perish in great huge awful pain from like a space explosion or falling into a volcano, or having to sit through a few of those caucuses that are happening right now, but we’re not, so we’ll answer one of those questions.

We’ve chosen the question directed at the horticultural aspect of our work here at The Institute. The Institute’s vast land holdings in other countries and even here on The Institute’s grounds are filled to the brim with every type of horticultural experiment, both good and bad, that you could possibly imagine plus some more to boot that you couldn’t think of in, like, a million years.

Let’s just take one example of an incredible horticultural breakthrough that has been made by our team of dedicated, underfed and misused technicians, groundskeepers and PhD’s that are the backbone of our horticultural pogrom here at The Institute. This is our latest patented, trademarked, copyrighted, DNA controlled, addition to the Pea family, “The Purple Pea ™” patent not pending due to forgetting to apply but will soon, maybe, plus © in Panama, the Iberian peninsula, and China, the not communist part.

What makes The Purple Pea ™ so unique? It’s coloring for one. It’s purple. All other inferior peas are green and always will be no matter how long you cook them. When your children’s children are playing “Kill ’em All ver. 6.8.7” on their Xboxes on Ganymede those boring peas will still be green. Our Purple Peas™ will be purple, and Royal Purple as well. Why? Because purple is the color of Royalty and if you have to eat peas why not feel good about it. Purple will also distinguish them from the other tasteless, odorless, bland but boring vegetables on your plate.

 Another benefit of Purple Peas ™ is the ease with which they can be harvested. Plain government funded peas have to be harvested by someone bending over and pulling the individual pea pod from the lowly bush it is attached to. This is hard. Many Americans simply refuse to do it. “Let them rot.” they say “I’m not bending over.” So other individuals must be found, sometimes at a very low rate of cost, to harvest the nation’s peas. This seems un-American. Or maybe just wrong. We don’t know. Here at The Institute we try to stay out of politics if we can. (Except for saying don’t vote for that one comb-over guy who looks and acts like Mussolini).

With our new improved Purple Peas ™ the harvesting is so simple even politicians could do it if they really had to work for a living. The peas grow on a tree at eye level so that no bending over is required, which may improve our unemployment numbers because real Americans could be put back to work harvesting Purple Peas™ at a huge rate of cost. According to our resident economists, who have issued a policy statement regarding lowering our unemployment rates, that states and we quote, “That would be good.”.

Here’s how it works. The Purple Pea™ trees bear the pods and as the pods grow they turn purple which is an aid to recognizing them, and soon become stuffed to their very seams with bright round, very Purple Peas™. At just the right moment these pods unfurl  in a corkscrew manner, allowing the Purple Peas™ within them to roll along the side of the pod gaining speed and burnishing themselves to a lovely shade of Royal Purple. Harvesting is as simple as placing a pot or pan or 55 gal drum under the flow of cascading Purple Peas™ and stand back. Watching the pots and pans fill up and seeing them be collected for shipment here and abroad is a pure joy. The most difficult part of the harvest is standing in a place where one doesn’t get hit in the eye by one of these Purple Peas™ rocketing off the pod into the harvesting vessel.

One of the niggling little problems of our new and improved Purple Peas™ is getting people in the United States accustomed to the taste of the new pea variety. Unfortunately they taste like eight day old scallops and have the consistency of previously chewed earth worms. Our taste tests in sub-Saharan desert countries have not indicated this to be a problem, but their diet is different from what we here in the states are used to. This is preventing us from getting approval from the Food and Drug  Administration to sell these on the open market but thankfully that has not affected our road side stands or food fair operations.

So rest assured The Institute is still tirelessly at work developing new strains of most of our common foodstuffs and hope to have new and colorful products out soon. Watch for our patent not pending, copyrighted, trademarked, Purple Peas™ at a food venue near you.