Robin enjoys doing science at every level, but in the way that she has described before: as having a conversation with plants. In this passage, then, she doesn’t seek out control groups or sterilized environments (or assert the factual veracity of her findings) but just performs a small experiment
with the plants as much as
on them, and from it draws a lesson of the intricate connections between all things. In nature there is no sterile lab or control group, and so experiments like this one take into account a factor that pure science cannot: the animacy of all things and their relationships to each other.