Can somebody explain what the joke is here? The two plants look similar (and they are evidently peas), but this hardly qualifies as hilarity. Or is there a pun of some sort involved?
One of those strips where, if this were Pearls Before Swine, the characters would be assaulting the cartoonist for his bad puns and feeble attempts at humor.
There’s a handy wikipedia page “Faux pas derived from Chinese pronunciation” that explains it. The word “san” (umbrella) sounds like the word for loss.
At the risk of pedantry, I should point out a glaring error in the strip, something known to anyone who has ever taken astronomy (and probably to lots of kids interested in it). “Canis Majoris” is not the name of a star. It means “of the Canis Major constellation” and would be preceded by the name of the specific star, in this case “VY Canis Majoris.” The wikipedia article on this star is worth reading.
My grandpa could pull a nickel out of HIS ear! Alas, he took the secret of how to do this to his grave.