The Trees of The Overstory, pt 2
I'm 4/5 through The Overstory, more books to read are piling up, and some Overstory plotlines are starting to resolve. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but my heart was rather broken by the end of the "Trunk" chapter, so it's been hard to pick back up. It's still beautiful, and I'm so curious to see how it ends. I got caught by a snowstorm tonight, and spent a few hours reading instead of fighting traffic.
We're cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling. And what Douglas Pavlicek wants to know is why this is so easy to see when you're by yourself in a cabin by on a hillside, and almost impossible to believe once your step out of the house and join several billion folks doubling down on the status quo.
Several character arcs converge and diverge on the idea of solitude and interconnection. Five paragraphs later, the same character is told: "You're not just you." Reading this book has been a similarly connecting and disconnecting experience. You can't help but feel connected to trees, and also alone in recognizing their value as living creatures—especially in these fraught days when it seems nothing environmentally reasonable is possible. Patty is currently trying to save tree seeds in a seed bank:
She argues economics, good business, aesthetics, morals, spirit. She tells them stories, with drama, hope, anger, evil, and characters you can love.
Back to tree identification...
Mimi Ma grows up with a mulberry tree. I knew mulberries were part of the silk process, but I didn't realize that they also grew fruit (I guess I assumed mulberries were a bush like raspberries). This article covers several considerations to keep in mind about growing a mulberry tree, but is pretty anxious about stained fingers from eating the berries ("the dark side"). Read here for more details, including what mulberry wood is used for. Mulberry leaves—>
The Appich family plants a tree for each child, and Adam Appich's maple thankfully reminds me that I know a few trees. Sibling trees for Leigh, Jean, and Charles (I know I've seen this tree somewhere growing up — I can SMELL it from the pictures) are also great to scope out. Emmett's ironwood tree seems to be a generic term.