On March 7 we discussed Gary Paul Nabhan’s Mesquite, an Arboreal Love Affair. How to describe this book? Petey Mesquitey (a nom de plume) wrote in the Foreword: “So you are about to go on a marvelous mesquite journey filled with stories that will sometimes have you belly laughing, sometimes have you thinking maybe you’re working on your thesis, or maybe even striking a chord that makes you quietly weep …” And that really summarizes this book. Read the longer report of our discussion and interesting links here.

The hybrid meeting seems to be working well for us. It’s great that our travelling members plus the occasional new out-of-town friend can join us so easily.

On April 4 we’ll be discussing Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree. All I can say is what’s not to like about a book whose opening lines are: “At first it was the underwear. I wanted to become a tree because trees did not wear bras.”

On 7 February 2022 we held our first hybrid book club discussion. With a limited number of carefully masked and distanced people in person and the rest online, our hybrid event went reasonably well. I was most concerned that the people online wouldn’t be able to hear the people in the room easily, but our discussion worked pretty much as usual. One comment from an online participant was that the in-person people didn’t show up on my computer camera so they “appeared” as disembodied voices.

We began the year with the novel, The Baron in the Trees. Written in 1957 by Italo Calvino, it is the story of a boy, Cosimo, who would not eat his escargots and took to an aerial life in the family forest, vowing never to set foot on the ground again. The boy’s father being a Baron, the family had rather extensive grounds and resources. It is well imagined and a fun read.

Our February book, The Legacy of Luna, on the other hand, is the true story of Julia Butterfly Hill, who lived in a coastal redwood tree, Luna, without coming down from the tree, from 10 December 1997 to 18 December 1999 – a bit over two years. Like Cosimo, Julia depended on people to provide her with the necessities of life. Unlike Cosimo, Julia recounts the difficulties and dangers of living in a tree. And, of course, in her case, there was the continual threat posed by the lumber company intent on cutting down Luna.

A quick check of “tree sitting” on Wikipedia indicates that tree-sitting pre-dated Calvino’s novel and even was used at least once to protect a tree from being cut down. The more common use in the 1930s appears to have been as a sort of endurance sport. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s tree sitting was used as a form of protest to protect trees from being cut down. The most recent tree sit listed in the Wikipedia article ended in 2021. While some tree sits have successfully resulted in protection of the trees and surrounding environment, it does seem that many have ended in the protesters being “extracted” and jailed.

Read more about our meeting and the information we discussed here.

I started the book club in June 2019. We meet monthly to discuss a book that has to do with plants. That’s actually a pretty broad definition and the books we’ve read, and continue to read, are quite wide-ranging. The complete list of the books up through the December 2022 book can be found here or by clicking on the Botanical Bibliophile link in the ribbon above.

Not everyone is up to reading a book about plants every month. We watch two movies a year and I include a couple fiction books that revolve around plants. For January 2022 we read The Baron in the Trees, a whimsical tale by Italo Calvino about a boy who would not eat his escargots and took to a life in the trees. We’ll follow up in February with Julia Butterfly Hill’s Legacy of Luna, a true story of living in a tree for two years.

Since May 2020 we’ve been on zoom. The really cool thing about that is that people from anywhere can join us. As our usual attendees travel or even move, they can still be connected to this group of people who love reading and who are happy to read about plants. If you’re interested in learning more and/or in joining us, wherever you are, contact us through the comments here.