Latest / Slow Flowers Podcast / Episode 671: Learning from Tree Collectors, a conversation with Flower Confidential’s Amy Stewart about her new book that reveals “tales of arboreal obsession”

Transcript

Episode 671: Learning from Tree Collectors, a conversation with Flower Confidential’s Amy Stewart about her new book that reveals “tales of arboreal obsession” · Slow Flowers Podcast

• 0:00
  What can flower people learn from tree collectors?
• 0:03
  For Amy Stewart, whose 2007
• 0:06
  book flower
• 0:07
  confidential ignited the spark of the
• 0:09
  Movement.
• 0:11
  The tree world is filled with people who
• 0:13
  are as equally fascinating and inspiring
• 0:15
  as the flower world contains
• 0:17
  first Amy and I discuss her new book,
• 0:19
  it's 50 vi of remarkable people whose lives
• 0:23
  have been transformed by their passion for trees,
• 0:26
  as well as her approach to writing and
• 0:28
  illustrating humans and their beloved specimens.
• 0:32
  The thing I got from a lot of
• 0:33
  these collectors was this endless sense of learning
• 0:36
  and curiosity.
• 0:38
  You know, it's sort of boundless,
• 0:40
  and and and I think for a lot
• 0:42
  of flower farmers, there's this sense of seeking
• 0:45
  in the sense of maybe there's something else
• 0:47
  I can do. Maybe there's something else I
• 0:49
  can find. 1 of the collectors in the
• 0:50
  books said, I know 90 year old tree
• 0:53
  collectors. And honestly, I think that's I think
• 0:55
  that's why they're 90. Like, I think that's
• 0:57
  why they're still going.
• 1:04
  Hello again, and welcome back to the Slow
• 1:06
  flowers podcast with Deborah Printing. This is episode
• 1:09
  671.
• 1:11
  This is the weekly podcast about slow flowers
• 1:14
  and the people who grow and design with
• 1:17
  them. It's all about making a conscious choice,
• 1:20
  and I invite you to join the conversation,
• 1:23
  and the creative community as we discuss the
• 1:25
  vital topics of saving our domestic flow more
• 1:28
  farms and supporting a floral industry that relies
• 1:31
  on a safe, seasonal and local supply of
• 1:35
  flowers and foliage
• 1:36
  This show is brought to you by slow
• 1:38
  flowers dot com.
• 1:39
  The free online directory
• 1:41
  to more than 750
• 1:43
  d flo, shops and studios who design with
• 1:46
  local, seasonal, and sustainable flowers.
• 1:49
  And to the farms that grow those blooms,
• 1:52
  It's the conscious choice for buying and sending
• 1:54
  flowers.
• 1:55
  And thank you to the Gardener workshop, which
• 1:57
  offers a full curriculum of online education.
• 2:01
  For flower farmers and farmer flo.
• 2:03
  Online education is more important than ever, and
• 2:06
  you'll want to check out the course offerings
• 2:08
  at the Gardeners work workshop dot com.
• 2:12
  I'm thrilled today to share my recent conversation
• 2:15
  with Amy Stewart
• 2:16
  The New York Times best selling author of
• 2:19
  the tree collectors, the drunken bot, wicked plants,
• 2:23
  and several other popular non titles about the
• 2:26
  natural world,
• 2:28
  Amy is best known in the slow flowers
• 2:30
  community for writing flower
• 2:32
  confidential. The good the bad and the beautiful
• 2:34
  in the business of flower which first dropped
• 2:37
  into our lives in 2007.
• 2:40
  Amy wrote the forward to my 2012 book
• 2:42
  that launched S flowers movement, the 50 mob
• 2:45
  okay. And I'm honored to call her a
• 2:48
  dear friend. Amy has also written several novels
• 2:50
  in her beloved cop sister series, the which
• 2:53
  are based on the true story of 1
• 2:55
  of America's first female, deputy sheriff and her
• 2:58
  2 rem sisters.
• 2:59
  There's 7 books in the series and you'll
• 3:01
  want to read them all.
• 3:03
  Her books have sold over a million copies
• 3:05
  worldwide and have been translated into 18 languages.
• 3:08
  Amy lives in Portland Oregon with her husband
• 3:10
  Scott Brown, a rare book dealer who can
• 3:13
  usually be found at his shop downtown brown
• 3:15
  books.
• 3:17
  Today, you'll learn about the tree collectors, and
• 3:19
  Amy and I discussed connections between the tree
• 3:22
  community and the floral community.
• 3:24
  When she discovered the universe of tree collectors,
• 3:27
  Amy expected to meet h cultural fan driven,
• 3:30
  to plant every species of oak or maple.
• 3:33
  But she also discovered that the urge to
• 3:35
  collect trees springs from something deeper and more
• 3:38
  profound, a longing for community, a vision for
• 3:41
  the future or a path to healing and
• 3:43
  reconciliation
• 3:44
  In this slightly humorous informative, quite po at
• 3:47
  volume, Amy shares captivating stories of people who
• 3:50
  spend their lives in pursuit of rare and
• 3:52
  wonderful trees.
• 3:53
  And are transformed in the process.
• 3:55
  I'm delighted that Amy has populated her lively
• 3:58
  tree comp with her own hand drawn watercolor
• 4:01
  portraits
• 4:02
  of the extraordinary people and their trees inter
• 4:05
  with side trips to investigate famous tree collections,
• 4:09
  arbor burial gloss, and even tips for unauthorized
• 4:12
  forestry street. This book is a stunning tribute
• 4:14
  to a devoted group of nature lovers making
• 4:16
  their lives and the world, more beautiful, 1
• 4:19
  tree at a time
• 4:21
  Let's jump right in and get started and
• 4:23
  welcome Amy Stewart.
• 4:32
  Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Slow flower
• 4:34
  show with Debra Printing.
• 4:36
  I'm so thrilled today to welcome a return
• 4:39
  guest.
• 4:40
  Amy Stewart, Many of you recall that Amy
• 4:42
  spent a guess on this podcast before.
• 4:45
  She's also kind of the godmother of, the
• 4:47
  plural industry that we know
• 4:50
  as we know it in the sunflower flowers
• 4:51
  world because she's the author of flower
• 4:54
  confidential, hard to believe. So I'm gonna welcome,
• 4:57
  Amy to join us. We're going to talk
• 4:59
  about her new project.
• 5:00
  Hello, Amy.
• 5:02
  Hello.
• 5:03
  Good to see you. So good to see
• 5:05
  you. Thanks so much for doing this. I
• 5:07
  know some people might say, okay, Amy. You
• 5:09
  wrote a book
• 5:10
  called.
• 5:11
  The tree collectors. And
• 5:14
  what does I have to do with flowers.
• 5:15
  But, you know, I'm all about h topics,
• 5:18
  and I think that's our roots that inform
• 5:20
  everything you and I do and many of
• 5:23
  the, you know, practitioners in the sunflower flowers
• 5:26
  world. So
• 5:27
  There's a lot to learn here. There is.
• 5:29
  And and I should say there is a
• 5:30
  Camel camilla collector, and
• 5:33
  I actually just heard from the international Lilac
• 5:35
  society who's very excited about the... So, you
• 5:38
  know, trees and flowers, it does happen. And
• 5:41
  also, I'll just tell you, flower confidential is
• 5:44
  actually 2007.
• 5:46
  Not 17.
• 5:47
  Oh, I'll correct that. Yes. It's been a
• 5:50
  ridiculously long time. You know what? I had
• 5:53
  2017 in my mind because that's when we
• 5:55
  had the first slow flower summit. Yeah. When
• 5:57
  you... And I cooked up the whole idea
• 6:00
  of celebrating the 10 year anniversary of flower
• 6:04
  confidential. Right?
• 6:06
  Alright. No.
• 6:07
  I'm corrected. I said Time flies. Time flies
• 6:10
  is alright. But, you know, that... You... The
• 6:12
  staying power of flower confidential is consistently
• 6:16
  you know, referred to as kind of the
• 6:17
  pivot point, the turning point for people's awareness
• 6:21
  about
• 6:23
  what's going on behind behind all these flowers
• 6:25
  that we're consuming. You know, we we we
• 6:27
  kinda be politely just assume they were local.
• 6:29
  We blindly assumed they were grown down the
• 6:31
  street. Or in our own region, and you
• 6:34
  peel back the curtain
• 6:35
  and showed people a different story.
• 6:38
  And, you know, I'd never could have imagined
• 6:40
  that it would actually impact anyone's life. Like,
• 6:43
  I definitely...
• 6:45
  I didn't have that ambition. It was more...
• 6:47
  I saw it as more of sort of
• 6:48
  a g whiz kinda of booked like, oh,
• 6:50
  who new.
• 6:52
  And even when I started working on writing
• 6:54
  it, the environmental
• 6:56
  issues weren't
• 6:58
  forefront in my mind,
• 7:00
  but they grew. Like, as I was working
• 7:02
  on the book, but also culturally for all
• 7:04
  of us. We were starting to talk... It's
• 7:06
  weird to think that there was a time
• 7:08
  when we weren't talking about this stuff very
• 7:09
  much, but that was true in, like, 2003
• 7:12
  2004
• 7:13
  when I was just starting.
• 7:15
  But it really surprised me when people started
• 7:18
  coming out to me at vince and saying
• 7:20
  things like, I dropped out of college and
• 7:22
  rented an acre of land and now... I'm
• 7:24
  an organic flower farmer, and I'm like, oh,
• 7:27
  please don't tell your mother that I'm responsible
• 7:30
  for this. Like, I'm gonna get calls.
• 7:32
  My gosh. It's so true. And, you know,
• 7:36
  the reason that you didn't quite... You weren't,
• 7:38
  like, treating this as a...
• 7:41
  I don't know social engineering experiment experiment. You
• 7:44
  were just, like typical Amy curious,
• 7:47
  highly curious.
• 7:48
  About a topic and you took a deep
• 7:50
  dive.
• 7:52
  And, I guess, that's just how you operate
• 7:54
  as a as a writer. You you write
• 7:56
  to learn. Right? Sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I
• 7:59
  realized there's this thing that I don't know.
• 8:01
  And then III start thinking about all the
• 8:03
  things I don't know about it.
• 8:05
  And then, you know, at some point, like,
• 8:07
  often within the next few hours, I think,
• 8:09
  well someone's write a book about this. So
• 8:11
  I'm just gonna get this out from the
• 8:12
  library, and then I'll know, and then I
• 8:14
  find out no one's written a book about
• 8:16
  it, and then I'm off to the races.
• 8:18
  So that was certainly what flower confidential was
• 8:21
  all about. Like, I can't believe no one's
• 8:22
  written this book on it. Right. Right. Yeah.
• 8:25
  I mean, you've done this with all kinds
• 8:26
  of Flo and fauna in,
• 8:28
  the natural world.
• 8:31
  And now you've done it with trees.
• 8:33
  So
• 8:34
  we're gonna talk about the tree collectors.
• 8:37
  Amy, you have a little
• 8:39
  trailer that you recorded that I just... Pulled
• 8:41
  up from Youtube. I think I'm show it
• 8:43
  and That'll kind of... It's just a few
• 8:44
  minutes that'll give us an introduction, and then
• 8:47
  we'll dive into our conversation. So let's get
• 8:49
  that going here. Pulled Breakout. Tales of arbor
• 8:52
  burial
• 8:53
  obsession.
• 8:53
  I wrote and illustrated this book with portraits
• 8:57
  of the people and their trees.
• 9:00
  The idea for this book came to me
• 9:02
  about 10 years ago when I met a
• 9:04
  guy who told me that he collected trees.
• 9:07
  And I said, wow, trees are really kind
• 9:09
  of a weird thing to collect because, like,
• 9:10
  they're really big and hard to move. So
• 9:14
  I don't know. How does this even work?
• 9:16
  And he told me that he lines his
• 9:18
  trees up like books on a books shelf.
• 9:22
  And that his goal is to collect 1
• 9:24
  of every different kind of tree that grows
• 9:26
  in his climate,
• 9:28
  until he runs out of space, which, of
• 9:30
  course, he did because all tree collectors run
• 9:32
  out of space.
• 9:34
  So I met a few more tree collectors
• 9:36
  over the years and what really surprised me
• 9:38
  was that everybody had a really different story
• 9:41
  about what they collected and why
• 9:43
  and how they're lives had been transformed
• 9:47
  by their relationship with trees.
• 9:50
  I met people who plant trees to
• 9:53
  honor their loved ones,
• 9:55
  or to heal the wound to the past
• 9:56
  or build community
• 9:58
  or say a habitat
• 10:00
  or even to make an art project
• 10:02
  And you don't always need a lot of
• 10:04
  land to collect trees. Some of the people
• 10:06
  in this book collects pine cones or leaves
• 10:08
  or seeds
• 10:10
  or they graft 40 different fruits onto just
• 10:13
  1 tree or plant a tiny forest in
• 10:16
  an ordinary sized backyard.
• 10:19
  Some people are collectors in the sense that
• 10:21
  they're catalog
• 10:23
  rare or historic trees in their community.
• 10:27
  And you know, even this act of catalog
• 10:29
  of noting
• 10:30
  is a form of collecting
• 10:32
  because it makes sure that they won't be
• 10:34
  lost or forgotten.
• 10:35
  I'm really honored to be able to pay
• 10:38
  tribute to these people
• 10:40
  and to the power that trees have in
• 10:44
  all of our lives.
• 10:45
  I thought these were really moving and inspiring
• 10:49
  stories
• 10:50
  that made me look at trees in a
• 10:52
  new way and I hope they'll do the
• 10:54
  same for you. Thank you.
• 10:57
  Okay. That was a great introduction.
• 11:00
  Amy, that was really fun.
• 11:02
  I... What I'd love the most is that
• 11:04
  picture of you at the bottom of a
• 11:06
  tree staring up.
• 11:08
  Like in awe, and this is just 1
• 11:11
  moment that you must have experienced over the
• 11:14
  course of many, many months working on this
• 11:15
  book.
• 11:16
  Yeah. For sure. Love it.
• 11:19
  50 vi of remarkable people whose lives have
• 11:22
  been transformed by their obsessed obsessive passion for
• 11:25
  trees.
• 11:26
  Written and
• 11:28
  illustrated by Amy Stewart. So,
• 11:30
  first of all, I guess, what's came first?
• 11:33
  The idea of wanting to illustrate these people
• 11:35
  or just chased down their stories Like, how
• 11:37
  did you wrap your arms around this. Like,
• 11:39
  I meant imagine you're in the Redwood forest.
• 11:41
  You're trying to get your arms around the
• 11:42
  base of a tree. It it's a big
• 11:45
  it's it's a big topic to to buy
• 11:47
  off.
• 11:48
  It is. And, you know, this is 1
• 11:50
  of many ideas. Had sort of been kicking
• 11:53
  around for a long time. I mean, I
• 11:54
  think if you asked most writers,
• 11:56
  they have a whole bunch of book ideas
• 11:58
  that are just sitting in a drawer that
• 11:59
  didn't didn't never quite launch that So this
• 12:02
  is 1 of them. And, what happened is
• 12:04
  that I'd always kinda of been an oil
• 12:06
  painter, but oil paintings don't make for good
• 12:08
  book illustrations.
• 12:10
  But more recently, I had gotten into working
• 12:12
  on paper more, watercolor and ink and gouache,
• 12:16
  and other things that are classic
• 12:18
  illustrator mediums.
• 12:19
  So all the people, like, including my agent,
• 12:22
  you know, who had said, why don't you
• 12:23
  illustrate your own books and I was always
• 12:24
  like, you know nothing about art? If you
• 12:26
  think I can do that.
• 12:28
  But it started to become more possible because
• 12:31
  I just learned those skills.
• 12:34
  So that made me think in terms of,
• 12:36
  well, if I was gonna do it, illustrated
• 12:38
  bug. What would it what would that be?
• 12:40
  And I went through my file of old
• 12:43
  book ideas, and some of them seem to
• 12:45
  sort of have more potential show somehow.
• 12:48
  If you added art, like, something about making
• 12:51
  it a little more gifting
• 12:53
  and and maybe gave it a little bit
• 12:54
  more breathing space
• 12:56
  and
• 12:58
  I don't know. Just sort of injected some
• 13:00
  air into the idea in a in a
• 13:03
  way that's kinda hard to describe.
• 13:05
  But, yeah. So I'm going through all these
• 13:07
  ideas. And my husband who's a rare book
• 13:09
  dealer and very interested in all kinds of
• 13:11
  collecting and in all kinds of collectors. He
• 13:14
  kept saying, What about tree collectors? Why why
• 13:17
  isn't that 1 on the list? And every
• 13:18
  time it fell off the list, he would
• 13:20
  bring it up again.
• 13:22
  And
• 13:23
  I am Scott.
• 13:25
  Thank you, Scott. But and, yeah, But it
• 13:27
  led me to kinda reach back out to
• 13:28
  the people I'd met over the years who
• 13:30
  had told me they were tree collectors and
• 13:32
  I was able to locate them all, even
• 13:34
  though I'm terrible at remembering people's names, I
• 13:36
  got back to all of them. And it
• 13:39
  just started to come together, like, oh, I
• 13:41
  maybe there is a book in this. Yeah.
• 13:43
  I love it.
• 13:45
  It's no small feet because it is an
• 13:47
  international global.
• 13:49
  I think
• 13:51
  population of people featured.
• 13:53
  I don't know. We must have been chatting
• 13:54
  or something when you said that there were
• 13:56
  people who you had to interview or maybe
• 13:58
  I read it in your in your acknowledgement.
• 14:00
  There were people who did not share your
• 14:02
  language and you had to use translators.
• 14:04
  Yeah. That's wild. But we... Believe it or
• 14:07
  not, those were some of my favorite interviews.
• 14:10
  What I would do is I would find
• 14:11
  an interpreter,
• 14:12
  just, you know, online, I would just track
• 14:15
  somebody down.
• 14:16
  And then I would explain the book to
• 14:17
  them and explain the point of the interview.
• 14:19
  And a lot of times, these are people
• 14:21
  who do business
• 14:23
  translation. Right? Why I corporate whatever.
• 14:26
  And so I'm explaining the project, and I
• 14:28
  give them a list of questions.
• 14:31
  Which is kind of a bummer because I
• 14:33
  like my interviews to be a conversation where
• 14:35
  I don't have a list of questions. But
• 14:36
  what choice did I have, So I would
• 14:39
  give them my list of questions. And then
• 14:40
  I would say, you're gonna conduct the whole
• 14:42
  interview. Like, don't really stop... Don't stop and
• 14:45
  translate everything for me because it's gonna become
• 14:48
  clunky and awkward gonna take 4 hours. So
• 14:50
  we're gonna be on Zoom the 3 of
• 14:52
  us.
• 14:53
  I'll just be sitting there in case you
• 14:54
  have questions, you can turn to me and
• 14:56
  ask me. But otherwise, you too have this
• 14:59
  conversation, and I gave them some pointers about,
• 15:01
  feel free to dig in more,
• 15:04
  you know
• 15:05
  add your own questions. Put down the rabbit
• 15:07
  hole on a specific answer. Right. Right. And
• 15:10
  I sort of explained in particular, these are
• 15:13
  areas that I wanna get more specific in.
• 15:15
  So especially if they go in in these
• 15:17
  areas.
• 15:18
  But they were so much fun for me
• 15:20
  because I'm just sitting there on Zoom, watching
• 15:22
  2 people speak Jeff knees to each other
• 15:24
  or speak portuguese
• 15:25
  or polish to 1 another. Right They're they're
• 15:28
  having so much fun.
• 15:30
  Like, they're getting really into it, and I
• 15:32
  just felt
• 15:33
  And was so moving to just sort of
• 15:35
  realize like, here's this person that I'm never
• 15:37
  gonna meet. They're halfway around the world,
• 15:40
  but they share these interests. They share these
• 15:43
  passions. They're willing to be open and express
• 15:46
  themselves. And I was so glad they were
• 15:48
  doing it in their own language, so it's
• 15:49
  not a struggle. Right. And then I would
• 15:52
  send the Zoom video to the interpreter
• 15:55
  and and ask them to not transcribe it
• 15:58
  word for word, But, to give me the
• 16:00
  meaningful bits, and then I come back to
• 16:02
  them and say, I need a little bit
• 16:03
  more on this section or I need a
• 16:04
  word for word translate.
• 16:06
  Wow When gonna put it in quotes, and
• 16:08
  we would work back and things like that.
• 16:09
  Wow. It's like we you deployed these deputy
• 16:12
  writers or, you, or, you know, in interviewers
• 16:15
  too Right. Collect these stories. Yeah. You're in
• 16:18
  your own... You're a collector in and of
• 16:20
  yourself. I love that. Well, I have to...
• 16:22
  I I have to say, thinking back to
• 16:24
  the first conversation, we had about this book.
• 16:27
  You emailed me and said you were gonna
• 16:29
  start working on this.
• 16:31
  Kinda during Covid, I believe. I
• 16:35
  you were looking... And, Amy, I have learned
• 16:37
  so much from you about your intentional for
• 16:40
  representation and inclusion, and
• 16:43
  bringing everyone into the world of florida culture
• 16:46
  or flu culture, but you were really specific
• 16:48
  to say, I, you know, this is not
• 16:50
  gonna be
• 16:51
  is there my where it's not yours old
• 16:53
  White guys book. You know? And that's just
• 16:55
  coming out of where culture sometimes
• 16:58
  the perception is that's who gets to talk
• 17:00
  about.
• 17:01
  And you were really able to find,
• 17:04
  people in communities that have never... Been able
• 17:07
  been asked about their tree collections or
• 17:10
  I'd love that. As maybe you can talk
• 17:12
  about some that are really special to you
• 17:13
  that really
• 17:16
  I don't know, changed your perception of who
• 17:17
  is a tree collector. Yeah. Well, this was
• 17:20
  really important to me.
• 17:22
  In part because...
• 17:26
  Anytime you talk about collectors in any field.
• 17:28
  It does tend to be wealthier people. It
• 17:30
  tends to be more white people. It tends
• 17:32
  to be more North Americans and Europeans.
• 17:35
  And it tends to be more men.
• 17:37
  So that's just the demographic, whether you're collecting
• 17:40
  cars or you're collecting books or you're collecting
• 17:43
  trees, Yeah. Right. Especially trees because they require
• 17:46
  land and who has land and who doesn't
• 17:48
  have land. Right?
• 17:49
  So going in...
• 17:51
  This is, I think so important when we
• 17:53
  think about inclusion is
• 17:55
  it's not so much about... This is my
• 17:58
  table. And I need more of you to
• 18:00
  come sit at my. I wanna check the
• 18:01
  boxes kind of thing. Right Yeah. It's it's
• 18:03
  about...
• 18:05
  My table isn't working,
• 18:07
  like, we need a different table.
• 18:09
  And so my premise of, I'm gonna write
• 18:11
  a book about collectors
• 18:13
  couldn't be. It's only people who have big
• 18:16
  plots of land. It had to be what
• 18:18
  are other ways of seeing collecting. And as
• 18:21
  soon as you do that, the population changes
• 18:25
  radically.
• 18:26
  Right? So it was about me asking a
• 18:28
  different... Deciding that I was gonna ask a
• 18:30
  different question. But then, yeah, also being super
• 18:33
  deliberate. Like, everyone I talked to. I said
• 18:35
  the same thing. I said I'm looking for
• 18:36
  more women. I'm looking for more people who
• 18:38
  aren't in North America or Europe.
• 18:41
  I'm looking for people who aren't white.
• 18:43
  I'm looking for people who aren't rich. And
• 18:45
  a lot of collectors were sort of stumped,
• 18:47
  Like, that, you know, they kinda couldn't come
• 18:50
  up with a lot of folks. So I
• 18:52
  did do a lot of digging on my
• 18:53
  own. I went on to Youtube and Tiktok
• 18:55
  to look for people who were
• 18:58
  obsessed with trees.
• 18:59
  But but, I love it. But had never
• 19:01
  joined a tree collecting society, and never will
• 19:04
  join 1. Right?
• 19:06
  So, yeah. I went to all these other
• 19:08
  places. To try to track these folks down.
• 19:11
  But, you know, I found people who collect,
• 19:14
  well, like I said in a video, like,
• 19:16
  you can collect part of a tree. You
• 19:17
  can collect pine cones,
• 19:19
  there's a whole thing about collecting wood samples.
• 19:22
  Yes. That's right. That doesn't a crazy chapter.
• 19:25
  Yeah. There's an international wood collecting society
• 19:29
  and they have a standard size for their
• 19:32
  wood samples, which is about the size of
• 19:34
  an iphone
• 19:35
  that,
• 19:36
  makes them easier to sort and keep keeping
• 19:39
  files. Like, yeah. Yeah.
• 19:41
  So there's that. But then there's also people
• 19:44
  who collect trees in the sense of go
• 19:46
  picking up acorns in your neighborhood and grow
• 19:49
  them in pots on your patio
• 19:51
  until they get too good for the pot,
• 19:52
  and then you can either plant them somewhere
• 19:54
  or toss them out and start more, but,
• 19:56
  like, you know, there's a million ways to
• 19:58
  to do this that don't have to involve
• 20:02
  a lot of land. Yeah. Well, you kind
• 20:04
  of organize the... I love the way you
• 20:06
  organize the
• 20:07
  table contents
• 20:09
  by the role that the individual how you
• 20:13
  saw their role as a healer, and colleges,
• 20:15
  and artist,
• 20:16
  curator,
• 20:17
  educator, community builder,
• 20:20
  ent,
• 20:21
  seeker,
• 20:22
  preservation, and visionary. So you're kind of saying,
• 20:25
  okay. What's their relationship with their own world,
• 20:28
  Right. And how do trees fit into that.
• 20:31
  I thought it was a good way to
• 20:32
  organize it because
• 20:34
  that alone breaks up this sort of curated,
• 20:37
  you know, collection in an arbor, which is
• 20:40
  where we would start normally. Right? Right.
• 20:43
  Yeah. It's... It's hard putting human beings into
• 20:46
  categories.
• 20:47
  So,
• 20:48
  I I resisted it a little bit because
• 20:50
  there is definitely crossover between those categories.
• 20:52
  But I think it does send a message.
• 20:54
  And this was the big surprise for me
• 20:56
  working on this book. Honestly, at the beginning
• 20:58
  of it, I thought I was gonna be
• 21:00
  sucking to like, plant geek who geek out
• 21:02
  about their geek plants.
• 21:04
  And I wasn't expecting the level of personal
• 21:07
  stories that I was getting. Yeah. I wasn't
• 21:09
  expecting... You know, there's a there's a a
• 21:11
  woman Marie Bo,
• 21:14
  she's
• 21:15
  in England. And she collects maple trees. And
• 21:18
  and her big thing when she started talking
• 21:20
  to me. I mean I just found her
• 21:21
  through the Maple society, she was... She responded
• 21:24
  to my, you know, saying, I'm looking for
• 21:26
  women and a bunch of people were like,
• 21:27
  I'm a woman talk to me. So very
• 21:29
  love. That's how I found her, but then
• 21:31
  she starts talking to me about what these
• 21:34
  trees mean to her, and a big piece
• 21:36
  of it is that she wasn't able to
• 21:38
  have kids,
• 21:40
  and it... That was really hard for her.
• 21:41
  That really hurt
• 21:43
  and that the maple trees have filled this,
• 21:46
  hole in her life that she felt was
• 21:48
  left behind by not being able to become
• 21:49
  a mother
• 21:51
  And the thing she said that just knocked
• 21:52
  my socks off
• 21:54
  was she... The the thing in Maple trees
• 21:56
  is it's pretty easy to come up with
• 21:58
  a new variety. You know, I mean, a
• 22:00
  seed drops and it starts growing, and it
• 22:02
  could be an interesting new variety. It's not
• 22:05
  hard to do with Maple.
• 22:06
  So,
• 22:07
  she's really hoping that she's going to get
• 22:10
  an offspring from her trees that's worth cultivating,
• 22:13
  and and actually sort of introducing and naming.
• 22:17
  And she said I wasn't able to give
• 22:19
  a name to a baby, and I would
• 22:21
  like to give a name to a tree.
• 22:23
  And It just erased cry. Like, I can't
• 22:26
  tell you how often and I cried listening
• 22:27
  to these stories. I mean, it's just
• 22:30
  people
• 22:31
  something that I think, you know, I mean,
• 22:33
  you've got a lot of people listening to
• 22:34
  this podcast to or flower farmers. And, you
• 22:36
  know, what I realized is you spend a
• 22:38
  lifetime that putting down roots, like literally putting
• 22:41
  roots into the ground,
• 22:43
  and it does transform your life. Yeah. The
• 22:45
  thing you have at the end of that,
• 22:47
  there's a lot of 70 and 80 year
• 22:49
  old tree collectors in this book. And the
• 22:51
  thing you have at the end of that
• 22:52
  is this life well lived and this life
• 22:55
  that is so... Because intertwined. I mean, the
• 22:58
  roots analogy is just so useful here, but
• 23:00
  this life that is so intertwined with other
• 23:02
  people
• 23:03
  who are literally connected with you through these
• 23:06
  plants.
• 23:08
  And it doesn't matter if there oak trees
• 23:09
  that are gonna out live you or if
• 23:11
  they're, you know, Sunflower in a in a
• 23:13
  field,
• 23:14
  you have that to show for yourself in.
• 23:17
  Show for what your life has meant. And
• 23:20
  it honestly made me sort of question my
• 23:22
  life choices.
• 23:23
  I was gonna, I was kinda like, why
• 23:25
  don't I have
• 23:28
  a miniature forest that I can point to.
• 23:30
  And so
• 23:31
  here are where my people are. Here's where
• 23:34
  my values and my priorities are. Here's what
• 23:36
  my life has met and it is tangible,
• 23:39
  and it's in the ground right here. Well,
• 23:42
  because I know you live in a,
• 23:44
  priorities townhouse, Condo.
• 23:48
  Maybe you have some house punch on your
• 23:49
  windows sill. But your your collection is in
• 23:52
  the isn't any stories, Amy. And in this
• 23:54
  art.
• 23:56
  I I just wanna say that Marie bo
• 23:58
  store you called at the mother of trees.
• 23:59
  So that's so great.
• 24:01
  I do remember my 1 little, like, a
• 24:03
  personal connection to this book is during Covid,
• 24:06
  I was on a
• 24:08
  special shopping
• 24:10
  expedition,
• 24:11
  I don't know how I got per permitted
• 24:13
  to do this, but to,
• 24:15
  go to the nursery
• 24:18
  in port townsend in Washington owned by, Sue
• 24:20
  mill and Kelly Dod. Yeah. And,
• 24:24
  they,
• 24:25
  You had just told me about this book,
• 24:27
  and so I took a photo of them
• 24:28
  and texted it you and I'm like, here's
• 24:30
  a couple and, you know, Sue is of
• 24:32
  1 of the...
• 24:34
  Amazing plant collectors of the world, and
• 24:37
  their far... Their nurseries called Far reaches farm.
• 24:40
  And so Lo behold, they showed up in
• 24:41
  the book, And I, are they the only
• 24:43
  couple. You don't have a lot of,
• 24:45
  ts. Pears. Right? They're the only couple. I
• 24:48
  mean, there there are definitely 3 collectors in
• 24:50
  the book. Who are married and their spouses
• 24:53
  involved
• 24:53
  to a greater or lesser extent. Yeah. But,
• 24:56
  yeah. When I started talking to them, who
• 24:58
  I realized quickly, I couldn't
• 25:00
  focus on 1 or the other because they...
• 25:03
  So for people who don't know, they they...
• 25:05
  Fell in love on basically a tree collecting
• 25:08
  or a plant collecting
• 25:10
  expedition. Right. It's is a great story. It
• 25:12
  is a great story. And it... So in
• 25:14
  the book, it's the only time that I
• 25:15
  did this in the whole book. But their
• 25:17
  their story of how they met is exactly
• 25:20
  like those stories and when Harry met Sally
• 25:22
  where the old couples were talking about how
• 25:24
  it was Love at first sight. Literally, that's
• 25:26
  how it broke down. And I'm like, I'm
• 25:28
  gonna write this out, like a screen play,
• 25:30
  So that everyone can hear them in their
• 25:33
  voices, the way they... Yeah. So I love
• 25:36
  worth telling their sweet story of falling in
• 25:38
  love a while plant collecting.
• 25:40
  I love it. Yeah. That's great.
• 25:44
  The... I was going to show my pages
• 25:46
  from the readers copy, but they're in black
• 25:48
  and white. So I think I'm ask you
• 25:50
  to show us some of your,
• 25:51
  stack of paintings Yeah or illustrations rather. Well,
• 25:55
  you said
• 25:56
  paper medium, but what did you use
• 25:59
  pencil and watercolor, how did you illustrate these?
• 26:02
  I decided to after much
• 26:04
  experimentation. I decided to use watercolor
• 26:08
  and water soluble colored pencils.
• 26:11
  Okay. And and the reason is it's a
• 26:13
  for anyone out there who's an artist, you
• 26:15
  probably know 2 things that are very challenging
• 26:17
  to draw are people and trees.
• 26:20
  You'll you'll always hear artists talking about how
• 26:23
  they're intimidated by people, especially if you have
• 26:25
  to get their likeness
• 26:26
  accurately. It can't be... Out human being for
• 26:29
  sure. But trees are also weirdly tricky because
• 26:32
  they're generally all 1 color, but you have
• 26:34
  to get the shading and make it seats.
• 26:36
  And and there are artists who kind of
• 26:38
  avoid trees for that reason. And I thought
• 26:40
  that that the watercolor
• 26:42
  and these colored pencils would give up, kind
• 26:44
  of a softness and at humanity
• 26:46
  to the people, because I didn't want them
• 26:47
  to look like car signatures or cartoons,
• 26:50
  but also, they very much look can draw
• 26:52
  Right? Like, this is something that I want
• 26:55
  people to flip through this booking and sort
• 26:56
  of go, like, oh, I can draw that.
• 26:59
  Like, in sort of in some theoretical way.
• 27:01
  Like, this is they're accessible. They're not, like,
• 27:04
  they're accessible.
• 27:07
  Precise botanical illustrations even. Right? Exactly. There they
• 27:10
  should look like I was sitting there in
• 27:12
  my sketchbook even though, I was working from
• 27:14
  photos a lot because people are all over
• 27:16
  the world and it was Covid. So, you
• 27:18
  know, But I'm just... I'll I'll show the...
• 27:20
  I'll show just the the book,
• 27:23
  you can see that for every 1 of
• 27:25
  these I did at.
• 27:27
  Illustration of the person and then,
• 27:29
  an illustration of their garden.
• 27:32
  So I had that in every case that
• 27:34
  was sort of my That's a hunch... That's
• 27:36
  a hundred illustrations right there, and then use
• 27:39
  all this bonus
• 27:40
  content, which I really appreciated.
• 27:43
  Where... And I'm sure that, like, you've got
• 27:45
  this 1 called this as a society for
• 27:47
  every tree,
• 27:48
  and you have a little drawing of a
• 27:50
  European box wood and Top,
• 27:52
  for that society and a Emilia for that
• 27:55
  society. So altogether, you had hundreds of illustrations
• 27:58
  in this book. There were there were over
• 28:00
  300
• 28:01
  Jpeg, but I had to upload for this.
• 28:04
  So... That's amazing. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
• 28:08
  Yeah. But I feel like the
• 28:10
  the
• 28:12
  how do you make a tree look real?
• 28:13
  You're not trying to do a scientific drawing.
• 28:15
  You're trying to Right. Capture a moment in
• 28:17
  time and the person who loves that tree.
• 28:20
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the challenge. So
• 28:22
  do you wanna see some of my just...
• 28:23
  You posted them on your social media a
• 28:25
  couple, like, maybe last week, and I was
• 28:26
  like, I wanted to show that on our
• 28:28
  interview. Yeah. Sure. I'm just gonna... A mother
• 28:30
  load of drawings.
• 28:32
  I know. This is only a small portion.
• 28:34
  I just reached in and grabbed the top
• 28:36
  of the stack, but I'll just show you
• 28:38
  that it's sometimes they were just sort of
• 28:40
  abstract
• 28:42
  paintings of, like, looking up at trees. That's
• 28:45
  wonderful. For like section openers. And the reason
• 28:48
  I decided to be looking up at trees
• 28:50
  is that that's how we humans see them.
• 28:53
  You know I wanna
• 28:54
  I wanted to imply a human viewer with
• 28:57
  and the scale of,
• 28:59
  we're so minis minuscule compared to the grand
• 29:01
  Right.
• 29:02
  Like... So this is Vivian kaye who lives
• 29:05
  in San Jose. And and she and I
• 29:08
  just hit it off so much. So she
• 29:10
  grows per simmons.
• 29:11
  In her garden. And so for her, rather
• 29:13
  than do another tree I just did the
• 29:15
  pre simmons because she's sort of all about
• 29:17
  the.
• 29:18
  Those are few. For her, this is really
• 29:21
  it's it's become something that's really about connecting
• 29:23
  with her Korean
• 29:25
  family,
• 29:26
  her her her auntie and grandma and mom
• 29:30
  and all of that generation. She mails them
• 29:33
  boxes of
• 29:34
  cement, which is such a part of their
• 29:37
  history and their culture and their heritage and
• 29:39
  such a treat in Korean culture. And she's
• 29:41
  like, you know, this is kinda how I
• 29:43
  can stay connected with them. Like, it's super
• 29:44
  hard with your you know, with your grandparents
• 29:47
  and with your elders,
• 29:49
  especially a family of of immigrants, Like, it
• 29:51
  can be sort of tough through the generations.
• 29:52
  Yeah. But we we understand this about each
• 29:55
  other. The language of food. I love it.
• 29:57
  This is how we connect. Yeah. That's beautiful.
• 30:01
  That's really vivid too. Like, not just a
• 30:03
  green book. There's color coming out of blooms
• 30:06
  and fruit and obviously place. So...
• 30:09
  Right. It's But you haven't talked about before
• 30:12
  about how many colors of green you have
• 30:14
  in your on on your painters ballot. Right?
• 30:16
  That's right. That's right. Yeah. I want. That
• 30:18
  that was actually an issue. Like I really
• 30:20
  was looking for, you know, how do I
• 30:22
  inject color was really a thing. So for
• 30:25
  instance,
• 30:26
  1 of my... Every time I show you
• 30:27
  1 of these, I'm gonna say, like, this
• 30:29
  was really my favorite person. And and I
• 30:31
  I really mean it. It's know this is
• 30:33
  very sincere.
• 30:36
  But,
• 30:37
  doctor Ali Hu
• 30:39
  in, in Ethiopia,
• 30:42
  has been working, and and this is an
• 30:44
  example of really trying to say what else
• 30:46
  can a collection be? Because I wanted someone
• 30:48
  that was somewhere in Africa? Like, how do
• 30:51
  I pull that off?
• 30:52
  And, what he's doing is he's working on
• 30:56
  the
• 30:58
  church for of ethiopia.
• 31:00
  So in Ethiopia,
• 31:02
  almost all the trees are gone
• 31:04
  because of livestock.
• 31:07
  So the the landscape tape was entirely denoted
• 31:11
  except that the the churches
• 31:13
  have a little wall around them, and there's
• 31:15
  this tradition in the ethiopian church that when
• 31:18
  you walk in you're entering the garden of
• 31:20
  Eden. So there's these stone walls that basically
• 31:23
  keep the livestock out, so that trees can
• 31:25
  grow,
• 31:26
  And these are the only trees left.
• 31:29
  And so he realized if we're gonna have
• 31:31
  any trees at all in Ethiopia, I have
• 31:33
  to work with the,
• 31:35
  the pastors, the the priests,
• 31:38
  and
• 31:39
  they have to come up with the solution.
• 31:41
  So they did the... They came up with
• 31:43
  these ideas about we're gonna spans, the... We're
• 31:47
  we're gonna have a little wall around the
• 31:49
  edge,
• 31:50
  and we're gonna build it out of stone
• 31:51
  that we're gonna pull out of the farmers
• 31:53
  fields, which they will appreciate,
• 31:55
  and we're gonna make it not about excluding
• 31:58
  people, but we're gonna make it about, you
• 32:00
  know, inviting people in and expanding this circle.
• 32:04
  And so for this 1, I drew just
• 32:07
  looking down at the landscape from above. Wow.
• 32:10
  Like, a, like, a drone photo of the
• 32:12
  top of the circle, that is so beautiful.
• 32:15
  And just the symbolism of what that... How
• 32:17
  that's inviting people in.
• 32:19
  Right. So the others like this care about,
• 32:22
  let's let's save these trays. Right. And the
• 32:24
  fact that he's done, off, off the top
• 32:27
  of my head, I'm forgetting, but, you know,
• 32:29
  It's a small number of of, he's... He
• 32:31
  works for a non nonprofit. He's a bot,
• 32:33
  and he works for a nonprofit, and there's
• 32:34
  sort of a small number of churches that
• 32:36
  he's done so far because it's sort of
• 32:37
  1 at a time.
• 32:38
  And I asked him how many they are
• 32:40
  and he said 30000
• 32:43
  In the country of Ethiopia. Yeah. Wow. And
• 32:46
  he's done, you know,
• 32:48
  hundreds.
• 32:48
  Wow. But he's doing moving. Yeah. Right? That
• 32:51
  does not put him off. That does not
• 32:53
  tell him this is impossible. He's is like,
• 32:55
  he was like this was all 1 big
• 32:57
  forest before, and it can be 1 big
• 32:58
  forest again. And
• 33:00
  I love that story. You have a few
• 33:03
  quasi celebrities.
• 33:05
  In the book, I guess 1 can't write
• 33:08
  about trees without finding a few rockstar collectors
• 33:11
  or
• 33:12
  quirky collectors who are known
• 33:14
  Do you wanna share any of those stories?
• 33:17
  Yeah. You know, I...
• 33:20
  So well, let me tell you about 1
• 33:21
  that got away first of all. I'll tell
• 33:23
  you 1 of my biggest regrets, and I
• 33:25
  hope that by talking about this, maybe I'm
• 33:27
  gonna find another collector who does this. But,
• 33:30
  I'll There are a few tree collectors out
• 33:33
  there who are interested in growing
• 33:35
  wood
• 33:36
  and tone wood is trees that are used
• 33:38
  to make musical instruments.
• 33:40
  Oh, wow. Yes. Oh, sorry.
• 33:43
  Right.
• 33:44
  And because the wood has to have a
• 33:45
  very particular quality to have the resonance that
• 33:48
  you need.
• 33:49
  And, you might have... I don't know if
• 33:51
  you, if you got this far, but,
• 33:54
  Diane,
• 33:56
  Diane Allen Jones,
• 33:57
  is in New Orleans, and she's a landscape.
• 34:00
  I'm sorry. Diane Jones Allen is in New
• 34:02
  Orleans, and she's a landscape architect.
• 34:04
  And she once did a project in New
• 34:06
  Orleans at Lily Armstrong Plaza where she got
• 34:09
  to put in
• 34:11
  african trees that were used to make musical
• 34:14
  instruments in that plaza. Oh wow. But she
• 34:16
  also has her own personal tree collection that
• 34:18
  I was talking about So anyway, among celebrity
• 34:20
  tree collectors, I did have a musician
• 34:24
  who is into tone wood. So but they
• 34:26
  dropped out of the process. They were, you
• 34:28
  know, too busy couldn't do it whatever. So
• 34:31
  I was So putting the word out to
• 34:33
  the tone with collectors.
• 34:35
  Get in touch for the book number 2.
• 34:38
  Right. But
• 34:39
  but I was so delighted to find out
• 34:41
  about Edward Everett Horton.
• 34:43
  Okay. So yes. So so the... And and
• 34:46
  also, there are not many people in this
• 34:47
  book who are who are not alive. Like,
• 34:50
  I really wanted this to be a book
• 34:51
  of living people. Not... People who lived 200
• 34:53
  years ago. But, there are a few people
• 34:55
  who are no longer with us who are
• 34:57
  in there, and that includes him. And so
• 34:59
  he was an actor who acted with Fred
• 35:01
  air, people He was in the gay divorce.
• 35:03
  I mean, if you're into the golden age
• 35:05
  of Hollywood Cinema, you know who Edward Everett
• 35:07
  Horton was.
• 35:09
  And, so he lived down in Southern California,
• 35:12
  and he was pretty successful for his day,
• 35:14
  pretty well known, smaller parts, but character actor.
• 35:17
  And he
• 35:18
  was a tree collector.
• 35:20
  And he was very funny in the press.
• 35:22
  So he would do these interviews
• 35:24
  and talk about
• 35:26
  you know, talk about his obsession with trees,
• 35:28
  and there's a story about him at 1
• 35:30
  point that he was late showing up to
• 35:32
  the studio for a film,
• 35:35
  and he said it's because he was up
• 35:36
  all night with a sick tree.
• 35:39
  You must have just felt like you hit
• 35:41
  gold when you find his interview. Feel like
• 35:43
  I did gold.
• 35:44
  Yes. And it's a thing. I I knew
• 35:46
  it.
• 35:47
  Right. Right. So so funny and interesting and
• 35:51
  delightful, and he does have archives. Again, like,
• 35:54
  it was hard to travel to all this
• 35:55
  stuff, but I found someone in Wyoming who
• 35:57
  could go into his archives funny for me
• 35:59
  at the university there and dig through him
• 36:02
  to see, you know, what can find out
• 36:04
  about his connection with with trees. Oh my
• 36:07
  gosh. I love that story.
• 36:09
  That is such a great story. And, you
• 36:11
  know, there's... The... This the 3... The way
• 36:13
  you have that the book organized is so
• 36:15
  interesting because you see the portrait
• 36:18
  and you read the person's story, and then
• 36:20
  you see maybe a tree from their garden,
• 36:22
  and
• 36:24
  it that you could pick this up and
• 36:26
  just, you know, read... As almost like a
• 36:27
  daily meditation, You can almost get through the
• 36:29
  whole year,
• 36:30
  reading 1 tree story
• 36:33
  a week
• 36:34
  right. Maybe you wanna read faster. I mean,
• 36:36
  I I have just like... I like the
• 36:37
  idea that there's
• 36:39
  a lot of
• 36:40
  education in this. A lot of things I
• 36:42
  did not know, like,
• 36:44
  collective nouns for trays,
• 36:47
  what you call a collection of birch,
• 36:50
  a
• 36:51
  Bet you lead him. Is that what how
• 36:53
  you saying? Right? Yeah. Or pane for for
• 36:56
  pine trees or que Ke for oak... Trees.
• 36:59
  I know. I love these words.
• 37:02
  I know you do. And I think that's
• 37:03
  so fabulous that you have that. Okay. What
• 37:06
  is this 1? Joey Santo
• 37:08
  tips, for unauthorized forestry.
• 37:11
  Okay. There's gotta be a story here. He's
• 37:13
  1 of my fit. Well, here Go again.
• 37:15
  He's 1 of my favorite people on the
• 37:16
  book.
• 37:17
  Go to his Youtube channel, which is called,
• 37:21
  Crying pays, but Doesn't.
• 37:23
  Okay. It's great. Yes. And and he works
• 37:27
  under and and and and he'll be Tony
• 37:29
  Santo. So he's sort of... He's created a
• 37:31
  little bit of a character for himself. Well,
• 37:33
  he's from Chicago. So he... But he... So...
• 37:35
  But he's got this kind of,
• 37:38
  he's got this sort of Chicago Gangster
• 37:40
  persona when he's talking about now. K. But
• 37:44
  his Youtube channel is unbelievable, So he is
• 37:46
  someone that I found through Youtube, basically. And
• 37:48
  he really knows his stuff. But 1 of
• 37:50
  the things he did several years ago was
• 37:53
  he was living in Oakland,
• 37:55
  and there was a,
• 37:57
  Macarthur Parkway in Oakland was... Meant to be
• 38:00
  landscape
• 38:01
  with trees down this very wide median strip,
• 38:04
  but they did a terrible job, the city
• 38:06
  and the trees died,
• 38:07
  And so he just took it over and
• 38:09
  started planting trees. So it's like Gorilla gardening
• 38:13
  only with trees. Yeah. Yeah. And
• 38:16
  and he has. So yeah it is crazy.
• 38:18
  And they're still there. Like, again, talking about
• 38:21
  a legacy, you know, you really realize when
• 38:23
  you plan a tree
• 38:24
  you are leaving a legacy. I mean, if
• 38:26
  the tree survives, it almost certainly will will
• 38:28
  out live you. So, yeah, he has all
• 38:30
  these suggestions for how to do it. If
• 38:33
  you're gonna... Sneak a tree into
• 38:36
  a public space where you're not invited to
• 38:38
  do so. Like, he suggests make sure the
• 38:40
  tree is kind of big enough,
• 38:42
  that when the maintenance crews come by, it'll
• 38:45
  look like it's always been there. If it's
• 38:47
  too small, they might know that you're sampling.
• 38:50
  Yeah. I love it. Right. Oh my gosh.
• 38:52
  Return often to the scene of the crime
• 38:54
  to pull weeds. 1 of his 1 his
• 38:57
  rules.
• 38:58
  Right. Oh my gosh. I love it.
• 39:01
  Their
• 39:02
  their the idea of people
• 39:07
  cherish or honoring their heritage.
• 39:09
  Mh through their trees is definitely
• 39:12
  a big part of this book because, you,
• 39:14
  as you said, you're you're
• 39:15
  coax out their stories. But the 1 that
• 39:17
  I was really interested in I mean, we
• 39:19
  could talk on talk about is the
• 39:22
  Joe Hamilton, the rightful air?
• 39:24
  Yes. Is that...
• 39:27
  That's a really special 1.
• 39:29
  Joe Joe Hamilton blew me away. He...
• 39:33
  And I... And I'll say, of of of
• 39:34
  all the interviews I did, you know, Every
• 39:36
  recorded them as we do when we do
• 39:38
  interviews on on Zoom or whatever. And that
• 39:40
  was the 1... Like, I had to play
• 39:42
  it over again for my husband that night.
• 39:45
  For him to understand how powerful this story
• 39:48
  was. So this... The Joe's story really gets
• 39:51
  most closely at the question of who has
• 39:53
  land and why?
• 39:56
  In the south,
• 39:57
  there's there's this issue and it's called Heirs
• 40:00
  property. And so what it is is it's
• 40:02
  black families who, have land
• 40:05
  that maybe came into their possession immediately following
• 40:08
  the civil war.
• 40:10
  I'm not really an expert on exactly
• 40:13
  how things washed out in the immediate aftermath
• 40:16
  of the civil war, but I had a
• 40:17
  general impression
• 40:19
  that some farms got split up. And in
• 40:22
  some cases,
• 40:23
  people who had worked on the farms as
• 40:27
  enslaved people
• 40:29
  ended up getting land as things were sort
• 40:32
  of dis band. Yeah. That may not be
• 40:34
  the most air night way of explaining it,
• 40:36
  but it happened. Yeah. Oh so that... So
• 40:39
  that land or land that's bought acquired through
• 40:41
  other means. Whatever it is,
• 40:43
  there are... There's a real issue with black
• 40:45
  families not having clear title to their land
• 40:48
  or Right. As they weren't in the system
• 40:51
  that paperwork wasn't right. And I mean, I'm
• 40:53
  talking... I'm, you know, I'm talking really going
• 40:55
  back. We're talking manual record keeping anyway. Right?
• 40:58
  And like they're digitized.
• 41:00
  Yeah. As you can imagine an unbelievable amount
• 41:03
  of
• 41:04
  discrimination and outright. Fraud that happened for families.
• 41:07
  So the reason it's called Heirs property is
• 41:10
  that the county tax assessor
• 41:13
  may not be super clear on who has
• 41:15
  title to the land, but they want their
• 41:17
  property taxes.
• 41:19
  So They know who they're gonna... They're gonna
• 41:21
  hit up for that that... Right. And it
• 41:23
  basically says it's a that property tax bill
• 41:25
  is sent care of heirs of this property.
• 41:28
  Right? And oh, okay. It's like, whoever you
• 41:31
  people are, you better send us some money.
• 41:32
  So right. So the process of clearing title
• 41:36
  improving that you own the land you have
• 41:38
  is a really different difficult 1, and there's
• 41:39
  these organizations that help. So, like, in South
• 41:42
  Carolina, it's the... They're called, I think the
• 41:44
  center for Air property, and they just do
• 41:46
  South Carolina, but there's other ones in other
• 41:48
  stick because every state's is gonna be a
• 41:49
  little different. And so in Joe's case,
• 41:52
  his,
• 41:54
  I think great great
• 41:55
  maybe triple great
• 41:57
  grandfather,
• 41:59
  got hold of 800
• 42:00
  acres
• 42:01
  coming out of the civil war and being
• 42:04
  free man.
• 42:05
  And so Joe's family,
• 42:08
  Joe had inherited
• 42:10
  04:40... It was down to I think, 40
• 42:12
  acres,
• 42:13
  So he's trying to figure out
• 42:16
  how to get title to the acreage he
• 42:18
  does own because it's unclear, but also what
• 42:21
  happened?
• 42:21
  What happened to the rest of that land.
• 42:23
  Right. And so he's... He went through this
• 42:25
  incredible process searching the deeds and looking through
• 42:29
  what whatever you can find newspaper records property
• 42:31
  maps, all the things and what he sees
• 42:34
  is this history of,
• 42:37
  bad decisions, you know, he was sort of
• 42:39
  like Look, this guy, my great grandfather, like,
• 42:42
  he wouldn't have had a lot of business
• 42:44
  smarts,
• 42:45
  and and he would've have been taken advantage
• 42:47
  of, and there were days when you you
• 42:49
  know, you go to the bank and you
• 42:50
  take out a loan, that's gonna be paid
• 42:52
  back when the crop comes in, but then
• 42:54
  the crop fails and you lose land to
• 42:56
  the bank.
• 42:57
  Or... Right. Just you make other bad business
• 42:59
  deals outright theft,
• 43:02
  of, you know,
• 43:03
  reasons. Outright theft and fraud all kinds of
• 43:06
  reasons. So at at the end of the
• 43:07
  day, he couldn't get back any near the
• 43:09
  acreage that was lost, but he could lock
• 43:11
  down what he had.
• 43:13
  And this land... This particular land in South
• 43:15
  Carolina
• 43:16
  isn't really... You're not gonna build condos on
• 43:18
  it. Yeah. It's it's timber land. There's there's
• 43:22
  they grow a lob lol pines in South
• 43:24
  Carolina, they're used for telephone poles and and
• 43:27
  furniture and other things.
• 43:29
  So the best highest and best use of
• 43:32
  the land. The most the most economical use
• 43:34
  of the land is sustainable, long term timber.
• 43:38
  And that's kinda what the Air property program
• 43:41
  is about. It's, like, we'll teach you how
• 43:42
  to plant for future generations. So it's nice
• 43:46
  because it's about generational wealth. Right? And that's
• 43:49
  the thing that
• 43:50
  a struggle for black families, particularly in the
• 43:52
  south. It's that lack of...
• 43:54
  The generational wealth that comes with owning land
• 43:57
  and having a right base like that.
• 44:00
  So that's what he's done is he's put
• 44:02
  it into long term timber production that will
• 44:04
  happen long after he's gone. So, like, as
• 44:06
  a tree collector, yeah. I mean, I sort
• 44:08
  had to explain to him. I'm sort of,
• 44:10
  like, look, put Your collect quote unquote, air
• 44:13
  quotes, collection of trees is 1 tree planted
• 44:16
  over and over again, and it's planned for
• 44:18
  a different purpose. It's not planted to g
• 44:20
  the ego of someone who wants to have
• 44:23
  every species of oak in the world because
• 44:25
  it's so cool.
• 44:26
  It's planted to create generational wealth. Yeah. It's
• 44:28
  your it's your inheritance. It's your legacy. It's
• 44:31
  a legacy
• 44:32
  that can be passed on directly from coming
• 44:34
  right out of the civil war.
• 44:36
  So
• 44:37
  I hope his story. Yeah. I hope his
• 44:39
  story empowers
• 44:41
  other people to kind of get there.
• 44:44
  Ownership tied up and, you know, locked down
• 44:47
  and really
• 44:49
  you know,
• 44:50
  correct that
• 44:51
  the problems of bad record keeping. And as
• 44:55
  you said,
• 44:56
  fraud and
• 44:57
  you know,
• 44:58
  outright discrimination. So That's a great story. Like,
• 45:02
  that's sort of why I love the way
• 45:04
  your mind works is that you're not
• 45:07
  you're not linear. You're very certain killer and
• 45:10
  how you
• 45:11
  explore a topic, and that's
• 45:13
  why this book is so rich with,
• 45:15
  amazing amazing stories. And, yeah, the illustrations make
• 45:18
  it killer so special, Amy.
• 45:22
  Your art really has become a huge part
• 45:25
  of your, life as a writer now. I
• 45:27
  mean, that's just
• 45:30
  if anyone has not discovered Amy subs stack,
• 45:33
  newsletter. It's... How often do you publish that
• 45:35
  once a week? I try to do once
• 45:37
  a week. Yeah. Yeah. And there's lots of
• 45:40
  amazing illustrations specifically to
• 45:43
  go with a story. Like,
• 45:46
  And, I'll put the link in our show
• 45:48
  notes for people to subscribe to the free
• 45:49
  version or you can, pay get a paid
• 45:52
  edition. Which has, I think more content or
• 45:54
  something like... It's our lessons. Yeah. Oh, our.
• 45:57
  The paid lesson is straight up our tutorials.
• 45:59
  Here's how to here's how to do this.
• 46:00
  Here's how to do that,
• 46:02
  So that's more for the the people who
• 46:04
  follow me for art. You know? I mean,
• 46:06
  it's it's it's 1 of those things that
• 46:07
  can happen. Like, people know you for a
• 46:09
  bunch of different reasons. Right?
• 46:10
  We like your art, other people like you
• 46:12
  for your writing, and I like you for
• 46:13
  both. Oh, thanks.
• 46:15
  So how are you gonna, launch this... The
• 46:17
  book. The books out in a few weeks.
• 46:19
  No
• 46:20
  will you be, able to do some book
• 46:22
  signings and book events and, how can people
• 46:24
  find out what where you're going to be
• 46:26
  when?
• 46:26
  Yes. So I'm going on the road,
• 46:29
  I've got a a little tour plan for
• 46:31
  mid July going into August. So if you
• 46:33
  go to my website, which is just amy
• 46:36
  stewart dot com,
• 46:37
  there'll be a list of events there, and
• 46:39
  please come. It's so it's so important and
• 46:42
  so helpful when people turn up, and and
• 46:45
  bring their tree stories to share with you...
• 46:48
  Bring you... You know what? It's so amazing.
• 46:50
  I did AII
• 46:51
  did a talk at a little what writer's
• 46:53
  conference here in Oregon a couple months ago.
• 46:56
  So way before the book is gonna come
• 46:57
  out. But I had a copy, which I
• 46:59
  just, you know, waved in front of the
• 47:01
  audience just to say, hey, this is coming
• 47:03
  People had stories about tree collections. Like this
• 47:06
  was not an audience that was expecting to
• 47:08
  talk about trees. That's not why they were
• 47:10
  there. So I know. People are totally gonna
• 47:12
  have
• 47:13
  stories, which well, hearing... Maybe it's a fun
• 47:16
  use of the of the pun coming out
• 47:18
  of the wood work yeah with stories. Right.
• 47:21
  Well, that's great.
• 47:23
  What is the actual pub publication date? It's
• 47:25
  July sixteenth.
• 47:27
  Okay. Pre orders encouraged,
• 47:29
  please.
• 47:30
  There... It's available now, and you can get
• 47:32
  a signed copy through Amy site, which I
• 47:34
  believe is yes,
• 47:36
  on your website as well.
• 47:37
  Yeah. I partnered up with a bookstore here
• 47:39
  in town, Broadway books, so they're taking all
• 47:41
  the orders, and then I'll go over there
• 47:43
  and sign copies for everybody when on in.
• 47:45
  I love it. What is the tree that
• 47:47
  you visit the most on your neighborhood walks
• 47:49
  in in Portland?
• 47:51
  Because I know you've scour them all? And
• 47:53
  painted them all. Right. Right. Well, there are
• 47:56
  a couple of,
• 47:58
  enormous doug fir that I walk past, you
• 48:01
  know, the... The footage in my little video
• 48:03
  of me and the forest. It's... That's kind
• 48:05
  of my daily walk. That's sort of what
• 48:06
  it looks like for part of it. I
• 48:08
  can cut into the to the woods there.
• 48:10
  So, I think everybody loves a massive old
• 48:13
  tree. Right? And there there are a couple
• 48:15
  of really fantastic ones.
• 48:17
  But I I live in a very tree
• 48:18
  line neighborhood
• 48:20
  here in Portland, and it is something that
• 48:23
  definitely affected the the book and how I
• 48:25
  think about. How I thought about the book,
• 48:27
  but also how I thought about the trees
• 48:29
  is that if you're a tree collector,
• 48:31
  you sort of have this ac ac,
• 48:34
  nature with trees. You're like, oh, I like
• 48:35
  that 1. I'll take that, please. And, you
• 48:38
  know, you can't have them because they're growing
• 48:39
  in the sidewalk or they're growing in a
• 48:41
  pot pod. But you're visiting them. Their friends.
• 48:44
  Yeah. And you sort of start to have
• 48:46
  opinions about them and pass judgment on this
• 48:49
  1 is better than that 1. And I
• 48:51
  think that's another interesting thing actually because a
• 48:53
  lot of us have this generalized
• 48:55
  love of tree... Like, trees are good. We
• 48:57
  love trees.
• 48:58
  But trade collectors really walk around going, oh,
• 49:00
  no, no. No. It's...
• 49:02
  That's the best 1 of the bunch, and
• 49:05
  it's right there. It's kind of like what's
• 49:07
  happening with bird bird watching, I think that
• 49:09
  that there's just... We have this have had
• 49:11
  this...
• 49:12
  You know, bird book blindness. And we also
• 49:15
  have had tree blindness where we don't really
• 49:17
  know the species and the and the... Even
• 49:19
  the families. And now
• 49:22
  as we all wanna spend more time in
• 49:24
  nature and maybe appreciate what our environmental in,
• 49:27
  you know, world has for us. Mh We
• 49:29
  are looking more closely. And I think the
• 49:31
  tree collectors tales of arbor burial
• 49:34
  obsession is going to kinda be a guide
• 49:36
  book. To get us through some of those,
• 49:40
  just
• 49:41
  whoever has taken a plant Id class,
• 49:44
  1 quarter in a community college like, I
• 49:46
  have, that's not enough. I need more help.
• 49:49
  Yes. For sure.
• 49:51
  I love it. Amy, anything else you wanna
• 49:53
  mention before we wrap up?
• 49:56
  No. Just,
• 49:58
  I think the thing that I would say
• 49:59
  to your audience into the... To the flower
• 50:03
  community is, in addition to what I already
• 50:05
  said about kind of the way that,
• 50:08
  what you do really
• 50:10
  allows you to have a life
• 50:12
  that is connected
• 50:14
  to other people through
• 50:16
  plants. Right.
• 50:17
  But also, the the the thing I got
• 50:20
  from a lot of these collectors was this
• 50:22
  endless sense of learning and curiosity.
• 50:24
  You know, it's sort of boundless,
• 50:27
  and and and I think for a lot
• 50:29
  of flower farmers, there's this sense of seeking
• 50:31
  in this sense of, maybe there's something else
• 50:34
  I can do. Maybe there's something else I
• 50:35
  can find. And and I had a... 1
• 50:37
  of the collectors in the books said, you
• 50:39
  know, I know
• 50:41
  I know 90 year old else tree collectors.
• 50:43
  And honestly, I think that's I think that's
• 50:45
  why they're 90. Like, I think that's why
• 50:48
  why why they're still going. And and so
• 50:52
  I I think anytime you're working with plants
• 50:53
  and I think this is very true in
• 50:55
  the in the floral world is it's the
• 50:57
  key to longevity and happiness
• 50:59
  to stay curious and and keep innovating and
• 51:02
  keep making discoveries and there's just endless opportunities
• 51:05
  for that. In the floral world as well
• 51:06
  as the tree world.
• 51:08
  I love it. I love it. Well, next
• 51:09
  time I see you when person, maybe we'll
• 51:11
  go for a tree walk. And you can
• 51:13
  show me what you know. And I I
• 51:15
  think there are so many crossover and so
• 51:17
  much relevance
• 51:18
  to just understanding the ecosystem that we are
• 51:21
  all in. And
• 51:23
  what our responsibility is to
• 51:26
  to honor that and not
• 51:29
  not, I don't just don't take it for
• 51:31
  granted because it's very special, and it's it
• 51:33
  can go go away. So it's it's worth
• 51:35
  honoring and and educating ourselves, so we can
• 51:39
  live a more well informed tree life. I
• 51:42
  don't know what's the word
• 51:44
  for a tree fan.
• 51:46
  Is there 10I
• 51:47
  don't know. Alright. I'm gonna cut that out.
• 51:50
  Never mind. Maybe it would be, like, no.
• 51:51
  Let's try to figure it out. Maybe do
• 51:53
  would be like Den file.
• 51:55
  Okay.
• 51:56
  Check it out. I just made that out.
• 51:58
  Alright.
• 51:59
  Amy, thank you so much. This has been
• 52:01
  so delightful. All. I've enjoyed it so much.
• 52:04
  Congratulations.
• 52:05
  Thanks.
• 52:24
  Thanks so much for joining me today. Please
• 52:25
  visit s flowers podcast dot com for episode
• 52:28
  671
• 52:30
  to watch the replay video of my conversation
• 52:32
  with Amy, you'll also see her short book
• 52:35
  trailer and some of her the original paintings
• 52:37
  that fill the pages of the tree collectors.
• 52:40
  I'll also share links to Amy's upcoming book
• 52:42
  tours. She might be coming to a town
• 52:44
  near you, as well as the link to
• 52:46
  subscribe to her must read newsletter. It's good
• 52:49
  to be here. A behind the scenes look
• 52:51
  at the creative process, her book and podcast
• 52:54
  recommendations, an occasional cocktail recipe, a work of
• 52:57
  art, an illustrated story, and lots of rye
• 52:59
  humor. Her newsletter makes me laugh out loud
• 53:01
  and how often does that happen in our
• 53:03
  everyday lives?
• 53:05
  Our next sponsor thank you goes to historic
• 53:07
  cold creators of the revolutionary cool bot, a
• 53:10
  popular solution for flower farmers, studio flo and
• 53:14
  farmer Flo,
• 53:15
  Save thousands when you build your own walking
• 53:17
  cooler with the Cool system and an air
• 53:20
  conditioner. If you don't have time to build
• 53:21
  your own, they also have turnkey units avail.
• 53:25
  Learn more at store at cold dot com.
• 53:28
  Summer is in full swing, and I just
• 53:30
  wanna take a moment to celebrate the exciting
• 53:32
  news that appeared in last week's, New York
• 53:35
  Times,
• 53:36
  writer Amanda Mc piece, your wedding flowers could
• 53:39
  be in your backyard, both blew up the
• 53:42
  web with excitement from our slow flowers community.
• 53:45
  She wrote, ms p attributes the rising interest
• 53:48
  in local flo, partly to social media blew
• 53:50
  where couples and flo have shared photos of
• 53:53
  romantic bo,
• 53:54
  featuring non conventional flowers.
• 53:56
  The story also quoted at talented lineup of
• 53:59
  our slow flower society members, including Jessica Stewart
• 54:02
  of Bra and Blossom,
• 54:04
  Lenny Larkin,
• 54:05
  of B side Farm, Heather Henson of Bore
• 54:08
  Blooms and Becky Fe of prairie girl flowers.
• 54:11
  And the response from our social media community
• 54:14
  underscores how much support there is for the
• 54:16
  topic of local, seasonal, and sustainably grown flowers,
• 54:20
  especially for weddings.
• 54:22
  As of July fourth, our post of this
• 54:24
  story reached 21500.0
• 54:27
  accounts. That's 21500
• 54:29
  accounts.
• 54:30
  Including 87 percent non followers,
• 54:33
  we directly engaged with 1300.0
• 54:36
  accounts, the post shared was shared a hundred
• 54:38
  and 70 times and generated 40 comments.
• 54:41
  For people who think local flowers are a
• 54:43
  french topic this level of engagement does not
• 54:46
  lie.
• 54:47
  Thank you, Amanda for reaching out to chat,
• 54:49
  this story represents 1 great reason to join
• 54:52
  slow flower society. When the press calls, we
• 54:54
  love to highlight our members.
• 54:56
  Ps. If you miss the story, check out
• 54:59
  our show notes for the link in today's
• 55:01
  episode.
• 55:03
  Our next sponsor thank you goes to Red
• 55:05
  Twig Farms. Based in new Albany, Ohio, Red
• 55:08
  farms is a family owned farm,
• 55:11
  specializing in P, Da, tulip and branches,
• 55:15
  a popped in pe bo okay by mail
• 55:16
  program and their spread the hope campaign where
• 55:19
  customers can purchase 10 tulip stems for essential
• 55:22
  workers and others in their community. B Learn
• 55:25
  more at red twig farms dot com.
• 55:28
  I'm so glad you joined us today. The
• 55:30
  sunflower podcast is a member supported endeavor.
• 55:33
  Downloaded more than 1000000 times by listeners like
• 55:36
  you. Thank you for listening, commenting and sharing.
• 55:39
  It means so much.
• 55:41
  As our movement gains more supporters and more
• 55:43
  passionate participants who believe in the importance of
• 55:46
  our domestic cut flower industry.
• 55:48
  The momentum is contagious. I know you feel
• 55:50
  it too. If you're new to our weekly
• 55:52
  show or a long running podcast, check out
• 55:55
  all of our resources,
• 55:56
  at far society dot com.
• 55:59
  I'm deborah P, host and producer of the
• 56:02
  Flower show and the Far podcast.
• 56:04
  The s bars podcast is engineered and edited
• 56:07
  by Andrew B.
• 56:08
  The content and opinions expressed here are either
• 56:11
  mine alone or those of my guests. Alone
• 56:13
  independent of any podcast sponsor
• 56:15
  or other person company or organization.
• 56:18
  Next week, you're invited to join me the
• 56:20
  putting more slow flowers on the table, 1
• 56:23
  stem, 1 base at a time. Thanks so
• 56:26
  much for joining us today, and I'll see
• 56:27
  you next week, putting