Mother’s Day / Belated Arbor Day Giveaway

Happy Mother’s Day and belated Earth Month, and Earth Day, and Arbor Day! 

Read on to the end to learn how to enter my Arbor Day & Mother’s Day themed giveaway 🙂

This Arbor Day, I resolved to walk amongst trees at least once a week.

As a woodworker and nature lover, I spend a lot of time thinking about trees. Even still, I feel like I don’t pay enough attention to them. I’m currently rereading The Overstory by Richard Powers for the second time. (When was the last time you reread a book? I don’t know if I’ve actually done it before.) This time I’m reading it with my partner in an impromptu book club, each of us reading in our own time and coming together to talk about the book. If I were to recommend any one book, it’s this one. I like to describe it as a book about trees told through stories about people. 

“If you carved your name four feet high in the bark of a beech tree, how high would it be after half a century? [Patricia] loves the answer to that last one: Four feet. Still four feet. Always four feet, however high the beech tree grows.”

Richard Powers. Powers, Richard – The Overstory (W. W. Norton & Company) – libgen.li (Kindle Locations 1690-1692). Kindle Edition. 

I was 32 years old when I learned that new tree doesn’t continue to grow up at ground level — like garden eels swimming up out of a hole. They add rings and reach up from the top towards the light. It makes sense, thinking about all of the carved up beech trees I’ve seen over the years. Frick Park’s North Clayton Loop has several beeches covered in the evidence. Names and hearts carved into the trees years ago and stretched as the tree continues growing out.
A little tree anatomy vocab moment — the cambium layer is the growing layer in the trunk that annually adds new layers of wood.

After we finish The Overstory, one of the next books on the reading list is Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. I saw her speak at the Carnegie Lecture Hall recently and got a signed copy of her book (for you!). I get the feeling that her story is part of the inspiration for the character Patricia Westerford in The Overstory. 

Want to learn more about trees? You’re in luck!

For Arbor Day & Mother’s Day I’m giving away a signed copy of Finding the Mother Tree. 

There are four ways to enter and each one counts as a separate entry so go nuts!

Here on the blog:

1. Subscribe to the blog and comment on this blog post! Let us know something about trees! Whether it’s the last thing you learned about them, your favorite fact, or maybe something about a tree that is special to you. 

On Instagram
Follow @squirrelhill.shop then:

2. like the corresponding giveaway post, comment with some thoughts about trees and tag a friend who also likes trees, maps, and Pittsburgh things
3. Share the corresponding giveaway post in your stories and tag @squirrelhill.shop

In person:

4. Sign up for the mailing list at the 3ROC Mother’s Day Market this Saturday May 13th

I’ll announce the winner on Monday May 15th! Good luck and stay curious

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