It's a lazy Saturday afternoon over here and I am sitting outside in the sun leafing through some Lonely Planet guide books while drinking some awesome coffee from a recent care package (thanks Ben and Aly!). There are several cats sprawled around who occasionally try and sneak into my apartment. I have the door open to air things out a bit because of the beautiful weather today. Perhaps they want to get in because they can smell the aroma of stuffed mushrooms. Sean is over using my toaster oven to make another batch of them and I am pretty sure they will be devoured in less than five minutes.
The Gingko leaves from the tree next to my house are scattered around the patio like the spilled cornflakes currently on my counter and they remind me of leaf collecting with my dad. My dad has always been into science and nature in and out of the classroom and passed that interest onto his kids. I can remember learning about the difference between oaks and maples from a very young age and that passed naturally into seeking his help with the genus and species of each tree for a big leaf project in seventh grade. Dad took me around the neighborhood and town and pointed out the common names, the bark, flowers, fruit and leaves of the indigenous trees. The trees that I had walked and played around when I was little now had names like Paper Birch, Red Maple, Weeping Willow, Elm, Horse Chestnut, Hophornbean, Sassafrass, Hemlock and Beech. I learned how to use a dichotomous key and nights before the project was due were spent in the three-season room-turned-leaf-processing-station with Dad identifying leaves, typing out the Latin genus and species names and pasting everything into a professional-looking (for a 7th grader) binder.
There was a Gingko biloba tree that we found and had to be included in my "Extra Credit" section of leaves since it was not native to Michigan. I remember thinking that the Gingko tree's leaves looked so exotic compared with the ubiquitous Maple and Oak leaves that covered our lawn in the fall. I didn't ever think that I would be sitting on a porch drinking coffee next to a Gingko tree in its native country of China, but it's starting to look a little less exotic each day that I'm here.
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