May 2025 Leaflet ~ Elisabeth C. Miller Library, UW Botanic Gardens

Leaflet from the Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Volume 12, Issue 5 | May 2025

Small Paintings on Wood by Juliet Shen

a painting on wood depicting a landscape in blues

The Miller Library welcomes Juliet Shen with new paintings on wood. From the artist's statement:

To paint is to enter a safe space in my head where anxiety, anger and despair cannot take root. I study Nature because I find there a blueprint for living morally and enduring. I hope my paintings bring these values into the homes where they hang. I’ve tried to keep these small paintings spontaneous and colorful, working directly on wood panels with brushes and ink. While they have recognizable elements, they are also interpretive and abstracted.

The exhibit is open during library hours. Meet the artist in the library for an opening reception on Saturday, May 3, from 12-2 pm.

The Serviceberry:

Abundance & Reciprocity in the Natural World
By Robin Wall Kimmerer
Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy

The Serviceberry tree lives in a reciprocal relationship with its environment — it takes only what it needs to grow and gives its fruit abundantly. Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the plant, especially in its Native American context, as a model for the gift economy she argues we must create.

Kimmerer’s Serviceberry is a western species, Amelanchier alnifolia, which is good to eat, unlike a common eastern variety, A. arborea. Indigenous groups use it many ways, as an important element of their diet. Readers may recognize the plant by one of its many other names: Saskatoon, Juneberry, Shadbush, Shadblow, Sugarplum and Sarvis. Kimmerer uses these alternatives as she writes.

The serviceberry : abundance and reciprocity in the natural world / Robin Wall Kimmerer ; with illustrations by John Burgoyne.

After comparing the Northwest Native American potlatch, which involves much mutual gift giving, and other examples of Native American sharing to the economy she wants us to develop, Kimmerer admits that scaling the process up to a national or international practice has proven difficult or impossible. In the end she submits that even small scale “intentional communities of mutual self-reliance and reciprocity” provide benefits to the givers and receivers and to the natural world:

“The real human needs that such arrangements address are exactly what we long for yet cannot ever purchase: being valued for your own unique gifts, earning the regard of your neighbors for the quality of your character, not the quantity of your possessions; what you give, not what you have” (p. 92).

The Serviceberry makes a good case on its own. It is even more effective as a follow-up to Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, a fuller account of the interdependence of humans and nature. Read them both.

The Trendy Ten: readers' favorite books this year

a collage of the covers of the top ten books this year in terms of borrowing

Each spring we look at what readers are borrowing, gaining insight into how our collections are used. For this list, we looked only at the past 12 months. Books on Indigenous uses of plants, trees, land stewardship and restoration, vegetable gardening, and botanical art have all been popular. Here are Miller Library borrowers' favorites over the past year: