October 2024 Leaflet ~ Elisabeth C. Miller Library, UW Botanic Gardens

Leaflet from the Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Volume 11, Issue 10 | October 2024

UNWEAVINGS by Lena Youkhana

detail of rabbit from painting on deconstructed silk by Lena Youkhana

We are thrilled to welcome Lena Youkhana, one of our own librarians, to the exhibit space this month with her paintings on deconstructed silk. Of her work, Lena says:

Working with simple images, I multiply meaning by the act of removal in order to explore issues of impermanence and loss, displacement and belonging. I am interested in what emerges as things are removed and newly created, to look at things with the idea of what was continuing to live inside what is now. The silk pieces are simple drawings that I try to stretch materially by unraveling them (separating the weft from the warp), creating multiple images.

The work will be on display October 3-26 during library open hours.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy

The Backyard Bird Chronicles is a winsome account of six years in Amy Tan’s obsession (her word) with the birds behind her house. Mostly she stays indoors, watching the action in her yard. She describes what she sees each day (not all days are included) and sketches bird portraits for each entry. Yes, Tan the best-selling novelist has learned to create attractive art as well as lively avian episodes. She first took drawing lessons at age 64 (now she is 72) and has here produced accurate and attractive bird portraits.

She convinced a hummingbird to drink from a tiny feeder she held in her hand. As someone excited to see a hummingbird hover just once over my apartment window box geraniums, I’m awed — and a little jealous.

Tan chronicles the many tactics she uses to attract birds to her yard — the bird houses, perches, and especially the feeders. Finding something the squirrels could not figure out took many tries. What foods work best was also a challenge, and discovering that some birds eat only on the ground added complications.

Tan’s entries often describe an encounter and then ask questions about it, often questions she does not or cannot answer. Her entry for October 29, 2019 begins with a quotation from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “Hermit Thrushes rarely visit backyards and generally do not visit feeders” (p. 89). Then, she tells how a Hermit Thrush spent three and a half hours trying to find a way into three of her feeders. It kept trying even when the same food was easily available in a flowerpot on the ground below the feeder. Tan then asks five questions about why the bird acted this way. For example, was it young? Migrating? Just curious? She ends by deciding that Hermit Thrushes are not shy, but “solitary nonconformists.”

The May 6, 2019 entry describes an Oak Titmouse encountering live mealworms where it was expecting to find suet balls. The three drawings show stages of the bird’s bafflement and eventual acceptance, each with an imagined bird comment in a cartoon balloon: “What?! No suet balls? It’s alive!” “The food keeps moving.” And eventually, when it accepts the mealworm, “What are you looking at?” Then Tan reports the bird ate many mealworms and carried many more back to the nest.

Tan says her obsession with birds has some similarities to her work as a writer: She regards herself as an observer who asks questions about the lives, deaths, and surroundings of what she sees. Add that to her success in attracting dozens of birds to her backyard, and this book emerges in full feather.

Miller Lecture coming soon

We are pleased to announce that the 2024 Elisabeth C. Miller Memorial Lecture, a gift to the community from the Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable Foundation, the Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden, Northwest Horticultural Society and the Elisabeth C. Miller Library, will be presented as a recorded webinar linked to the November issue of this newsletter.

The speaker this year is C. Colston Burrell. Cole is an acclaimed international lecturer, garden designer and the author of 12 gardening books. He has escorted garden and nature tours throughout the United States as well as to Canada, Europe and the Americas.