A mulberry leaf

Come look at this with me

I have been wanting to write about this mulberry leaf for weeks. I don't have a proper excuse for why it has been so hard to write about this leaf. I love this leaf.

It is one of many mulberry leaves, even just on this one plant, which is a baby, just reaching chest height, but was once just a stick I got from Kula Nursery.

One day, it will produce some of the most delicious fruit on earth. Maybe it will become as tall as a house. It’s been a slow growing process; I hurt it while planting it. But now it is leaping skyward.

Back to the leaf. It's big. As big as your face. It's shaped like your heart, edge like a steak knife. The leaves have generous, obvious veins, branching out from the midrib: The mark of organic circulation, of exchange between realms, energy expended and replenished. Each leaf stands alone on what will one day be a mighty trunk.

This little tree spends summer getting hit by light first from the east, then a bit of shade, and then more western sun in the afternoon.

In the shade, the leaf is solid and waxy, reflective—the blue sky right now is laying on its the ridges. The texture is so singular, so perfect that it reveals a new dimension of failure for our digital cameras. The lustrous sheen is inseparable from this particular green, and it cannot be captured. The leaf is not iridescent like an abalone shell; it doesn’t reveal rainbows through optics. But it should be in that same magical category! This is a green that reveals the whole spectrum of green and suggests that it might run beyond our perception. This is beauty. My eyes find the leaf from all the angles of our yard.

And that is just this leaf under standard lighting conditions. When it is backlit in the late afternoon, it reveals itself to be translucent, and the compartments of the leaf, the areas between the veins, come to life, looking like the plat map of an ancient, organic city built along a branching river.

It is rare that we appreciate a leaf. The hot pink hollyhock nearby is a more obvious beauty. It’s almost easier to appreciate our dependence on the invisible labor of these organisms, to imagine the photons and RuBisCo moving through the cycles of photosynthesis. A whole canopy over a road, a gawp-inducing forest, the simple shade of a whole tree by a trail—these things, yes, they are available pleasures. The sensory thrill of a single leaf, though?

Indoor plant people seem to be better at this, waiting and watching for their monstera leaves to unfurl. Inside, each splash of green is distinct from the human interior. Outside, the default is life. It takes a special leaf to stand out in a world of leaves.

Or maybe not. Now, I am looking at the raspberry next door to the mulberry, feeling its geometrical ridges. And I looking at the slim, smooth olive leaves next to that, and the fig leaves that remind me of amphibian hands. I am remembering the nasturtium leaves that I brought into the bath tub when my first kid was a toddler, their magic hydrophobia: a leaf that can turn a stream of water into a string of gems.

Perhaps this mulberry, then, is an emissary. A reminder. A teacher.

If you wanna look at more leaves together, or hear about my book, which has distressingly few leaves, sign up here:

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I have a lot of news to share with you all about many things. My book is done! I apologize in advance for future advertising. I have a full slate of fall events. Terrible things continue to happen. I have a new marigold gardening plan based on a chapter of the book, The Light Eaters.

But it is labor day. Let us rest, and appreciate the angles of the light, the late summer mess. Blink and it will be Thanksgiving.

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© 2024 Alexis C. Madrigal
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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