Emily | Planned & Planted

“The myopia that lets us see only our woes falls away for a little while. Suddenly, we can breathe again.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“The suburbs can seem anti-septic. Nature mowed and manicure to Better Homes and Gardens conformity. But wild things roam there that can't be tamed.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“I see Banyan House for what it is: a home for women, a shaggy, worn, and vicious protector of the bruised, the tender. We grew up in that house, and in turn, it grew inward on us. It could tolerate no less than our full devotion, even in death. And when we began not to need it, it crumbled. A mirage that could not sustain itself without pain.”
― Thao Thai, Banyan Moon