Stunning essays on nature and living, connecting simultaneously in personal indigenous stories of responsibility and care and in scientific understanding of botanical processes and systems. Every description I've tried to give this (and the sub-title and book blurbs too) makes it seem drier and hippier than it is, really a warm and active use of all the threads in the author's life story to make a Rachel Carson-like plea for a change in our personal and societal relationship to the living world which we cannot separate ourselves from. Fun juxtaposition to Lab Girl, a similar voice and subjects but this is definitely the calmer mother focused on retelling stories and nurturing her undergraduate students view of the world, rather than an obsessive scientist in love with the world (though both describe both).