A Tree Grows in Rogers Park - Umberto Tosi
The view from my window: A squirrel feasts on mulberries. The back-alley view from where I sit right now would be uninspiring but for a large and living intruder. A sprawling canopied , out-of-place, forty-foot-tall, spreading wild mulberry— Morus rubra —plays constantly with the incoming light. As I compose this post, pausing and drifting off more often than I'd like, I note its serrated, heart-shaped leaves now bright summery green, on branches rich with dark red fruit, fluttering gently in the mid-afternoon breeze coming off the lake. Brown specked, white-throated sparrows hop from twig to twig—this being their usual hour of appearance. A chubby, rust gray fox squirrel scampers impossibly along lacy branches, then freezes and wall eyes me through the open window, protected by a screen. Squirrels carry on that way, often within arm's reach, even when our hefty aging Maine Coon orange cat, Oliver, crouches on the windowsill to gaze upon the scene like feline real...