Pastor Meeter prefers the Ginko. I think the golden leaves are beautiful. But have issues with the Ginko because of the way the berries smell. I call them stinkleberries and there are loads of them on the stoop at the Montauk Club from a Ginko tree. The Japanese make a soup out of Ginko berries. They boil them endlessly I would guess. I think they have spiritual/holistic/health properties. Here’s an excerpt from the Old First Blog.

Outside my window, across the street, next to the fence of Prospect Park, is a ginko tree. It shades the bench where Melody and I sometimes sit.

Last Wednesday, it still had all its leaves, though most of them had turned. We went to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. When we got back on Friday all its leaves were down. Suddenly, like that.

And there was a beautiful carpet of yellow gold, with touches of green, around our bench. The sidewalk was covered, and the carpet was clean and fresh. In a day or two its lustre would be gone.

The ailanthus is on our side of the street, right against our building. It seems to have dropped its leaves just as suddenly. But they were scattered, and on the street. And it dropped its stems as well, the long leaf stems on which its leaflets grow, and they now litter the corner like straw.

I do not love thee, ailanthus, as I love the ginko. You have come here from China too, but you are lower class, and you have no lovely bark, and your branches break, and people call you messy.