Kiss my Ash

The Rowan Tree (Mountain "Ash")

Vladimir used to make rowan-berry flavored vodka every year. The rowan berries are so red and pretty. There are also lots of beautiful English and Russian folksongs that mention this tree. It turns out that there is an awful lot of northern European folklore associated with the rowan tree. Vladimir said that the rowan berries are medicinal and that rowan (ryabina) berry vodka is considered not only delicious, but also as a curative for a variety of ills, mostly upper respiratory. When we looked up the translation for ryabina, the first listing was "mountain ash", although it is not a member of the ask family.

There is a lovely Russian folksong called "Tonkaya Ryabina" (Slender Rowan) that we used to sing in Moscow. Tanya used to play it on the flute, I played the balalaika, and the boys sang.

Here are some rowan tree links.

Species profile - The Rowan

Mythology and Folklore of the Rowan

Rowan - Wikipedia

We managed to get rowan branches in Stony Brook, I wonder if there are any around in northern California.

White Ash

The first table I bought myself in San Francisco was made of ash. It's so sturdy two people can lie on it. Now it stands in the kitchen burdened by hills of potatoes and dishtowels.

Ash is a hard wood. They make baseball bats out of it. Art keeps a baseball bat by the door in case we ever need to brain someone who comes in.

I don't think I even know what an ash tree looks like. They didn't have too many in New York City. I don't think we have them in the Bay Area either. This picture is of a "white ash". I Wikied it and it turns out that I might have seen it on the east coast, but as my arboreal education has been quite lacking, I probably wouldn't have known it had I seen it. In school they only taught us oak, maple, elm and the evergreens. I knew about mimosas because there was one in the neighbor's front yard.

This doesn't seem to be the more romantic, possibly less hard (and less likely to be used for braining or screwing) European Mountain Ash, or Rowan tree, which is another matter entirely and a worthy subject for a separate blog post. I leave you with an image of a white ash plank. Here it is: white and hard.

What a Birch

January

hey long legged trees
all white and lean
shivering in simple
stark groves between
empty fields.

Janus is a two-faced god, no?

Life's a birch and then you sigh.

Birch grove photograph by Arnoldas Jurgaitis of Vilnius, Lithuania