meayrs

By meayrs

Autumn colours

I planted this rowan, aka 'mountain ash' or sorbus, as a sapling in September last year. My father was very proud of his Welsh heritage and originally it was basically for him. We had scattered his ashes in the rootball of another rowan tree in Upton-upon-Severn (that's in the UK) when my mother was still alive but the tree didn't survive the big floods there of a few years ago. We dug up the rootball and mixed what was left with my mother's ashes when her turn came and the residual soil and ash is now nurturing a couple of pear trees at my sister's farm house in North Wales, as appropriate.

Someone found out that the rowan tree was also the plant that corresponded to our mother's birth. Go figure; I don't remember the details now and I don't really believe in these things anyway, but it made me doubly determined to have a tree commemorating my parents in a place where their great-grandchildren are now growing up. And the Welsh connection is appropriate for Patagonia, though not normally so far north. Who said nostalgia is dead.

Whence the rowan tree, today's blip, with all the glory of autumnal change. And if this seems strange to readers in the Northern Hemisphere, well just flip your seasons and it should make sense.

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