Birch

We have quite a few birch trees around us. In fact, our property is called les bouleaux (the birches). The woods around us abound in birches and their close relatives les aulnes (alders) and les charmes (hornbeams). Birches are among the first trees to populate an open space. Many of the abandoned vineyard plots and fields around us are home to the young trees.

I remember birches from where I grew up in upstate New York, and reading Robert Frost's poem "Birches" (among others) in school.

The stream bed that runs roughly parallel to our road on the south side is called la rouere de l'aulne (the alder stream). I think that the word rouere is a more or less local word for "stream." When we get firewood each year, a good part of it is made up of charme.

Today is this blog's thirteenth anniversary. It's hard to remember when I didn't do this.