Well, almost.

Aaron stuck a stick in the ground and it flowered.

I stuck a willow branch in the ground and it’s budding.

The branch is from our Japanese willow tree . It will be a bush rather than a tree, but otherwise will look the same.

I wonder if Aaron’s rod was really a thick willow branch, which roots very easily and buds quickly.

Willow trees are part of my Polish heritage; they grow all along fences and stables and wayside shrines throughout old Poland. I have a collection of translated prose and poetry from 1945 called “Wayside Willow.” It is a first edition, signed by the editor and all of the contributors. The dust jacket is missing, although the flyleaf portion is stuck inside like a bookmark. It was a gift to my Dad, who was very active and well-known in the downstate New York Polish community. It comes with me wherever I go. I have to admit that I have never read through the entire publication. Maybe today, Father’s Day, is a good time to do that.

The willow has a rich mythology, some of it controversial.

The above link says that I am a willow person….

Willow people (i.e. those born in March) are beautiful but full of melancholy, are attractive and very empathic, they like anything beautiful and tasteful and love to travel, they are dreamers and restless, capricious and honest, they are easily influenced but are not easy to live with being demanding, they have good intuition, but suffer in love and sometimes need to find an anchoring partner.

…but the truth is that I don’t like to travel, I am not easily influenced, and I’m awfully easy to live with. As for the rest, I’m not sure that I can be objective.