Because they fail to regenerate when cut back too severely,
Cypress trees have been associated with the underworld for ages—
They also bear small round seed cones resembling apples,
But no one would ever be caught dead trying to eat them.
Eat a cypress cone? Unimaginable, but trees of the underworld? Yes I can imagine them.
ReplyDeleteWait, you mean these little guys, which have been clogging up our drainpipes in every North Pacific storm since Homer was a pup, are not really the Golden Apples of the Sun, but the Chopped Nuts of the Underworld? Well, then, I'll be damned.
ReplyDeleteI love the way you keep pulling the rhythmic tablecloth out from under the neat tea setting of the meter! Pass me one of those cypress-cone scones....
ReplyDeleteI just read somewhere that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was most likely an orange or pomegranate. Here I've been giving apples the evil eye all these years. Thanks for the meditation, Vassilis.
ReplyDeleteEat a cypress (s)cone? Unimaginable, of course but I do remember a wedding thirty-some years ago in my home village of Remmatia high up in the Ithomi Mountains, where the bride and groom were pelted by their guests with a hailstorm of these in lieu of the usual hard-rock almond candy as they were doing Isaiah’s dance in the church.
ReplyDeleteI would use cypress-–along with sage, branches of the Mastic bush (Pistacia lentiscus), lemons leaves, etc, to smoke the salted pork we used to make the week before Lent. The current financial crunch has dampened both weddings and the salted pork a bit but if anyone would care to visit us, I’m sure we could spread our tablecloth and find something to fit the bill—perhaps roast pork and quince, garnished with pomegranate seeds?
Thanks to the four of you.