Balance, receiving, gift, comfort, security, family, homestead, prosperity, north-south, gold(color), fulfilling, relief, plenty, "all is well in the world", growth, luxurious crops on the horizon, fat babies, milky cows (leaking), abundance, cream and butter, smiling rosy-cheeked happiness, promise, physical manifestation of desire, hope, grace.

Summary: fulfillment, comfort, manifestation of goals/desires leading to security. ¹

Common Name: Common Alder
Latin name: Alnus glutinosa
Habitat and description: Europe south of the Arctic Circle, Western Asia, North Africa.
A moderately sized tree or large shrub of dark color usually found in moist woods, pastures and near streams. The leaves a broadly ovate, stalked and smooth. The catkins, which grow in a spiral formation on the twig, are formed in the fall, the fruiting ones having scales like a tiny fir-cone. The furry nearly globular female catkins are the so-called "berries". The flowers are white.

Alder wood is tough, water resistant yet light and easily worked. For this reason and for the variety of dyes it produces this would have been a very popular wood for many types of domestic crafts. The wood has been used in the manufacture of spinning wheel, bowls, spoons, carriage wheels, clogs, pumps, troughs, sluices, and when covered with hide, it was used to make shields. Its water resistance may also have seen it used as pilling for cranogs or other wet land construction. It was so favored as wood of choice for milk pails and other dairy vessels that in the book of Ballymote it is called Comet Lachta-Guarding of the Milk.
        If the wood was soaked in a bog it took on a rich dark color somewhat like ebony. In later years it was used to make fine furniture, because as the wood matured it took on a rich natural color and fine grain formation.
        In dyeing it produces several colors depending on which part of the plant is used. The mature bark is used as a foundation for blacks with the addition of a little copperas, alone it produces a rich reddish color. Both young bark and shoots dye a yellow color and with the addition of copper a grayish-yellow. The fresh shoots cut in March will give a cinnamon color and if the shoots are dried and powdered they will produce a tawny shade. The fresh heart wood yields a pinkish-fawn and the catkins a green. In the process of dyeing which usually consisted of two parts, Alder tips were used to impart the "ground" or foundation of the color, a reddish-brown. This was accomplished by steeping and boiling the cloth with the fresh twigs.
        In Cormac's Glossary it is called "ro-eim"-that which reddens the face. This may have something to do with how the fresh wood when newly cut turns from white to red. Or it may have been used as some form of "make-up" like a cheek blush or lip-stain.
        On a more somber note a rood of Alder(though more references point to the Aspen) may have been used as a Fé, a rod used to measure corpses and chart out graves in pre-Christian Ireland. (mentioned in Cormac's Glossary as well as the Book of Leinster).

Note:
This meditation is purely my own experience. I included it here for inspiration not emulation. Because our hearts and spirits hold different visions, each individual will have their own unique experience. --Willow Ragan