Those bountiful samaras at the picture's top, right are a blessing for certain seed-eating critters, especially birds such as finches. Many times I've noticed commotion up in a forest's canopy and when I focused my binoculars there I'd see a flock of Goldfinches, Purple Finches or the like contentedly among the samaras grinding the wings and husks off one fruit after the other, creating husked-off chaff that snowed groundward.

If you were to see the branch in the picture without the fruits, would you be able to identify it as an ash branch and not, say, a hickory? Both ashes and hickories bear pinnately compound leaves -- which means that at the bottom, center of the above picture you see a single large leaf, a compound leaf consisting of seven leaflets. Both hickories and ashes bear large, pinnately compound leaves. The big difference between hickory leaves and ash leaves is that hickory leaves are "alternate" (a single compound leaf arising at a twig node) while ash leaves are "opposite" (two compound leaves arising at each node). Can you see how this ash's twig bears opposite, pinnately compound leaves?

It can be hard to distinguish certain trees by their bark, but ash trunks are fairly distinctive, as shown below:

Notice the "ashy" gray color and how many low, slender, flat-topped ridges interconnect with one another.

Green Ashes, sometimes called Red Ashes, are native to the eastern US and adjacent Canada -- they are, in fact, North America's most widespread ash species. Also, because they adapt well to extreme conditions, they're one of the most widely planted ornamental trees, several cultivars having been created that produce fewer "nuisance" fruits, brighter fall color, etc. The species is most at home, though, in rich, moist bottomland soils like those at Anna's Bottom.