crab apple

“Apple of my eye”

IMG_3426Every gardener has their treasures season to season. The Evereste crab apple tree probably tops my favourites list because she covers all of them. Here she is, caught this week in the evening sun after a day of buffet and bluster, hail, wind and downpour. Already much of the blossom is ‘blown’, and whether any fruit has set, we’ll have to wait and see. The apples that come in the autumn are small and russet-blushed, an inch or two centimetres at most, but each one image perfect; doll’s house apples in other words. And after we have admired them for many weeks, the winter weather then softens them enough to make them a valuable food store for the blackbirds and pigeons. We watch them from the kitchen door.

A tree of many pleasures then. Here she is a couple of weeks ago, the blossom just opening:

IMG_3231ch

*

And this was last September (in the midst of an early autumn gale), the apples freshly formed:

IMG_9855

100_7068

*

Evereste is also queen of that unruly quarter, the-garden-over-the-fence aka the guerrilla garden, caught here early one summer’s morning. Its content changes every year:

IMG_2867gg

*

And in winter there are many new scenes:

IMG_6553

img_1083

IMG_6106

IMG_6565

IMG_1586

*

And so yes, the apple of my eye:

P1050485

Lens-Artists: Gardens  Please visit Amy’s very lovely gardens. She is hosting this week’s theme.

I Will Survive! Blooming Transplanted Crab Apple

IMG_4339

Back in the autumn I mentioned we had been forced to move a much loved crab apple tree. Her name is Evereste and she is a small tree of the Japanese sort. She was originally planted in the corner of an ugly raised bed and beside some increasingly dangerous garden steps. The bed needed to go, and Graham planned to remodel the steps so we would not break our necks on them in the upcoming years of decrepitude, or after a glass too many of Prosecco out in the garden. Evereste thus had to be relocated to a much nicer spot on our fence boundary, but before that she had to undergo some very serious pruning with the aim of reducing the stress of being moved. She went from being a billowy, branchy tree to a very neat and upright tree.

However, I’m sure she will return to her billowy self in a year or two, and the good news is she is flowering wonderfully NOW. I love crab apple trees. We recently bought a stunning weeping one for my sister’s birthday – Royal Beauty . And it was while I was tracking down suppliers that I learned you could make a hedge using low growing crab apple trees. A hedge that flowers and fruits. How beautiful is that – and how the wildlife would love it. It’s making me think that Evereste might need some company along the garden fence.

IMG_4337

Cee’s Flower of the day