Little apple tree

The apple tree was not going to make it until I was home again to be picked.  Apples will be waiting for me ASAP next week.

Roseanne remembered the event of the near-mortal injury of the baby apple tree.  She said that one day afterwards one of her friends asked her, "Why are you growing a stick in your front yard?"

"That's not a stick, that's an apple tree.  That's my dad's apple tree, but it got broken-- but it's not a stick."

"That's not a tree, that's just a stick.  It won't do anything--there's no point to leaving it there. You should just get rid of it, your yard would look much better without it."

Well, the stick was still, in its heart, a tree, and it did do a great deal, given time.  We have to keep it in check, now.  It definitely will be cut back as soon as fall comes.

In its most prolific year, we put up 38 pints of applesauce and four gallon bags of dried apple slices from that tree, besides what we cooked in recipes while they were fresh;  this year won't be as good as that, but Carole will come down and help me do applesauce.  We won't let our apples go to waste.

The branches stretch almost 20 ft. along the sidewalk, 14 ft. from the sidewalk towards the fence.  Much more than a stick!  All it needed was faith, patience, and time, and a little care along the way.  Remember its story when you feel like your life doesn't seem any better than a "stick."

This picture was taken before they had fully turned, the apples go  partly yellow with some red striations.
Here's one side, laden

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 22, 2012 at 8:23 AM

    Marian, be careful of that fall pruning. Apples bear fruit only on the new wood from the season before. If you cut too much next spring your harvest will be small.See you Friday.
    Love, Dad

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don MeyerAugust 22, 2012 at 8:58 AM

    Wow! That's some stick! And as you indicate, it is an excellent parable for life.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AlisonHAugust 25, 2012 at 11:04 AM

    Wow! How did you DO that?! Not just the growth, but the apples themselves--our squirrels rummage through our trees, pick one very unripe, bite, throw, pick, bite, throw, and strip them in a day or two. In nineteen years since we planted the Fuji, we've never had a single ripe apple from it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marian S.August 26, 2012 at 9:03 AM

    With us, it's birds. When the birds start pecking at them, we know they're ready...but we haven't had the birds this year. The picture was taken before they were quite ready, as mentioned; though they did have more color by the morning I left, enough of these had fallen that the point of the density of fruit was lost, the pictures didn't look as good. Time of day and light didn't help as well, either, so I stuck with this. We do have squirrels, but they don't go for the tree, they attack any vegetables we try to grow.

    ReplyDelete

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