The unbroken apple tree, so long ago

It's spring, and the flowering trees around town are in various stages.  I drove down the old block and the cherry blossoms were barely budding, and I remembered how late they seemed every year, because the timetable of the trees along a stretch of South 12th, where I travel pretty much anytime I go anywhere brings them out earlier.  The Prices' magnolia tree, that was cut back to  such a truncated state two years ago, has brought back branches, lightweight ones, in a tulip shape and they were almost  ready to open; in the week since, I imagine that they have.  I loved that tree across the street, out my front door.  I miss it.

The white-blossoming trees that aren't apples are in bloom, and as I've gone walking I recognize that whatever they are, the city must have been responsible for planting them years, decades, ago, because they go up and down many of the blocks in this neighborhood.  The apple tree behind us, that so surprised me last summer, is not blossoming yet, and it's clear that it's not the same kind of tree as the not-apple tree on our property.  Last spring of course, I didn't look because I didn't know there was reason to worry about it. I can see now that the bark isn't quite the same, either.

Going through pictures a few weeks ago, I found one with the little apple tree before the disaster. The story of the little tree is here, as two portions amalgamated from the blog posts into my column. (Just to give you someplace different to go.)

Christina by the baby apple tree

The tree is a smidge taller than Christina.  It was brought to us as a gift and planted in the fall, anxiously watched through the cold, waiting to see if it would survive and start to develop in the spring.  We were all excited that it did.  In this picture you can see behind her the C-F's house, though that would be years later; you can't see the Reverend Price's brick house very well on the right, but you can see one of the two cherry blossom trees in bloom.  (The other was eventually broken in a windstorm, and had to be removed.) Behind that tree is the magnolia, whose fallen petals are the blanket of white on the ground.  So from that, I'm guessing that it's about the end of April.  (Yes, I know I should have dated my photographs.)

Christina is probably five.  She would be in college before the city would plant cherry blossoms on our street. I made that dress, and it survived to be saved and passed along.  That dress is my mental point of reference.  She was small; that dress was a size 2T pattern, which was equivalent to a 3T in the stores.

I look at this picture and see our street without the present string of trees in bloom.  The Prices' trees were the only blooming ones in anyone's front yard then.  I don't know how we got a shot without any cars at the curbs.

When the adolescent decided to jump 'over' that tree, his moment of horseplay was disasterous.  You can just make out that lowest little branch without any flower, over on the left.  It broke just below that--leaving NO branches. Nothing to keep growing.  Except...one little nub.

So we left it, and watered it, and watched.  It finally grew, sideways, and at long last flourished.  Here is the picture from two years ago:

We had to trim it so that it wouldn't intrude over  the sidewalk, so it grew from side to side; I went out and measured it--from tip to tip it spread sixteen feet.  (It has since been trimmed back.)  It produced great quantities of apples, too; in the biggest yield we got 38 pints of applesauce, four gallon bags of dehydrated apple slices, as well as all the fresh cooking of pies and cakes that we could do.  Pretty good for a lost cause. I hope its new family enjoys it.

Little tree, big apples!