Thanks as always to Squirrelbasket for hosting this tree-following meme. Click the tree thingy to have a look at her blog. For the benefit of any new readers, I’m following a crab apple tree around in my front garden. Which is easy as it doesn’t move very quickly. If you want to read the earlier instalments, there are links to them at the end of this post.

“I urge you to get a blossom tree if you do not have one, for the chance of witnessing this window of spring. Slowed for a moment, you too can take in the miracle.”

Dan Pearson in “Natural Selection” (Guardian Books 2017)

A month has flown by and in that month my tree has undergone rapid change. It seems a little unfair that when I last wrote about it, it had slowly built up to a crescendo of bright pink buds, the harbingers of things to come ….

But, in no time, the pinkness had been replaced with the open blossom in a very un-pink shade of white …..

Though I have to admit, even white makes me happy when it is so abundant. Almost every year I’ve had this tree, the opening of the blossom is a precursor to a storm of some sort and, after just a few days, the advent of high winds strips the tree bare almost overnight. The road in front of the house looks like snow has fallen!

This year, though, was one of the few exceptions. It took a few weeks of lightly coating the lawn (and the car, dammit) with dots of white to take the tree to its next stage.

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”

Shakespeare in “Sonnet 18”

 And by now, the transformation is complete. The buds have long gone; the blossom has wafted away in the breeze (and stuck like glue to the bonnet, roof and boot of the car). The sight now is of something my grandmother used to pluck off her apple trees to tidy them up. We could never get through to her that this was why she never got apples! And so a new generation of harbingers takes over, happily harbinging the coming fruits. But we’ll have to wait a while for those.

But, while we wait, we can enjoy the greenery.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

Martin Luther

Until next time….