Our Crabapple Tree

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Thursday, August 29, 2024

Many years ago we bought an apple tree that, if I recall correctly, was supposed to be a Cortland variety. As it grew and started to produce fruit it became clear that this was a crabapple. It has produced reddish fruits every year, some years more than others. This year, it is a bumper crop — large fruits (as crabs go), deep red color, and so many fruits. I’ve yet to learn the variety — maybe a Hyslop?

We are making our third pie with these beautiful ping-pong ball-sized fruits. Crabapple pie, as you might except, is a bit sour (although plenty of sugar sweetens the pie) and to me tastes like a sour cherry pie that my mother used to make from our cherry trees. I still marvel that she would pit so many small cherries to make a pie. Now we are chopping the flesh of nearly 40 crabapples to make a pie.

A partial harvest of our crabapples, August 2024

Pies are a gesture of love, especially when you harvest the fruit from your own yard. A group of my wildlife friends from UMaine gathered every year for Thanksgiving, with everyone bringing a pie. That’s a lot of love.

Our crabapple tree produces lovely white flowers each Spring attracting many pollinating bees and flies and birds in search of insects. All summer it provides shade in our front yard. In winter it houses our suet feeders, bringing in woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, among others. The trunk is ringed with rows of sapsucker holes. A few weeks ago a hummingbird buzzed around the holes, snatching some sap or spiders. Recently a doe that we’ve seen often this summer wandered past the tree, first nibbling on leaves then pulling off a few crabapples and mashing them around in her mouth. She didn’t show any surprise at their sourness.

The crabapple in May.

Spider Webs

Monday, August 26, 2024

Plants (although, not all) are flourishing in our yard with the summer’s rain and humidity. Eggplant and pepper plants are three feet tall and spreading out beyond the raised beds. The crabapple tree is loaded with scarlet-red fruits–40 crabapples make a nice pie, if you like, as I do, things just a bit sour. My cucumbers were a flop, while the tomatoes continue to yield the most precious summer fruits, despite various afflictions that come with a wet, humid summer.

Our small wildflower meadow is lush with wildflowers. Goldenrods that have never been taller, mix with the white flowers of asters and bonesets. Very tall purple-flowered ironweeds tower over all. There are a few weedy plants that I try to minimize by pulling the stems, roots and all, before they set flower. I walk quietly and slowly though the tall growth to avoid disturbing our friends the spiders. And yes, I love spiders. They don’t bite (if left alone), or fly away, or eat our vegetables or berries. They mostly sit completely still, waiting for a meal to fly into their nearly invisible web. 

Around early August is when I typically notice the first yellow garden spider (Argiope aurantia) clinging to her web masterfully spun with a zig-zag pattern (called a “stabilimentum) down the middle. If there is one of these large orb weavers, I know there are more. I try to locate them all so I don’t walk through a web by mistake–this month I found five in the meadow. You can’t miss the striking black and yellow body and eight light-colored legs with black tips.

I’ve not found a male yellow garden spider, perhaps because they are much smaller and die soon after mating. The female eventually builds a brown, paper-like sac filled with eggs. She will die at first frost and the spiderlings will hatch next spring and start the process anew unless they are eaten by another predator, which often happens in nature. 

Yellow garden spider