Apple Blossoms

Now is the time to enjoy the blooms of the apple tree. I have to admit that the apple is my favorite tree. In my wanderings through the Alleghenys I've often stopped and wondered about the history of an old apple tree struggling to survive on the side of a ridge planted years ago by some long dead homesteader. Every year since 1979 I've planted apple trees on my land. Never one to go the "normal route" I've searched through nursery catalogs for heirloom apples with names like " Hudson's Golden Gem", "Purdy", and "Swaar". Trees that have survived for years and sometimes centuries because of some unique characteristic. With most of my land being old "homestead ground" I also have quite a number of volunteer apple trees that have sprouted from seeds of old trees now long gone. As a kid I roamed around on this very ground and remember the old trees that my grandmother called "Rusty Coats". Gnarled old things mostly hollow with a limb or two still alive and producing fruit in the fall. Planted by some long forgotten farmer in the 1800's they are all gone now but are remembered in the seedlings trees that sprouted from their fallen fruit. I believe my passion to plant apple trees is a desire to leave something still alive after I'm gone and to hope that someday some future hunter will pause under a tree that I planted and wonder about the person who took the time to nurture it to maturity.
A Doglo crabapple tree I planted near my "Man Shed".

A wild apple tree growing in our pasture. More of a shrub than a tree it defied the odds, sprouting from a fallen seed and growing into a fruit bearing tree.