Blame it on my Grandmother

The urge I get each spring to plant something. Inherited from my mother's mother who was always digging in the dirt, planting all types of flowers, keeping a large garden, and especially the strawberry patch I remember fondly. My planting taste runs to trees usually apple, crabapple, hawthorne, or pear.
Here's a site ready to plant. A tubex tree protector to keep the deer from feasting on the tender tree, a bucket of dirt to compensate for all the rocks that I had to remove from the planting hole, a bucket of water, and a bale of old hay for mulch.Dance, my mountain cur, thinks the hole needs to be just a little deeper :).

The finished site. With some rain and a little luck this seedling pear tree will someday bear fruit for whatever wildlife wanders under it.

A 5 year old grafted pear tree coming along nicely.

A 5 year old apple tree in full blossom.

I usually plant a few grafted trees each year but lately I've taken to planting "Malus Antonovka" a Russian seedling apple tree that is used for grafting standard sized trees. A vigorous grower, drought,cold weather, and disease hardy it may or may not produce tasty apples for me but should be a productive tree for wildlife to feast upon.