Apple surprise

The builder who developed our street back in the 1950s planted crabapple trees in the front yards, some of which remain.  In a good year the pink blossoms make a fine show in the spring before the wind and rain knocks them down.         

And later, as summer winds down, the crabapples themselves deluge the driveway and the lawn.   

Early one morning these three deer were after them like they were vacuuming.

   Along with the crabapple trees we have another apple tree that never belonged.  It looked like a crabapple, to our unsophisticated eyes, but the blossoms were more white than pink and instead of prodigious numbers of crabapples it produced only a couple of odd little green apples.  Or none.

      And so it went until this year - our twenty-first in the house - when the odd tree on the end pushed out a bumper crop of big, red, actually edible apples.  We don’t know what variety, but the ones that don’t have bug holes and brown spots, of which there are a few, are actually pretty good.  

   Why the tree would suddenly produce this year, out of nowhere, is a mystery.  We wonder if it has to do with the big wasp nest that appeared in the adjacent crabapple this year, also a first.  We think the wasps have taken care of the moths that used to plague the crabapples. 

   But really, as with much of the actual world, there is so much we just don't know.