Friday, March 31, 2006

Apple Tree Massacre

Following Thursday night's thunderstorms, I awoke to find wind damage to the apple tree in our backyard. Being a dutiful homeowner with a vacation day on his hands, I decided to go out, save the tree, and "clean up" the overgrowth of limbs.
A couple hours later I had a HUGE stack of branches, busted limbs, and sawdust on the ground, and a skeleton of an apple tree still standing. Every time I cut out a broken branch, I'd find two more with splits, squirrel-inflicted bark damage, or gall. Somehow, the finished product didn't come out like the trees on 'Victory Garden' do.
Come this Summer, I'll have lots of adversaries looking for revenge since the birds, squirrels, rabbits, and wasps all loved the sweet apples that filled the once-numerous branches and sometimes fell to the ground. The biggest problem with lumber is that once you saw something off, it's pretty much impossible to put it back together.
I wonder what you can build with wood from an apple tree?

2 comments:

gimlet said...

Nooo! I remember planting that apple tree! As a kid, I always thought it was going to grow into this towering tree that would be full of huge apples. It turned out to be a rather smallish tree, but it was always the tree that I considered to be "my" tree. Hope it buds out and survives, but from the description, it doesn't sound too good.

Merc Man said...

For the last few years, the tree has had a serious case of black spot each Summer, so most of the apples were inedible. When it was a sappling,it had a rather split trunk, so it probably never got to its full potential, and I planted it too close to the maple tree, which heavily shaded it. Maybe we can plant a new tree--one with an untwistable stomach!