Round the garden in 80 days #31

It was decidedly lugubrious outside today. Nonetheless, I stuck to my target of lopping the top of the crab apple tree.

Before

After

I had had a thought about taking the tree out completely. I planted it below the graft, so it is never going to be a petite specimen and, more immediately, the apples are fiddly to process at the best of times. They all fall in September and increasingly are blighted by codling moth.

Have I sold you the tree yet?

The reason I’ve decided to prune it instead is because the blossom is useful for pollinating the Reinette Orléans (cooking apple tree). The other two apple trees tend to come into flower earlier and would therefore be unlikely to help out.

Besides, don’t we need more trees?

Whilst out in the garden, I did a bit more stone shifting, first in order to provide a secure base for the step ladders

and then to make more space to get the new raised bed in.

I could have done more work but would like to reflect overnight on the question of the cardoon and more generally if I have made enough space for the raised bed. I did, however, manage one more small job: chopping the top of the crab apple tree into smaller pieces. Some are now on the bug house pile at the back of the garden, the rest are waiting for construction on the walls of the bed.

All round, a most satisfying morning’s work!