Crab Apple

I lodged next door for a year in 1976 but I cannot remember if it was there. It was certainly there when I bought this house in 1984, 41 years ago.

If it is watered and treated regularly to prevent powdery mildew, apple scab etc its lifespan is thirty to forty years. It has done well as the crab apple tree outside the sitting room window has never been sprayed but every few years has been pretty brutally cut back by the council arborists. It put up with this cheerfully and I ascribe its death to old age, no inquest required. In its youth it produced crab apples in abundance which made a squishy mess on the pavement. A friend used to harvest some for jelly. In recent years it has blossomed less and produced no fruit.

I wouldn’t have thought it but the trim hedge,  Lonicera nitida, ancient forty-one years ago, has outlived the crab apple tree and shows no signs of turning up its toes – what hubris. I remember being somewhat put out when my sister and brother-in-law came to look at my new acquisition. Before Simon had gone in the door he told me the hedge needed cutting in the peremptory tone well known on Irish race courses and in his stables. I rather dreaded what he would say about the interior but that didn’t interest him and Angela made tactful, approving remarks about what was the sort of wreck only just suitable for the lowliest stable lad whose mammy had evicted him.

I live in a conservation area, although you wouldn’t know it. The council are strict about mansard windows but seem to have no powers to prevent ghastly mock Georgian front doors with miniature fan lights above. I wonder if they will slap a preservation on the satellite dish, just visible behind the tree?