In just over a year, the Crabapple Allée, aka the Avenue, has gone from dream to dirt, to bloom and gone.
We started with this, a dull bare field.
I took this photo on April 24, 2017, when I became serious about planting a long allée of trees,. The walk through the trees is part of a larger project I’m still working on.
Four months later, The Avenue was beginning to take shape.
August 8, 2017
By mid-November, the site was a mess of wet earth and newly planted trees.
November 9, 2017
While the trees rested, I kept my fingers crossed. How would they survive the freeze and thaw of a difficult winter?
January 25. 2017
By early May, we were beginning to find out. Some trees were leafing out, obviously fine. Others were looking doubtful. Possibly they were slower growing, possibly they were dead or dying.
May 8, 2018. By this time we’d seeded the bare ground and were waiting for the seeds to turn it from tan to green.
Two weeks later, the excitement was building. Some trees were in bloom, others were about to start.
May 22, 2018
Warm weather began to open more blossoms but the full impact was not yet there.
May 24, 2018
On May 26, only two days after I took the photo above, the trees were in full bloom. The sky was grey, though, so I decided to wait until the following day to photograph the trees at their best.
That night it rained. Hard. The next morning, all the blossoms were gone.
I’m disappointed not to have a photo of the trees fully in bloom, but the image is there in my mind. Considering that this was their first year, the trees bloomed magnificently. Next year they will be better. And the year after, better still.
June 3, 2018
The best news is that every tree made it through the winter. Hooray!
