The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

Quit your griping. I know my place
Neglected rosy stepchild
Too generous for respect
Too tart for love
But come back when your horny trees are yearning
When blossom proper’s long since gone
Aye, that’s me. I’ll still be here.
Don’t forget to tip your waiter.

Ok, fair enough; I’m not much of a poet but someone should write poetry about crab apples. They’re worth it. Probably not me though. My effort doesn’t even rhyme.

Crab apples are native ancestors to the imported orchard apples that we bang on about every chance we get but they spend much less time in the limelight. Despite their lower status, left to their own devices, wild orchard apples have been known to revert to their ancestral crabness, forsaking all the time it took their orchard forebears to travel from Kazakhstan to Western Europe in the bowels and backsides of wolves and bears. Next time you get your sweaty hands on a Pink Lady, all crisp crunch and dripping juiciness, remember she might just be an old crab apple at heart.

So with all this history going for them, why are they so neglected? They are perfect for many pollinators and plonked near orchard apples can extend pollination periods and increase fruit yields. Shakespeare mentioned them in his romance plays and ancient gnarly Celts used to burn them during fertility rites. The trees look sensational covered in vibrant blossom or, later on, when they’re heaving with tight bunches of tiny apple nuggets. Is it just because they taste a bit grim?

To be fair, tasting like armpits soaked in vinegar would be an issue for any fruit. Reminding yourself how pretty they look whilst your face is doing contortions and your eyes are watering is cold comfort. More of a terminal roadblock than some temporary traffic lights on the way to cherished status.

However, I’ve always harboured some sympathy for the neglected and maligned, apple or otherwise, possibly because I’ve never been given the credit and respect I deserve in life. Ahem. I think the time has now come for me to stand up and be counted. A blow must be struck for the ginger stepchild of the Malus genus.

Thanks entirely to official field warden Barb, my orchard now has several lovely corners that could easily host a new tree and I’m eager to pick somewhere suitable. Admittedly, the decorative bench she installed actually faces away from the trees towards her plastic greenhouse veg garden but it still adds to the overall ambience of the place and no-one can deny the appeal of the flowers she’s planted in ancient crumbling wheelbarrows. Honestly she’s done a great job of covering for the lamentable slackness of my site management.

The spot I eventually choose is near neither of those things though; it’s the farthest corner, away from the hustle and bustle of the horse paddock and veg patch, nestled in a Hawthorn corner next to my lurching patriarch Dr Clifford. A few years previous my chain-smoking stepbrother planted wildflowers here that he rescued from the Chelsea Flower Show but they never took and now the only feature likely to be hidden is a plastic cupboard covered in spray painted graffiti. No great loss. I’m hoping to sneak some kind of beehive in here as well at some point but that will require further negotiations. Best to start with something that doesn’t sting.

Longer bearded apple nerds than me advocate one crab apple per six or seven orchard trees but I think I’ll start by just getting one from the shops and maybe grafting another. Crab apples don’t seem to have heritage like orchard varieties so I can just concentrate on getting one that will flower for as long as possible. My mum has a likely candidate in her garden but I start by heading over to the local garden centre for a recce. 

Blind luck leads me straight a section marked Crab Apples but then laughs in my face when I expect to find crab apple trees nearby. I stare at the range of pears and plums a bit nonplussed and eventually, once I’ve ruled out any formal relationship between the sign and the exhibit, head left. After a few minutes of not-unpleasant browsing, I find two suitable trees sharing a plot with some decorative shrubs and pick up the one without a mangled label. I get about nine inches towards the tills before the wire protecting it from shoplifters pulls me up short. I briefly consider untying it myself in the absence of employed assistants, but notice a disguised price tag as I’m fiddling around with the knot. A penny shy of sixty-five quid! Suddenly I’m reconsidering my plans. Perhaps I’ll be alright without any crab apples. It’s not as if there’s any chance of me being organised enough to make crab apple jelly any time soon. Or to know what to do with it once I’ve made it.

I decide to buy some similarly overpriced pruning shears instead and come back when I win the lottery. Then I start walking home and second guessing myself. How serious am I about my trees and cider production? Isn’t it worth worth robbing my pork pie budget? By the time I’m home, I’ve decided to head back the following morning and suck up the crippling expense. I head for work that evening resolved and relieved that the decision is made.

Except I’m not and it isn’t. Without warning, whilst I’m pretending to do some work, up stalks a dour ex-gardener who has overheard me sharing my woes with a work colleague. I’m surprised he’s talking to me because he normally only comes for the free biscuits.

“You can get ten for forty quid on eBay,” he tells me sourly, waving his phone in my face. “And free delivery.”

To tell the truth, there was a lot of grumpy rhetoric about the criminal practices of garden centres and non-internet based businesses in between the “forty quid on eBay” and “free delivery” but I’ve cut it out for the sake of brevity.

I’ve never been more angry to be saved a fortune. If it was only likely to save me a few quid, I’d still head back to the garden centre but these bad boys are a fraction of the cost. It would be morally wrong to cave in to convenience. All of which means, despite repeated promises to myself, this blog post describes the accomplishment of precisely nothing and I can only apologise for wasting yours and my time. I’ve made plans to buy and plant a new tree but have done neither. I was hoping this year would be different but it seems there are just some spots you can never change.