The Thrill of Flowering Crabapples

Pink crabapple petals drifted around me when I walked through Dianne Mrak’s Dover, NH garden the other day.  I’ve always liked these trees, which bloom in pink, white, or red, but in Diane’s garden I saw them in a new way–flowers deconstructing, petals floating on a breeze and quivering on the ground. My heart sang. Oh—crabapples can be wonderful plants if  you pick a good cultivar like Malus sargentii ‘Tina’, a dwarf cultivar with pink buds and white flowers. (Pick the wrong crab, and it’s a pain–all the woes of the rose family defacing the tree by July.) But in spring, when buds swell, flowers bloom, and foliage is fresh, who cares what summer will bring. Live in the moment and rejoice in spring.