Crabapple Tree

      We ordered a dwarf apple tree, about 10 years ago, and it arrived from a nursery, very small, bare root tree. We understood that dwarf apple trees, are
grafts, with the base tree being a crabapple tree, so that it will be dwarf, and
a regular apple tree grafted to it. My recollection is that this dwarf apple tree may have had two different kinds of apple trees grafted to the crabapple dwarf base. However, over the years, any documentation was lost.
      When the tree was young, it looked fragile, with not many leaves and small. Someone mistook it for a weed and clipped off the upper portion. I was very sad about that. However, the tree recovered and grew larger and continued to grow. A year ago, the tree finally bloomed and bore one red apple, but only on one branch. Also, only one branch had flowers.
      This year, all the branches had blossoms and there was a profusion of small, red apples, that appeared in May. However, a daring person took a bite of an apple and pronounced it quite sour. We sadly concluded that this was a crabapple tree. Perhaps, when the top was snipped off years ago, the regular apple tree graft was lost, leaving only the crabapple base? We did not know what kind of apple tree that nursery might have sent.
      Over the summer, I observed the apples on the tree. Though the apples were small and red in May, the apples got larger and larger. Oddly, they also stayed on the tree, not being eaten by wild life or falling off the tree.
      In September, an apple fell off the tree and so I decided to see how the apple tasted. It was a dark, burgundy color and very hard on the outside. When cut, the inside was white, with some pinkish hue. The apple was delicious—it was definitely not sour, was tart with sweetness. There was no insect damage on the apple. I ate the apple in my oatmeal and it was delicious. The verdict was out, that these apples are not crabapples, but regular apples. The apples appeared small and dark red, in May, and grew over the summer, until in the fall, they were large and red. We don’t use chemicals on the tree, but the apples had no insect damage and the wildlife appeared to ignore the apples as well.
      Oddly, when a passing neighbor saw the apples on the tree, she complimented me on my “plum tree”. I assured her that those were apples and she also suggested that they would not last long, with all the wildlife about.
      In the same way, our Heavenly Father continues to nurture us, even when all seems to go wrong. When we seem to have sour fruit, by patiently waiting and enduring, we find beautiful, delicious fruit, even from a crabapple base, perhaps even a variety, not yet known.