I have mixed feelings about our crab apple.  On the one hand, it’s a beautiful tree, especially covered with soft pink flowers in spring.  But it also dumps piles of fruit on the ground every autumn.  Which the chipmunks love, as you can see.

Unfortunately our two dogs love those crab apples, too.

We can’t rake up the debris fast enough to keep our pets from chomping away like billy goats.  I had to make a trip to the emergency vet this week because one of our dogs kept vomiting.  I don’t know if his stomach was reacting to rotten fruit or an overload of sugar and acid, or if his intestines had a partial blockage caused by a mass of crab apples and stems.  He’s okay now, but I really could have done without the expensive animal hospital fee and the night-time drive across town with a retching canine in the back seat.

This isn’t the first autumn our dog has made himself sick on crab apples, although the vomiting has never been this bad.  Always I vow that’s to be the end of it; the tree is coming down.

Just as soon as it blossoms one last time next spring.

Spring comes and goes.  The tree provides such nice shade in summer.   There will be plenty of time to cut it down before the crab apples fall.  And suddenly, before I can bring myself to take action, the boughs sag under the weight of their bounty.  Ripe fruit begins to drop again.

Still I’m reluctant to rid our yard of the tree.  Following today’s thunderstorm, wet crab apples shimmered like jewels.

Like Scheherazade with her nightly cliff-hangers, that darn tree keeps enticing me to wait.  Il faut souffrir pour être belle, I guess.  (One must suffer to be beautiful😄)

And, after all, crab-apple season is almost over now.