First of all, is it “Crabapple,” “Crab Apple,” or “Crab-Apple”? I grew up thinking of it as a one-word tree name, but I see it spelled all three of these ways and could probably find even more variants if I searched for them. I think I’ll stick with “crabapple.”

It stormed last night in Milwaukee. If you were watching the Wisconsin–Ohio State football game on television (or, would that be the “Ohio State–Wisconsin” game?), you saw the rain passing through Madison and Camp Randall Stadium (which is built on the site of what actually used to be a Union army camp named for the governor at that time, Alexander Randall, during the Civil War). Speaking of the WI–OSU/OSU–WI game (I have divided loyalties😄), what a hard-fought contest that was!

Anyway, back to my tree bark. As I was taking out some recycling a few minutes ago, I noticed how strikingly textured and colorful the crabapple trunk looks while partially damp from last night’s rain.

So I took a few pictures and decided to put them on my blog. Hope you like them!