Hub pruned the apple tree last fall. It was high time, too; the tree was about twenty feet tall and all the apples were at the very top. Before he revved up the chain saw, he asked me how much of the tree to take off. I thought a moment, pictured the rows of small trees in the orchards at AppleAcres with their short trunks and little apple-bearing, easy-to-reach limbs branching up, and I told him to hack off pretty much everything and leave a short trunk I figured that in the spring, little apple-bearing, easy-to-reach limbs would branch up and we’d have apples that didn’t require a ladder and/or the force of gravity to gather.

I’m thinking now that maybe there comes a time in an apple tree’s life when it gets too big to be pruned. I’m thinking now that maybe all we did was dismember it and condemn it to a life of stumpy branchlessness.

It’s May now, and all the other trees are leafy and budding and blossoming. Here’s the apple tree:

What do you think? Overkill?

If you look closely, near the top, there is a tiny wispy whisper of apple leaf. I consider it proof that the tree is alive and trying to cooperate. No, not the poison oak near the bottom.

That cardboard container houses a clematis vine that I was thinking about planting there. It could cling to and climb the apple tree trunk.

I did tell Hub to leave a short trunk. I guess when you’re almost seven feet tall, a four-foot trunk IS a short trunk.

Looks like we won’t have any apples in the driveway this fall.