back to its roots

I spent some time outside on this beautiful, cool day pulling weeds, trimming bushes and chatting with my neighbor.  While working around I discovered that my little old apple tree is loaded with nice yellow apples this year which, in a few weeks, will provide me with plenty of apples for apple butter.

This still fascinates me because this apple tree started life as an ornamental crab apple tree which my husband planted soon after we moved here thirty-one years ago.  For years it had lovely blossoms and tiny little crab apples.  Then one year I found a few yellow apples under that tree and couldn't imagine where they came from.  The next year, when yellow apples again showed up under the tree, I had the sense to look up and discovered that the tree was producing real apples.  My grandkids and I gathered some up, leaving plenty for the birds, and that year I made my first batch of applebutter.

It has become an annual event.  When I got home from my vacation earlier this month, my granddaughters had already gathered up some fallen apples for me.

I mentioned the mystery of my transformed apple tree to my father one day,and he explained to me that often ornamental trees are grafted to another tree (crabapple to apple) to give them a stronger root system and sometimes the tree "goes back to its roots."  I'm sure there's a profound life lesson here somewhere, but for now I'll just enjoy the results.