These may well be the ugliest apple trees I have ever seen, these three trees standing at the south edge of the north pasture. The ice storm that hit in December of ’07 left a slew of dead and broken branches, triggering a spate of growth that left a mass of small branches clogging the middle part of the trees. I can’t identify the variety of any of the trees but I do know that each of them is different from the other two.

The tallest and the one with the least branches might be something akin to a Golden Delicious. All I know is that its apples have been tiny and green, only now beginning to ripen. The middle tree, almost stripped of branches on its southern side by the ice storm, produces apples with a soft fruit, medium red in color and a bit streaked in color. The other tree, Randa’s favorite, has a firmer fruit with a hint of tartness, very crisp in flavor and deep red in color. If one were forced to pick the ugliest of the trees, this one might get the nod. Then again, it could be a three-way tie.

None of them look anything like the notion of a well-formed tree. Each is twisted, clumped, gnarled, mangled, with nothing like any appearance of having been deliberately cared for in the last fifteen or twenty of their sixty-to-eighty years of life. All I can say for them, in the way of anything approaching a compliment, is that in this year of extended heat and drought, they have produced a bountiful crop of apples.

With no particular care, except having nearly all of their dead branches removed, they have yielded several bushels of apples. With no fertilizing, no shaping, no pruning, no protection from insects or blight or anything else, they have simply done what apple trees do: they have born their fruit.

Many of the apples were small but there have been several of late that have been large enough to nearly fill my hand. Nearly all of the apples have had some blemish but many of them are almost perfect. Many of the early apples were sour, some even bitter, but most of these in the full of the season are very sweet and flavorful. All together, they have produced the best cider I have ever made.

When we are fully focused on nothing but our highest purpose, when we abandon the pride and concern of appearance, when we have become deeply rooted in that which truly gives life and strength, all of the scars and ugly, all of the tangled and mangled will fade into the obscurity of insignificance, completely lost in the glory of yielding the fruit for which we were made.

H. Arnett
9/5/12