My tree for the year

Noddles has still not committed to what tree he wants to study though he says he does want to pick one. This is probably not helped by me having fasciitis which means I'm trying to limit the amount I walk on hard surfaces so I am not doing the school run unless no-one else is available and I'm afraid I am driving when I do, meaning we don't walk together past the trees every day at the moment.

However in the meantime I have decide to watch the apple tree on the allotment so here it is.
This is inspired by The Tree Year.

Last year this tree was covered in fruit though I am told it has a tendency to fruit every other year so I do hope it has a few apples this year or the boys will be very disappointed.

I don't know how old the tree is but certainly a good few years old and for much of that it probably hasn't had a lot of care. The last couple of years this plot was looked after by someone who knew his way round a tree but before that most of this plot had been planted up with Christmas trees and many of the plots on the allotments had been virtually untended for years.. very much not the case any more and indeed the allotment has just been allowed to re-open a bunch of old derelict plots which were outside the site fences until a week or so ago ! There are still a bunch more but the council are keeping them even though they are no longer planning to build an incinerator there, which is a shame as there is a fabulous huge Bramley tree on one of those plots !

Anyway back to our tree. It has a spread of about 20ft and has several noticeable pruning marks including these ones, the bottom one is quite a noticeable hole.

There is a nesting box rather randomly hung halfway up the tree which blue tits are certainly considering the last few times I have been up there.
It has lovely bark.

This weekend I noticed the first signs of the buds starting to pop though they are far from open yet where as the crab-apple tree is almost in leaf already.

I suspect it is a later flowering and indeed fruiting tree because some of the windfalls were still intact and edible a few weeks ago when I found them hidden under other more eaten ones which makes me think it's a later fruiting apple which will keep well. Hopefully it will give us some fruit this year to confirm or refute that.

A year of a Tree

 I have just found this idea via another blog. You can find the full idea here at A Year of a Tree.

Basically you pick a tree and observe it regularly through out the year seeing what it is like and how it changes over time. I have had a word with Noddles and we have agreed we will do it and pick a tree in the park we walk through every day to go to school.

The photo above is part of the park taken last year in the snow. We will go over sometime this week and chose a tree, it's half-term so one of the few weeks in the year we aren't going through it daily!

This is another part of the park

and these two are a couple of big mature trees just outside the park we sometimes walk past if we go round instead of through the park.

So plenty to choose from and that's without considering the trees lining Binley Rd or the Conker trees in the other park or all the trees on the old railway embankment between the school and another public green space on the other side of the road !

Once we have chosen our tree I will post here and join the Year of a Tree group properly.