how d'ye like them apples?

After humming and haaaing about whether it was too late to plant fruit trees (spring having definitely sprung in this part of the woods), and whether it was too boggy in our garden to plant them, I went on a "let's just see what's at the garden centre" expedition with a friend this morning.

I dithered and waffled and eventually decided it was too hard, gave up and we went for a coffee. Lovely coffee, lovely cafe - lots of room, and a toy box! excellent.

Got home, fed Miss1 her lunch, ate mine, and was just thinking about getting Miss4 from kindy when I thought "No, blow it, I am going to buy some trees today!"

I hopped online, looked up a couple of the cultivars that had caught my eye this morning, made a mental list of 3 and off we went! Collecting Miss4 on the way, of course :)

I headed straight for the apples, and loaded the cart with a Peasgood Nonsuch, and a Mother, but paused when I saw how tall the Oratia Beauty was. Could I fit it in the car??? (apples described here)

Yeeah, she'll be right! Give it a go... So onto the trolley it went too.

Of course, since I was in buying mode I then couldn't walk past a thornless blackberry, or a couple of comfrey seedlings, or a packet of runner beans, which is why I usually try and avoid the garden centre - but it will all come in handy and all be good for the garden and our food supply, right?

Managed to get them in the car by lying the tall ones from the passenger side floor, up over the tilted seat-back and along over the kids' heads. No worries!

Headed home, put Miss1 to sleep and then Miss4 and I were straight back outside into our lovely spring afternoon.

Here is Mother in her transplanted splendour.

Apple Mother

She'll need staking, but I was too pooped to bang a stake in. The root-ball is quite small, though, so Merl can do that in the next few days without fear of damaging anything. yay.