SPRING BUDS AND BLOOMS 77 



With these dwarf apple trees at Breeze Hill, the 

 whole of the picture is in sight, and a lovely picture 

 it is ! A "near-apple," otherwise one of the crab- 

 apple family, known as Pyrus or Mains floribunda, 

 is the especial and exquisite beauty of them all. 

 Wholly covered with buds that swell and swell into 

 red ovals, there comes a day when these ovals 

 burst into a pink bloom that is astonishing in its 

 combination of flamboyance and delicacy. 



The apple blooms on the espalier have given 

 this year a chance to really get wise to the spraying 

 game. A friendly fruit-sharp has suggested that 

 we watch and picture the various stages, and it 

 has been done. See the cluster of blooms only 

 partly open; no poison for the mean little cater- 

 pillar that grows into the codlin-moth could pene- 

 trate. Even the wide-open cluster is not right, for 

 the fertilization is not complete, and the stamens 

 crowd closely upon the pistils, closing up the heart 

 of the flower that is to be the heart of the fruit. 

 But when the winds have blown the flowers about, 

 and the bees have had their fill of the sweetness, 

 incidentally brushing the pollen on to the waiting 

 stigmas; when the petals, no longer useful in color 

 and odor to advertise the honey that is to pay the 

 bee for his help, have just fallen; when the calyx 

 is open and relaxed, and the heart of the flower- 



