It's Sugar Time

Wow. The little crabapple I planted outside the kitchen window last fall is simply stunning this spring. Still a small tree and still ungainly in shape, it is covered with fragrant white flowers. 

Buds start out pink and then open pure white.

It is Malus 'Sugar Tyme'. I don't know why they had to spell it "tyme" and not "time" -- sugar time is apt, as the flowers have a sweet smell. A little perfumey, but nice.

Fresh green tiny leaves opened in earliest April, then the buds appeared and by mid April this tree was a fluff of white flowers.

It's still cold here at night, and chilly in the daytime. Few other trees have done anything by mid April or even leafed out, but Sugar Tyme is gloriously ahead of everyone.

April does bring fruit trees into bloom in Santa Fe, and some years it all looks great. This year has been a disappointment for the flowering purple plums that line our streets, or the usually dazzling apricot next door. White flowering pear trees look like they typically do, but the mature crabapples just don't look as brilliant in bloom or as lush as in prior years. Not a great spring for early blooms this year.

This young crabapple in my back yard, on the other hand, makes up for the generally poor show around town. It is simply glorious on a cold sunny morning in April.

I have gotten used to waiting and waiting for the first few years to see if a plant in my garden will survive, thrive, or quit. It's a tough climate to get things established in. This tree, only planted last October, is upending all my expectations.