Crab: the power of waiting (and carrying time from one year to the next). When tasted, this energy is sour, when touched it is prickly, when contemplated it is not chosen, yet it retains the ability to accept frost and shed that masking sourness for the most intense fruitiness of all. (It takes concentration. The old name of the fruit, Krabb, with an r scraped out of the throat, is the very sound of the throat closing up with the dryness of acid.) One must be willing to wait for a crab’s crabbiness to be carried away by the bacteria of the earth and the air, and then … well! In the end, each year, crabapples may be rejected by people, but are devoured by the birds of February and March. Not one is left for the spring sun.

Crabapple Pollinizer, Vernon, British Columbia