The Coul Blush
By Phil Baarda
Outside my kitchen window, in the farm where I'm currently living, there's a tree, an apple tree to be precise, that's very old. Its gnarly diameter must be nearly a yard across. It might be a couple of centuries old. It might be as old as this farm is. The earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1881 shows the farm, with an orchard precisely where this sole survivor stands. The archway to the farm's still-cobbled quadrangle has a stone-carved MacKenzie Caberfeidh antler crest saying '1728' suggesting the apple tree has had a pretty good innings.
It could be the sole survivor of the 7th Baronet's era in the early 19th century. Sir George Steuart (sic) Mackenzie was a polymath 'a man, it seems, of many distractions'. He was a chemist, geologist, playwright, phrenologist, and, most notably, an agriculturalist. Known as 'Black' George for his role in extensive sheep breeding and the area's clearances, he also developed the UK's most northerly apple variety, the Coul Blush. I like to think 'my' tree is 'his' tree - spanning a trio of centuries, a lone and resilient endurer.
But, in the first big autumnal winds of this 2020 plague year, the tree split, snapping completely through, a few feet above the ground. It may resprout - let's hope it does - from its partially rotted-out stump, showing decades and decades of tightly packed growth rings, too tightly packed to count.
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