Cleaning up the Crabapple Tree

We had 4 glorious days of sunny summer weather over the weekend and I didn't even spend 15 minutes in the garden.  I was too busy with other things.  Well, the clouds have returned but I finally have time for my garden.  I got lucky to find a sunny patch of the day to tackle a needed pruning of my crabapple tree.

An arborist told me I could invigorate the elderly ornamental in its battle against moss by removing the base sprouts often.  You can see that I waited a while between prunings this time as some of the stems are nearly three feet tall.

Before I got started on the tree itself, I pulled out all the miscellaneous weeds at its base.  There was a lot of dandelion and the weed below.  I don't know its name.

Then I got to business clipping of the sprout stems as close to their origins as possible.  If you clip them too high, they host multiple new sprouts in a few weeks.

To get this done in 15 minutes, I had to work at a fast pace.  It was a bit like Boot Camp but it didn't last as long.  I must say I am looking forward to when I can spend some leisurely time in the yard.  But that wasn't today.  In the end I had a bucket of weeds and a pile of stems for the yard waste bin.

 And a spruced up tree for spring.