Field Study's Man in E11 was the apple blossom of my eye

Apple Tree - Plot B - 12th April

I was rather down-spirited at the weekend despite the splendid show of blossom by many of the allotment's fruit trees. While the flowers presented themselves as a heartening feast for the gardeners' eyes I was also aware of them as potential sites for a spring time festival of pests and diseases. I could not enjoy them as I wanted to because Field Study's Man in E11 was likely to be inhabiting all of the flowers in the form of site specific pests and/or diseases. Of course as a counter-horticultural doctrinaire he would be inhabiting the minds of the pests. Given he had taken to the broad beans via the burrowing collective consciousness of 'thee Bean Weevil' (of the family, Chrysomelidae) I wondered if he had altered his state of mind into that of 'thee Apple Blossom Weevil' (of the family, Curculionidae)?   

I searched for the tell tale signs of Anthonomus pomorum. I was unconvinced by the absence of symptoms of apple blossom weevil. What state of mind is it that conceives of everything as a figment of one's imagination? The reality was, surely, blight ridden and not so picturesque; so bucolic! This was the host of the field student.

Never mind. Relish the illusion. It might never happen again. The field student was no longer the apple (blossom) of my eye; rather the canker, capsid, curcullio, dimpling bug, leafhopper, maggot, mosaic, sawfly, scab and, last but not least, the sucker. What a carnival procession of earthly delights to play mas in my mind! This was potentially a grim progress of abject possibilities. The spectacle was on the verge of deteriorating into a grotesque field day for epidemiologists. 

What sorts of metamorphic aberration would be revealed by the unfolding of the buds? The buds would, I feared, open up to reveal the psychological meddling of the field student; as if the results had hatched from the fevered mind of Hieronymous Bosch. 

The abundance of blossom became totally abhorrent in it's shell-like beauty. I sought refuge in the leaves but there was none to be found for the field student's malignant stream of consciousness flowed through every vein and capillary.

I longed for the bare branches of winter and the stripped bare simplicity senescence brings.

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings

Psalms 17.8