Jackie French | Two life lessons I'll never forget

Back then I saw no reason to have even a single crabapple growing in my garden. Why not a proper apple tree, with big crunchy apples? Every apple tree has glorious blossom, especially now there are trees that produce full-sized red-fleshed apples and have brilliant red flowers in spring, too.

But their blooms are not as glorious as crabapple blossom - nor as early. The earliest varieties of crabapple begin to bloom in late winter/early spring. It doesn't matter if they are hit by frost, and while only one in 10 blooms sets fruit, that will be quite enough to make crabapple jelly.

Ah, that jelly. Crabapples have far more pectin - the setting agent - than ordinary apples. Add a few crabs when boiling blackberries, hawthorns, elderberries or any other fruit that is hard to set, and your jam will suddenly behave. Add a few peppermint leaves towards the end of your crabapple cooking and you have a perfect mint jelly that wobbles instead of runs or sticks to the spoon. I've flavoured crapapple jelly with peppermint geranium/pelargonium leaves too, and rose-scented geranium/pelargonium, and the result has been delicious, though I still like plain crabapple best. Not that there is any such thing as "plain crabapple" as each crab variety will give a slightly different tasting and coloured jelly.

No artificial pectin can give the same result as adding a handful of crabapples to your jams and jellies. If adding them to jams, though, tie the crabapples in gauze, netting, cheese cloth or a bit of old clean panty hose so you can remove the skin and seed detritus before bottling.

Then there is the colour. Crabapples can be deep red, purple, pink, yellow, bright gold and red together, or tiny and brownish, and all of them give vivid jellies in the most glorious rich colours - even the brownish tiny ones give a gold jelly.

Picking crabapples is one of the most peaceful pursuits I know. No one really needs crabapple jelly, nor in these supermarket days do we need to make it. Picking, making, gazing at the filled jars, giving some away, piling the quivering jelly on a scone - all are deep and gentle luxuries that leave you smiling.

We pick our crabs after the first frost, when the leaves have dropped from the branches, leaving the trees a bit like Christmas trees decorated with fruit instead of baubles. That way the birds have had time to enjoy the harvest too, though crabs can be picked and made into jelly as soon as they have sufficient colour: ie from now onwards. The picking time depends on your free time and your affection for birds and fruit bats. One of my great joys is watching the birds crunch and quarrel in the trees.

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Crabs will also give your garden stunning blossom for months, if you plant enough varieties. There are literally hundreds - possibly thousands - of varieties of crabapple bred purely for the magnificence of their blossom, in whites, creams, pinks and red, single petaled ones like a thousand butterflies or ones so heavy with petals they droop under the weight of the dew.

Our spring is marked out by the progression of crabs, ending with the purple-flowered crab that gives big purple crabapples by the carport, and beginning with the big white-blossomed crabapple by the chook house that has a Dorothy Perkins rose growing through it. Crab trees are also an excellent structures to support rambling roses, but only plant the rose after the tree is established, say year five, when the soil under the tree isn't too shaded and root compacted for the rambling rose to grow well.

Amazingly, every crabapple I've planted has survived wallabies, drought, soggy soil in the recent very wet seasons, bushfire winds, and complete neglect. If you want beauty, and deciduous trees that will shade you, your garden, the dog and the planet in summer but lose its leaves to welcome the sunlight in winter, go for crabs. They are pretty much unkillable, except by wallabies - and even when nibbled or torn, will almost certainly survive once you net the tree to protect it till it's above wallaby reach - about a metre and a half, or a bit more.

I'm not going to give you a list of varieties to try. Every single one will grow well in your garden, and look stunning. I also have no idea what varieties will be available this winter, in garden centres or specialist online fruit tree nurseries. Study the labels, as you may have to choose between stunning fat blooms and big fat crabs, some of which are the size of miniature apples and get crunched by the kids each time they pass the tree. Any crabapple is a good jelly apple, but the crabs with the biggest fruit do look stunning all through autumn and in to winter.

As for the clothes tip: years before when my friend was working in a hospital during a hard divorce, she reached the point one day when she just flung on the first thing to hand, and didn't bother with earrings or scarves or make up. Her first patient that day, elderly, in pain, and with only a few months to live, looked almost ready to cry. "We all wonder what outfit you'll wear! You've spoiled my only bright spot of the day."

I don't have her taste, artistry, elegance or access to designer gear, but as someone who'd be happy in a relatively soft, preferably inflammable and snake-proof old potato sack, I now do dress as well as I can, not for myself, but for others. I also have a heck of a lot of crab trees.

It's time to unearth the empty jars in the larder, and dream of translucent pink, gold and red jars of jelly on the bench.

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