This morning the trees and bushes were coated with frost, and I've been trying to figure out if it was soft rime or hoarfrost.

At first, reading about the differences between the two confused me. Soft rime and hoarfrost both occur when surfaces (including tree branches and twigs) have been chilled below freezing, but the two phenomena occur under different conditions.

Hoar frost forms on clear nights when trees lose enough heat that they become cooler than the air surrounding them.  Any water vapor in the air deposits directly onto a surface as ice, or hoarfrost. It occurs slowly.

Rime forms on cold, moist nights when the air is saturated with "super-cooled" water and when there's at least some wind. Riming occurs quickly, and if the wind is strong enough, the rime crystals will grow the direction the wind is blowing.

I do know that when I first woke at 7 a.m., fog obscured the trees a hundred feet away.  The temperature was near zero, and the humidity was about 100 percent. Based on that information and what I read on Wikipedia and The Weather Doctor's website, I'm going to declare I saw rime this morning on the trees, including the crabapple with its little, fermenting apples. Though the crystals encircled the surfaces I saw, on some Norway pine needles and twigs, the rime was heavier on one side than the other.   

Hoar (or hoary) means gray or white with age, ancient, or covered with white or gray hair. However, the adjective has fallen so far out of use that even some meteorologists will snicker when they say the word "hoarfrost" during a weather report.

When I was outside taking pictures, a few chickadees flew past me and chased each other through a Norway pine. They kept in touch with each other through the icy branches with their buzzing, plosive call.