Celebrated a victory today that was a long time in coming: An apple from my own tree. This may not sound like much, but the tree was planted in the front yard when I bought the house - 34 years ago.

The tree is usually covered in blossoms and depending on the bee population that year and other environmental factors, usually has a heavy fruit set. But I have never been able to actually pick one, as the entire crop gets stolen beforehand.

Between the squirrels who will take a bite of an unripe, golf ball-sized apple, spit it out and move on to the next, or birds that peck at the fruit and leave it to rot in place, I haven't gotten a single ripe apple.

I ordered what was supposed to be a golden delicious from Stark over three decades ago, but only this year have they ripened enough to identify 'em as red delicious. Gardening is tough when you have the only "free lunch" for blocks around.... And the only reason I have a few on the tree this year is that I have shifted from defensive operations to an offensive campaign.

For several years, I have been protecting individual apples with cages of hardware cloth so my grand daughter could actually pick one, but the buggers still succeeded. Now I would much rather to go after the miscreants with rocket-propelled grenades, but I figure there might be a bit too much collateral damage here in the city. So it's trapping and paint balls...and success...at last.

Cheers