Twenty Five Apple Pies

About ten years ago I was sent to the local Nursery to buy an apple tree.  When I returned home my wife Anne had a good laugh at the tiny dwarf Granny Smith specimen I returned with.   Good natured husband that I am, I clenched my teeth and planted my young charge in the back yard and doused it with water.   And then we waited.  

Several years later the tree began to bear fruit.  The fall harvest tended to be particularly bountiful when it did not follow one my of well-intentioned but hopelessly savage winter pruning attempts.  So, with that in mind, I've pretty much given up trying to assist the tree in doing what just comes naturally, and in the past couple of years it's showered us with green apples.   Lots of them.

Granny Smith apples are particularly well suited to making Apple Pies and I am equally well suited to eating them.  I've eaten a lot. Even with the rest of the family helping out, there have always been more pies than we could possibly eat without becoming apple pies, and so we've started baking and giving most them away.  

It seemed like a shame to send all of those pies off to their doom with nothing more than a dim memory as a keepsake.  So this year I took a picture of every one.   All 25 of them.  So here, for your visual enjoyment, is the class of 2008:

PS: Scott's reminded me that I forgot the first one. It had its debut and its final performance at Scott and Kao's house. It was a beauty.