I am happy to report that I made the apple pies for Thanksgiving this year from the apples from my own tree. My son and family hosted and cooked the main meal, it was as always a stupendous feast.
The apples came from a tree that was a first year seedling, the year we moved here to our deserty abode in 1976. I nurtured this little seedling until it is now a 25 foot tree. I always heard that seedling apple trees rarely have tasty apples. There was a large seedling apple at my Mom’s place (long gone now) in Bend, just a block from the Third Street And Franklin Street Safeway and it lived up to the myths of not very tasty apples. But my tree’s apples are excellent, a yellow delicious type. They were not a total suprise, because I had one or two apples a while back. But after 29 years, this apple tree finally fully fulfiled her mission of reproduction and had a full crop of apples and made a delicious pie.