Tidings of Joy

 I just picked the first fruit from the Cox's Orange Pippin apple  I grew from a bench-graft.  According to my back mail, I ordered the tree in the winter of 2007.  It showed up as the stub of a twig with a bud taped into it.  It's a well-branched  -- though completely unpruned -- sapling now, at least an inch in diameter and seven or eight feet tall.   When my husband gets home, we will all have a ceremonial slice of apple.