Oh what a splendid apple tree! Joan was so proud of it. Every year it produced hundreds of apples. They were the perfect apple, not too sweet and not too sour. Perfect for cooking and perfect for eating raw.
Every year Joan would preserve apple sauce, and make apple pies, and strudel, and everything that required apples. The cider she made in the shed behind her garage; she didn’t want thieves eager for alcohol loitering at her gate. Joan would share her apple produce with the neighbours. But one neighbour was the problem…
Joan’s apple tree grew on the boundary fence.
“How am I meant to get the clothes dry when your apple tree shades my clothes line from the sun?” asked the neighbour. “Chop that wretched tree down.”
Joan got in an arborist to cut some branches off to allow the sun to shine through, but the neighbour was still not happy. “Chop that wretched tree down or I’ll somehow get rid of it myself.”
Joan refused. And then, ever so slowly, the tree died.
Weave a Web 
I have an apple thief in my neighborhood. I suspect the next door neighbor who is obsessed with lawn ornaments. And apples.
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You need to do what Snow White’s mother did.
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Maybe. But I’d miss the garden gnomes and weird frog statues.
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One could say the frog croaked.
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This is very sad, Bruce. I like it though.
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Eek! I attached the wrong comment to the wrong posting! Thanks, Chris. Much appreciated!
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I swear the same thing happened to my father, except it was a mango tree! The story therefore has a global significance, and thus a classic. It made me sad!
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Thanks Uma. I was inspired by the apple tree at the back of the property where I live. Although no one has complained and it’s laden with ripe apples – too many to use.
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Nasty neighbour. In Newark, where there were very few gardens, we could not give our apples away. People were wary of a box labelled ‘Help Yourself’.
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Two houses away from me they have 7 feijoa trees on their front lawn (I think the love of feijoas might be a NZ thing?) There are hundreds rotting on the ground and they cost 8 dollars a bag in the shop. I went to ask if I could have some but they’re never home.
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Scrump ’em
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Hmmm… time to poison the neighbor. We had an apple tree in our yard when we lived in Evanston, IL. It fed the squirrels for miles around – we had to fight them off to get apples!
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We have no squirrels in New Zealand, but possums and birds are the pests. But hey! The apple tree produces extravagantly and what else is there for them to eat in winter?!
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