Every time I see a squirrel sitting on a fence eating a peach I have found it cute, and have taken innumerable pictures of this cuteness. But after this episode happened five times a day on a daily basis, I forget the cuteness and slowly developed   anger and frustration to see my peach tree devoid of fruit!

Last year around same time I went through major frustrations trying out every creative trick to scare away the squirrels from eating my crop of peaches. Protecting your fruit trees from wildlife!
Necessity mother of invention! Squirrel Control! But to no avail.

This year too,  the story was almost repeating itself till hallelujah I had a brilliant idea to reap the fruit of my labor and hours of watering and gardening in a different way!

One morning when I saw two squirrels’s sitting on my fence post eating my big large unripe green peaches, I grabbed a big basket and started plucking almost all the peaches off the trees. I still remember the look on the squirrels face who was audience to my crazy enthusiasm who possibly thought ” What is this woman doing?” “What does she plan to do with so much unripe fruit? ”

Having left some fruit on the tree for the squirrels to enjoy, I felt comfortable to have picked my share of fruit from the trees! Now of course I was told by others to put unripe fruit in brown bag and leave it in a pantry corner to ripe or drop it in a rice bag to help ripen. But my past experience with this strategy had not being successful.

Hence I decided a better way to enjoy the fruit from my tree, make something with it.
Previous years I had made peach salsa; stir fry peach curry and more with ripe peaches. This year   inspired by my mother, a friend and our family friend  aunt who have a reputation of making good Indian pickles with fruit and vegetables, I decided to try that route for my unripe peaches.

And voila, I too made a yum Indian peach pickle or grated chutney which is  hot and tangy.

Hence this lesson inspires me and hopefully others, to look for new directions for life situations; it will find its fruitful victory!