Walnuts!

Squirreling away our share

One of the many joys of living here is the giant walnut tree in front of our house. A quarter of it split and fell a couple years ago and it's still huge. Its a beautiful tree and every couple years it produces a bumper crop of walnuts. This is one of those years. We, however, are not the only ones that enjoy the fruit of this tree. We are in a race against the squirrel. I think we're winning so far, but I do have thumbs and buckets so I recognize that it is not a very fair race. We can hear them fall from inside our house and I can see the squirrel rushing out to find the fallen nut before I can get my boots on. We have been gathering them pretty steadily over the last two weeks. They really started to fall with the first big rain of the season. The nut itself is encased in a green husk which is hanging from the branch. When it gets ripe the husk cracks and releases the walnut in its shell. We were so excited about the baskets of walnuts we've been able to gather that I eagerly cracked open a few. The nuts were still a little soft and under ripe tasting. Last time I gathered nuts they didn't taste like this - they were wonderful. I think we might be collecting them earlier this year than I usually do - both because of trying to beat the squirrel and because of the rain prematurely knocking them out of their husks. I think that if we just let them dry a little in their shells that they will be delicious. We'll see. Walnuts are one of those things that I hated as a child and now I love.
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Walnut about to fall.....