The "Walnut Heaven" Story

The walnut trees that sit on the hill
next to our drive.

It was an ordinary day. Need to sit down.  I just finished collecting 22 big buckets of walnuts from my lawn under the six English Walnut trees we have in our side yard.  Make that from my lawn, the street, the driveway and the neighbor's yard.  I tried to mow the grass right over top of them, but the mower was bouncing all around and the walnuts were flying across the street when I hit them with the mower blade.  Also, certainly not too good on the blade.  This is only the third time since we have lived in our "Shore House", as Carol and I like to call it, that I had to collect walnuts.  Normally the squirrels start to bury them in late summer as they start to fall or they sit on our fence and eat them and leave the shells behind, but this year there aren't many squirrels around the house.  

Lugging the walnuts to their home.

Probably due to the three stray cats that frequent our back porch looking for handouts.  Some summers there are very few walnuts on the trees.  I heard that when that occurs, it will be a mild winter because the animals won't need a large collection of nuts to eat.  Well, if that's the case, it will be a bitter winter this year.

Making the dump.

 I can't remember this many walnuts dropping from the trees.  What to do with them!  Some of the 22 buckets of walnuts went in the trash cans, but the weight of all will put me way over the 40 pound limit per can that the trash company asks of their customers.  So, I dumped them behind the fence along my driveway.  Thousands of them sit about a foot deep along the fence that slopes from the hill where the trees sit to the lawn on the other side of the fence.  At first I just started throwing them towards the fence, but after I discovered I missed with quite a few and had to pick them off the lawn on the other side of the fence, I went and grabbed the big buckets.  

Final resting place.

The sun was hot, the walnuts were smelly and the weight started getting to me as I finished.  But, the job is done and when the remaining squirrels that are still brave enough to frequent our property find the stash, they will be in walnut heaven.  I'm hoping the walnuts will decay over the winter and will act as mulch on the grasses that grow in the area where I deposited them.  Time will tell.  When my wife came home from work and saw me sitting on my favorite chair, she asked what on earth I was doing.  Seems that my hands were a dark shade of brown and the color of my blue shirt was also the same color.  "Hope that's not one of your favorite shirts, because you just ruined it!"  But, it is!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.