The "English Walnuts Everywhere!" Story

The six English Walnut trees next to my house.

It was an ordinary day.  Finally decided it was time to begin the clean-up of the hill to the left of my house which has six large English Walnut trees on it.  Carol and I had just returned from an 11 day vacation to Antigua with our traveling friends Jere and Just Sue and when we left they were just beginning to drop their walnuts.  

Two buckets sit in front of an entire lawn
covered with English Walnuts.

Well, it didn't take long to drop the majority of them so I grabbed my large plastic buckets and began to pick up the walnuts from the lawn under them as well as much of the land nearby.  About ten years ago I wrote a story telling of doing the same thing, but with 10 more years of growth, the task has grown.  Years ago I was approached by a few people who asked if they could have the walnuts if they collected them.  I loved not having to spend hours picking them up, but after one year they never returned again.  They told me they were transporting then to another state to the west where they would sell them to a candy company.  This year I collected 21 buckets of English Walnuts and deposited them behind a fence to the bottom of the hill where the trees stand.  

The local squirrel and chipmunk population
uses our fence top to open and eat the walnuts.
Notice the hundreds of walnuts behind the fence.

 That was after I spent about half an hour throwing a few hundred behind the fence until my arm got tired.  Throughout the fall and winter months the squirrel population in the neighborhood will help themselves to the collection of English Walnuts behind the fence.  Many sit on the fence, break them open and after eating them leave the remains on the fence.  I must clean the fence a couple of times to keep the layer of shells from growing too high.  I have no idea what they taste like since I don't care for walnuts, but if the piles of shells is any indication, they must be good!  The cleanup usually takes the better part of a day since I find it such a daunting task as I grow older.  Perhaps it is time to hire a neighborhood boy or girl to take over the task for me.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Our neighbors help themselves to the walnuts and sit on the fence to eat them.