Gone WalNutty

Greetings, fellow sentient beings!

How are your crops doing? They are mostly symbolic here but it's where we are for the time being, making symbolic gestures to our earth, as well. Gardening from time to time only so that we don't quite lose our legacy. Mostly me doing the dirty work. And that's between lots of other work sessions so it's more like a hobby.

The walnuts are quite real, though. The trees had a minimal amount of care given by me last...well...this year. I only started removing the ivy from The Old One. And I tried keeping the sapling where they sprouted. But mostly...the trees have been left on their own.

Which is what I actually want for that garden in the future. Self-sufficient trees. If possible. Of course, I am taking some care like watering all through the summer but that goes to the young ones that I just planted. Not the Walnuts.

I rely on the Walnuts to take care of themselves, mostly. And so far...they kind of do. They provide what they can...

Which is...

It was...almost a bucketful yesterday. About 15 litres of walnuts. Take out the air and the shells from the equation and it may prove to be mere 3 kilos of nuts in the end. It might even be less.

The Walnut Photo Story Quest

So, this quest stated almost like a joke when I told @tarazkp his next walnut thumbnail picture shall be used by me as a signal to finally go and check my walnut harvesting grounds. Then, when the signal did come, rain season ruled here and I had to postpone for about ten days or so. So, on the previous morning, the second sunny one in a row, I finally got there — to the garden where some old walnut trees grow or...peek in above the fences with neighboring yards, some abandoned, others...empty for the most part, just like ours.

It was also a quest of gathering nuts already on the ground since...there were quite a few of those and my time was limited so...in the end, most of what remained on the trees...remained on the trees. Yeah, some more to come in my next raid.

My first gathering ground was below the branches that spread all over the old tool and other stuff shed. Some of the fun included gathering the nuts from its improvised roof.

This side is where the handle was. After some reviewing on the spot, I decided I should only collect those shells that did not have a hole there, meaning less likely to be spoiled by small insects. Some of those nuts had ant armies hiding inside.

After applying that filter, not picking up or tossing aside nuts with holes where they used to connect to the branches, I limited my yield quite a bit. The walnuts from this large, wide nuts sort were hardly to fill the bottom of the bucket.

Then it was the second stop — The Old One. A family legacy tree.

Here it be, looming over the vineyard.

It's probably going to yield some more later. It's participating but not as it could. It's nuts are kind of scares. Still, being very big, it does give some non-negligible amount of nutses ;)

Relatively small and elongated (which is a word, I checked, and it does not derive from elon and gates).

Muddy business, I told you.

I did mention my previous fights versus the ivy. I found new one already creeping around the great trunk. But week yet and it shall be easy to remove.

Sometimes I wonder, though... Who am I to decide what is to live and what not? A gardener?

Well, no other gardeners around.

This is the old ivy drying up but still hanging to the tree. And going quite high up the crown.

One of the things that interests me the most, though, is this:

It might just turn into a self-made dude of a walnut tree.

The last stage of yesterday's quest included gathering the nuts below the tree of the neighbors who are no longer there in that abandoned strip of land beyond the fence. Almost half of the branches reach above our yard and so it's...

Free Loot!

And it's the most bountiful specimen this year.

Motsly working on the ground, picking my picky way through the shells, looking for holes that might give away rot on the inside, throwing those on the side...Someday I might return to gather them, too, but that would mean I've cleaned the rest and eaten it...which shall not be soon. Then again, better lift those off the ground, anyway. Their chances are not improving. Maybe next time...

Someone still hanging on that tree. The green envelopment is already rotten with the rains and black...slimy...oily...whatevery.

After an hour or so in this slow progressing work, I had gone through most of what lay on the ground and what I could reach and pick from the lower branches. It was nearing noon, time for work was closing in, so it was time to pick my bags up and hit the road.

Until next time.

So, this shall be all for now, I hope to meet some of you in the comments and chat about nuts.

Don't go quite nutty!

Yours,

Manol

P.S. All images taken on the same day with my small mirrorless Sony Alpha 6000 camera.