Like a Rolling Head

[rejectomorph]

Oh, Bastille Day again, already? How the time flies! Next thing you know, The Terror will be upon us.

Something else that has flown is the heat. The day was so mild that I kept the windows open all afternoon, but the evening cooled so quickly that I had to close them soon after sunset. It's the lost spring, here at last! I managed to get quite a bit of yard work done, too. The dead parts of the rose bushes have been lopped off, and a few more nettle plants have been plucked from the grass-less rear part of the lot. The kittens are starting to go back there frequently, and I don't want them to have to be chewing nettles from their fur.

There were two belated poppies today, and a stand of daisies I thought would never bloom this summer has produced buds. The gardenia has surprised me with several dozen white flowers, when I was expecting no more than a handful. Also surprising is the walnut tree, which bore no more than two dozen nuts last year, shows every sign of having a big crop on the way. If next winter is a bad as last winter, at least I'll have plenty of nuts squirreled away.

Comments

[saltdawg.livejournal.com]

are walnuts formed all big and crunchy, or do they need roasting like chestnuts? I've never been forced to think about walnut origins before...

[rejectomorph]

Walnuts come ready to eat from the shell, just like their close relative the pecan. The nut grows inside a husk that has to be removed to get to the hard shell, though, so they don't look like nuts when they are on the tree but like little green fruits. These get darker and a bit wrinkly as the nuts ripen, and they're really dark by the time they fall off the tree.

The husk is supposed to peel away from the shell easily after the nut is harvested, but in my experience they usually cling tenaciously. The inner layer of the husk starts to rot and gets smelly and slimy if you leave it on too long, and then removing it is really messy. I might be doing it wrong.