Well, well, well.....last fall we went to my Sister's house in a neighbouring town. She has walnut trees, and the nuts are simply wonderful. We brought home a whole bunch, left them outside for a few days (oh brother, here we go again with procrastination), and then went to get them ready for the curing. Most of them were gone!!!!!!
We have two species of squirrels that love to live around our place. The Douglas Squirrel, a little cute grey one. The other one is a black one, no clue what the species name is, but it is huge, probably at least double the size of the cute little grey Douglas. The big black one is an annoyance, I see it run along the conifer trees alongside our ravine and the trees branches shake and tremble. YOu know it is the big black squirrel.
Oh right, where was I? I digress (hee, hee). We managed to dehydrate a few of the lovely fall time treats, barely enough to whet your whistle, but still, we obtained a few.
This year my Sister's trees did not even produce narry a fruit. Rats!!!! It must have been the ugly summer weather we had, far too much dark days with not an awful lot of that beautiful sun that brings on the harvests, and of course, the rain (that even got my tomatoes the blight in the middle of August, even under cover in that beautiful greenehouse my Husband built for me, blight middle of August, unheard of....period) :( :roll:
Oh brother, lost again.....right. A couple of weeks ago I noticed these little trees growing in one of the raspberry patches. I examined these little trees, and lo and behold!!! They are walnut trees. Wonderful little squirrels, now I have a different adoration of them. They had burried the nuts and these trees grew. So they would be a one year old tree, yeah.
I did a little research on walnut trees, evidently they will/may produce fruit in their 6th year and may live up to the 70th year (approximate dates of course). I carefully dug up these little trees, brought along some nice bonemeal and some healthy soil that has been amended with peat moss, manures and composts (the area around my blueberry bushes), put these products in my wheelbarrow and headed out the back with shovel in tow.
I spent a good hour searching for the most appropriate spots to heel in these little treasures that I had found. Each hole I dug was large, I placed the little trees within, gave them some bonemeal, beautiful soil that I mixed in with the natural soil from the hole, gently stomped them in, threw away the weedy, grassy soil that was the first shovel full of the hole (much to the great happiness of the Titan pittbull who chased down the sods and shook the blazes out of them, running back for the next treat I would throw for him), and then let Mother Nature take on her job of growing. We have had lots of rain, so I didn't have to bring a great big bucket with water, that is the beauty of planting in the cool autumn. In a few years, we will have our own walnuts, if the squirrels don't do the nut attack first. I hope with the 5 trees that I planted, there would be enough to share with the squirrels, and any other creatures high and low that may be privy to this too. Yeah!!!! One more winter chore accomplished. Have a wonderful and beautiful day, our sun is gonna shine later this day. The bees will love it too, they were out yesterday for a short glimmer in time, they had a great time. I got stung on the eyebrow because one of the colonies did not appreciate me taking off the entrance reducer to take out the sticky board to count the mite fall after the oxalic acid vapourizing, so that gave me a little feeling of happiness :roll: :-D ;) :) :) Cindi