Unwanted Harvest
For the past few weeks we’ve been afflicted by the nuisance of being bombarded by thousands of two-inch ball bearings cascading down into the yard. You might call these ball bearings “black walnuts” but we just view them as hazards of the yard and hillside to be navigated around.
Neither of us like eating black walnuts so we see nothing beneficial in their presence. In addition, many of Mrs. Barn’s plants, especially in the vegetable garden, are harmed by the toxic juglone in walnuts, walnut leaves, and walnut sap. She’s had to reconfigure the garden continuously to accommodate the magnificent trees growing just outside the west end of the fenced area.
Bombing season is drawing to a close so I will rake up the trash-can-full of these dangerous nuisances in the coming days. If only we had a better breed of squirrels to haul them all away. We’ve got gigantic squirrels here (seriously, almost as big as the cat) but the bums are too lazy to bother with our needs and clean up the yard.
Be careful what you wish for. Squirrels hauling them away can be a problem too. The furry little guys (and I’m being extremely generous in my description but thought it better than the words I would have liked to use) like to bury and hide them and one year an industrious little fellow decided the vent stack protruding from my roof was the perfect place to store them away for the winter. He hauled quite a few up there. I only discovered them because I was on the roof blowing leaves out of my gutters. The plumber admitted he never before had to rod a line “up”. They were lined up like pinballs in a machine where the plumbing tied into the stack.
Walnut husks make an excellent dye.
We have a similar unwelcome harvest in our yard every year! If you ever engineer a better breed of squirrels, please send one my way.