Black Walnuts

When the push for fall yard cleanup began in October, and I finally started to rake leaves in the far back area of the yard (we have an “L” shaped yard — so in the corner spot) I noticed an abundance of black walnuts falling. The tree is just on the other side of the fence, I expect it does belong to us because there is a four foot strip of land left for access and fence maintenance.

Anyway, I was outside and these walnuts were falling fast, dodging to avoid getting hit by them. At the time I thought for sure I took pictures, but naturally I cannot find them at the moment.

Looking them up on Wikipedia and elsewhere, I learned that the fruit production is unreliable, not necessarily appearing every year (hence no commercial interest in the product). It seems the husks were used by early settlers to dye fabric, an interesting fact. I also learned they are edible, and this interested me except that all the party preparations were my focus and time consuming effort at the time.

While my intentions to explore black walnuts were honorable they were lost in the flurry of election activity. Plus the harvesting of them appears to be work intensive — gloves required to remove the husks (stained hands if no precaution is taken, see the wiki link), drying them, then finally removing the nut from the shell. So perhaps next year, should the tree decide to produce again.  All that remain of the black walnuts are shown by the examples in the photo above.  And in the photo below is a lovely autumn picture of the back yard, carriage house in the distance.  Both images by Llewellyn.

Autumn View of Back Yard