Nuts to you

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There aren’t many birds up here, except for woodpeckers, and a few Mountain Bluebirds. This morning we saw a woodpecker on top of the jeep, and then he started pecking. I ran to the windshield (aka: picture window) and rapped, and he didn’t even look up. Bob said he hears rapping all day! So I opened the door, and off he flew! He was standing on the luggage rack pecking on one of the bars. Stupid bird…does that look like an oak tree???

Today we went to a pumpkin/apple festival at one of the local farms. I would have called it an orchard, but things are different here. Apple ranches? Yep. Chicken farms? Yep again! Apparently they plant those eggs, and chickens pop up! Anyway, these are some of the groves we drove through on the way to Tuolumne, and turns out they not only grow a variety of apples, but also nuts: walnuts, five kinds of almonds, (five kinds? That would be Smoked Almonds, BBQ, Salted, plain…see, I can’t even think of five kinds), and pecans. We talked to one of the owners and she said they give school tours, but they are scheduled during our work hours, so we couldn’t go along. We didn’t get anything worked out, but it sure would be interesting to go through there. The walnuts are just falling out of the pods, and I took some pictures, so we’ll see if they show you enough to make sense.

The weather is still early fall~~chilly in the morning, warm in the afternoon, and chilly big time when the sun goes down.

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Photos

The bottom walnut is in
the hull, but you can see the hull starting to pull away from the nut on the top. We were told not to pick up the hull, because it will stain your hands. Pioneers used the hulls to dye cloth.I wish I had gotten a picture of the whole tree. It looks like a small apple tree. There are walnuts lying on the ground, just like apples do!

Here's a picture of a nut
is almost ready to fall. It looks like the hull has a grip on it, but I don't know that.

Just another look at the same
walnut as the last picture. In this one you can see light through the top of the pod.

The people thought it was
more fun than the cat did. And if you get the idea that the cat was being led, you're wrong. The cat was leading.

Comments

[MikeWas]

Woodpeckers love to make noise
Woodpeckers marking their territory will peck on whatever makes the most noise. The farther the noise carries the farther he is announcing his territory. In the wild they love hollow trees, the cavity is a big resonant chamber. But they'll pound on pipes, cars, downspouts, metal utility poles ... you name it!

[Danielson]

Thanks for the information!
There are a lot of them around here, so they must work hard on finding space!

[carrell evans]

walnuts
That is very cool that the English walnuts fall out of the hull! We used to have black walnut trees in our yard in Prosser, WA. They fell with the hull and made such a mess on the ground if you didn't pick them up, because the hulls had to either rot off the nut or be chewed off by the squirrels who then buried them ALL OVER the yard creating quite a washboard for mowing or a forest of little walnut trees. The hulls stained the hands badly. Needless to say, our children hated the "on" years for the walnuts (bi-annually producing) because they had to pick them up. One year our son, John, and his friend took a bucket full and a couple of drivers to the overlook on Horse Heaven hills and...You get the picture.

[Patti]

Work Hours?????????
From the number of pictures and all the fun places you get to go and see, when exactly were those work hours?????

[Danielson]

Even more nuts!
What a funny story! Thanks for sharing...it made both of us laugh, and Bob commented that it would be fun to try that from the #6 tee box in Sidney!

[Danielson]

What's work????
We are working~~or what everyone calls work! The men are working hard~~everything has to be carried from on slope to another, no matter what they're working on. And the lumber company that dropped off the wood didn't do them any favors by placing it where they did. We finished cleaning and resetting the gift shop, and yesterday Wanda and I worked in the flower beds, and Nancy and Germaine sewed rags out of raggedy towels. Today we all four cleaned one of the houses that a staff member is moving into. It took four of us 3 1/2 hours (that's our work day!) and it looks terrific, and smells wonderful! Hey, they call that working!