Harvest Time

This afternoon was filled with the joyful glee of harvest time. It began with an innocent mention of the fact of many ripe tomatos on the vines. Kiki snatched this bit of information and went a-harvesting. Patches, Gleek, Link, and a neighbor boy all went with her.

I was downstairs deep in concentration on a sewing project when I became aware of the sound of children very close to my window well. They had discovered that tomatos shoved through the window well grate made a satisfying splat sound upon landing. At first it was only rotten tomatos, but by the time I ran upstairs to call the game to a halt every tomato their hands touched was being declared “rotten”. Even the green ones.

I chased the swarm of children away from the nigh barren tomato plants, but true to the nature of most swarms, it didn’t disband, just settled in a new location. This time the focus was the Walnut tree.

For those who may not know, Walnuts form slowly over the course of the summer as green balls on the tree. These green balls are half again as large as you’d expect because there is a thick green outershell to protect the walnut shell which in turn protects the nut itself. Apparently nature herself has learned the art of over packaging. This green outershell has the ability to stain fingers and clothing black. If boiled it would probably make an excellent dye because it doesn’t wash off. Late in the summer some of these green shells turn black, soft, and squishy because small maggots have moved in to eat the outershell. Gleek calls them “cute little worms!” everyone else in the whole world calls them “EEEEEEW!”

Fortunately our walnuts are past the wormy stage. The outershells have dried and curled back and the walnuts have begun falling from the tree. Kiki discovered that shaking the tree would bring down a rain of walnuts. (Don’t get hit. They hurt!) Then the swarm would gather the walnuts and hand them to Kiki through our back window. I don’t know why the window. The door was right there. In fact they developed an assmebly line. Neighbor Boy would peel off any remaining outershell, Patches would deliver the nut to Kiki, Kiki would sit inside and place the nut into a bucket. Link and Gleek had wandered off to play something else.

I like this kind of game. Now I have a bucket full of walnuts that need to be shelled and dried so that we can use them.