Cape Girardeau History and Photos
News photos that have grown whiskers and have become history
When I walked out to the car a couple weeks ago, I saw some marble-sized walnuts on the ground, just about the size that would hurt if you stepped on them with your bare feet.
Saturday, I noticed that a branch had snuck its way under my tarp car cover. When I grabbed the clippers, I saw that we’re going to have an early walnut season this year.
Griping about walnuts is a perennial topic for me. See my musings.
Being as how it would have been Mother’s 99th Birthday Season, it’s appropriate that I dig out these photos Fred Lynch took one day in 2014 when he was driving by the house.
She could get the hurricane-force wind under a pile of leaves, make them look like waves in the air, and send them all the way down the hill in no time.
I always said I could do better with a wide rake, but I couldn’t keep up with her.
After nearly falling when a leaf-hidden walnut rolled out from under me, and having one of nature’s Legos in the form of a black walnut sans hull leave me limping, I decided drastic measures were needed.
I was either going to have to display a sign like this and abandon the back yard for the duration, or I was going to have to corral the green (and black) monsters.
I tried my big rake first, but it couldn’t deal with both leaves AND walnuts. That’s when I reached into the closet for Mother’s leaf blower. It would move the leaves, but it didn’t have enough oomph to roll the walnuts (or I was skill deficient).
Plan C was the blow away the leaves so I could see the walnuts. Once the surface detritus was gone, I could use the rake to herd the nuts to the edge of the yard.
That allowed me to create safe passage to the bird bath and bird feeders on Sunday night.
Unfortunately, by Monday morning, another crop of nuts had fallen. Maybe the sign idea wasn’t that bad.
Phoebe the Bleeping Cat is tired of having to dodge falling walnuts. They also provide an obstacle course that slows her down when she’s trying to catch squirrels who are too tempting.
She blames the walnuts for her lack of success in apprehending the “fuzzy-tailed tree rats,” as Brother Mark calls them.
Every year it seems like I’m posting about the trials and tribulations of walnuts hitting the roof so hard it sounds like somebody breaking in.
These were a few I raked up out of the driveway last year.
Speaking of raking stuff up, here’s my 2014 rant about the green bombers.
My memory must be fading, because I plowed much the same ground in 2018.
These things are big enough that I’m going to have to corral them before I can run the mower to mulch the leaves.
Give me a ten-minute warning if you want me to be wearing pants, and I’ll loan you a rake, a five-gallon bucket, and two or three trash bags (you can keep the latter).
There are still plenty more in the trees. With that in mind, I might even loan you a hard hat or my bike helmet.
We’re coming up another Mother Birthday Season without the guest of honor. One of the things I’ve become almost used to are the sounds of a house that is empty except for me.
It used to startle me when I’d hear a BAM! like someone trying to break into the house. That would be followed by a RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE, SPLAT.
After awhile, I learned to identify that as the sound of walnuts hitting the roof, rolling down, then hitting the ground or driveway. In fact, it makes me think of the paraphrased lines of a B.J. Thomas song:
Walnuts keep falling on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red
Crying’s not for me
‘Cause, I’m never gonna stop the walnuts by complaining
Because I’m free
Nothing’s worrying me
Warriorette Shari came down from St. Louis for the weekend and griped about the walnuts all over the driveway. I told her it was part of my long-range financial plan to have her slip and fall, collect a huge insurance payout (which she would, of course, split with me), and figure she had won the liability lottery.
She rewarded me with The Look.
While I was sweeping them up, it made me think of past dealings with the green bombs.
Dad got the great idea that we should round up all the the nuts that fell in the yard, crack the shells and spend the winter picking out the goodies.
The big problem with that is that the walnuts are encased in a hard, green husk that has to be removed first. That ain’t easy. We tried all kinds of ways.
Putting them out in the street to let cars run over them just meant that you had to chase up the hill, down the hill and in the ditches on either side of the road after they had squirted off in every direction.
Then, he got a great idea: he bored several sized holes in a 2×6 board. We were supposed to select a hole slightly smaller than the husk, then drive it through the hole with a hammer, leaving the husk on one side and the nut on the other.
The nut, unfortunately, was the guy holding the hammer. You’ve heard of walnut stain, haven’t you? Well, there’s a reason for calling it that. I think I was about 42 years old before all of the stain wore off. I tried to convince people it was Dektol developer stain from the making prints in the darkroom because that sounded somewhat professional.
So, here’s the deal. If you have a hankering for walnuts, I have a yard full of them. Some of them have been herded together, but there are probably a bushel or two in the wild scattered all over the yard. Come and get ’em. (If you want me to answer the door with pants on, I suggest you give me a 10-minute warning.)
I just remembered that I had written about walnuts in 2014, and had plowed much the same ground. Nothing much has changed since then. You can click on any of the photos to make them larger, then use your arrow keys to navigate around.
Because walnuts were so hard to crack, and it was no fun to pick them out, we were more of a pecan family. Dad’s favorite winter pastime was sitting in the basement picking out pecans while watching TV.
In later years, Mother took over the task.