Trees in Love

Two trees embracing and kissing on the Divine Property, and I never noticed them until now. Views from both sides.

Free Food

A shagbark hickory tree has a three-year cycle, producing lots of nuts, then some, then squat, and I didn't know that, so last year when the shade tree had squat I blamed drought, or squirrels, or myself somehow, and was a sad sack until I heard this year's nuts pinging on my roof and smacking the pump-house roof, and  beheld a whole darned treefull to harvest.

They cluster in twos and sometimes threes. I pick only those I can reach from terra firma or by standing on top of the pump house, the only time I ever do anything so foolish. Still I filled a basket.

Within the spicy-fragrant (like Old Spice shaving lotion) green husk is a small brown husk hiding the nut. The green husk dries to brown, splits, and must be removed, and then the tight-as-a-leotard inner husk must dry; by that time, it's Christmas. Needing a drying rack and loath to buy one I raided the garage and made a duplex drying rack out of a plastic organizer that just never fit anywhere in the house and a screen that no longer has a window to match.

Ultimately I will have about a pound of nuts to look forward to. Cracking my own hickory nuts at Christmas is divine.

Wet Woods Wedding Dress

The soaking rains of April and early May, interspersed with a two-day span of warm sunshine, gave this live tree trunk in the woods a whole gown and train of fresh Turkey Tail mushroom (inedible). In eastern Missouri, luckily, it simply rained, and we didn't end up with the five inches of snow that Kansas City received on Thursday night and Friday morning. However, we eastern Missourians have no idea whether to wear our parkas or our cutoffs or our snow boots or sandals.