Last night I went out on my back deck to water my pitiful little tomato plants and the other vegetation that I thought was a good idea to cultivate. I say pitiful because thanks to a humongous black walnut tree my husband decided to plant some years ago, I have very little sun. Since my deck is metal and I am always barefoot I guess it is a actually a good thing since prior to the Black Walnut I pretty much seared the soles of my feet every time I went out there. My husband tried growing an apple tree. It died. He tried a pear tree. Ditto. The peach tree didn’t fair very well either. So he basically needed a tree that he couldn’t kill. (Boy would that come back to bite us) When he came home with the tree about 5 years ago it was small and barely cleared our 6 foot fence. He said the garden center told him there would be no walnuts since there would have to be a female black walnut tree within close proximity. (I guess we had a male although I have no idea where to check…and no, the nuts IN the tree don‘t count) Year one the tree grew ridiculously fast and reached the second story of my house. By year three it was almost three stories tall blanketing my yard and my unsuspecting sun worshipping neighbors in shade. Last year it bore fruit. Apparently some other gullible moron went to the same garden center and fell for the same no walnut story and in time a polination…um, romance began. Now I love walnuts. I like them sprinkled on my cookies, crushed on my ice cream and especially imbedded in my brownies. But walnuts from the supermarket are not like the walnuts this tree bore. Key Food’s walnuts come in bags and cans. This tree grew clusters of green rock hard balls. The squirrels have figured out that inside those green balls are the walnuts. Black walnuts. So they told their friends. And they told theirs. My yard and the treetops in all the surrounding yards are full of walnut loving squirrels…and my neighbors glare at me when they think I don’t see. These bushy-tailed beasts sit high in the tree breaking open the green rocks and with no regard at all for what lies beneath toss the pieces to the ground. They’ve hit me, my dog and my grandkids. They hit my awning and it sounds like we are under attack. They hit my car and worse, my son’s car. There are hundreds of these green rocks clusters and they make off with every one of them. I have yet to find one intact that I can pry open and enjoy. But the worst part is that inside the green rocks is the part that makes this a ‘black’ walnut experience as opposed to just your run of the mill walnut. A black tar-like substance that stains everything it touches. The now dented awning, the now dented car and the sidewalk from my house to the corner are covered with black gooey stains. To add insult to injury the rodent bastards now find the need to bury their walnuts in my postage stamp sized lawn. The very lawn I pay an overpriced gardener to mow has more holes than a golf course. One day my little Mexican gardener asked me why I made the holes in the garden. I told him it was the squirrels burying their nuts. He said, in the best English he could muster….“if I catch him I’ll cut his nuts off“ …he laughed and pointed at his crotch. I guess he thought I didn’t know what ‘nuts’ were or where they were located.
I tried to hire a tree removal service. They basically wanted my first born. (which I actually considered as payback for those terrible teenage years) So I Googled ‘how to kill a tree’. The squirrel gods must have been watching out for them since I couldn’t find any site that told me in 5 easy steps how to annihilate a tree. I even looked on Youtube hoping that some other clueless husband brought home a tree from hell and his wife made him get rid of it…..and they video taped it. And posted it. But no luck. So as the season progresses and the green rocks are growing and the squirrels are massing, as my neighbors are scowling and my husband is getting used to his permanent position on my shit list, I am determined to hunt down the garden center that got us into this mess in the first place. I’m not sure what I will do when he is found, but I assure you it will involve nuts!
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