Tiny Fragrant Walnuts

Our backyard black walnut trees have suddenly dropped hundreds of tiny fragrant walnuts all over the place. There have been years when we've had a few small nuts drop in late spring or early summer but never like this. Our full sized black walnuts usually drop by the hundreds in late August and September. This year is very different. So I'm sitting here this evening in our backyard sunroom pondering the walnuts while drinking a Mountain Time Lager from New Belgium Brewing.

I'm going to need to take a rake and gather up these nuts. The pile here in this photo was were gathered in one square foot of the backyard near the chair in the pic. We have seven black walnut trees in our backyard and all of them are dropping these little walnuts. I've also seen other trees dropping them throughout the neighborhood while on our evening walks.

Last year we had hardly any nuts in the fall but we also didn't have any of the immature nuts in the spring. I'm wondering what we will see this fall. In our 24 years in this house we have never seen the trees drop nuts like this year.