Yard Full of Nuts

Yesterday we came home from our ten day visit to Philadelphia to a backyard full of leaves and black walnuts. Of course that is expected in mid-October and it has certainly happened many times before. Over the years that we have lived in Buffalo we have often traveled to visit family around the Columbus Day holiday weekend when the kids had an extra day off. It is also a very pleasant time of the year in Philly.

Today is my first full day back home and I will soon be going outside to continue with the cleanup of the backyard. I did some leaf and nut picking up before we left and had accumulated and tossed out twelve bags. I was estimating this year I would have about twenty bags total which is not a big nut year by far. The most bags I've had in a season was sixty and I usually average between thirty and forty. Only two of the eight trees that drop nuts in our yard are having a heavy nut year.

When I'm home during the time of the falling nuts which varies slightly year to year I am able to keep up with the cleanup and I don't usually have what I see out there right now. A couple of years ago we had a banner year for nuts during the time we were in Europe and we came home to a full yard of nuts and leaves that took several days of intense cleanup. It's not quite that bad this time but it will take a couple of days. Fortunately I did some before we left and there are already piles in the yard. 

Earlier in the summer in June our trees dropped a lot of very small black walnuts. I was wondering at the time what the Fall would be like. I wrote about it here.

Today will also be cool and sunny. A beautiful day to work in the yard. Becky will also be back there cutting back the gardens.

The day before we left for Philly I noticed that a falling nut had punched a hole in the arm of one of our plastic chairs sitting under a tree in the yard.