17.3.12

Introducing Xenia

Among the many productive trees in our yard is a walnut tree. It's a pretty big tree and in quite good condition so it produces a lot of nuts.We have to share a few of them with the sulphur-crested cockatoos but they leave most for us.
Walnut in the middle, oak on right
If you've never had the pleasure of gathering walnuts before, this is what they look like on the tree. The husk starts out completely green and fleshy and then it starts to turn brown/black and break up like the one in the photo below is doing. You then have to either get them from the tree or pick them off the ground once they've fallen. The problem with getting them from the ground is that there are lots of old empty shells on the ground from previous years and they look pretty similar. Yes, we should have raked up the old shells before now but we haven't as the ground has not really been clear enough to rake.
Walnut in its husk
Here are some walnuts waiting for the treatment on our beautiful orange laminex benchtop. Some fall to the ground still in their husks, some fall out of their husks.
Some nuts waiting to be shelled
I met Xenia in the market at Daylesford railway station a few years ago. It was love at first sight. I took her home and she has been with me ever since. And she's about to see some action.
Xenia Onatopp - my weapon of choice
Crunch.
Brings a tear to my eye...
A little bit of messing around to get rid of the shell and we have one beautiful walnut.
It was yummy
There are still lots more walnuts in the tree so even more to eat from our garden.

3 comments:

  1. Xenia's thighs are inspirational.

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  2. How are your hands? I gathered walnuts from our tree and the sap died my hands black for weeks! I had people coming up to me at work asking if I had been under a truck all weekend...

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  3. Haven't got any marks at all on my hands. Were you picking them off the tree? So far we've only been picking them up off the ground so not much contact with the sap.

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