Nuts to the season

Those blankety blankety squirrels! I wouldn't mind their stealing the nuts off my trees if they did not chew the husk into little pieces and spit them out on the sidewalk. Looks very dirty and unkempt. I do like having the nuts disappear. Black walnuts especially. They are very hard to crack and the nut meat is impossible to retrieve in pieces large enough to chew. These days the squirrels put most of the nuts in the ground and by spring the yard will be sprinkled with seedlings.
The black walnut, Juglans nigra, is one of the grand trees native to north America. Forests were depleted to make furniture. Its wood is used for gun stocks because it does not splinter. Back when airplanes first had propellers walnut was used for them. The tree is deciduous, meaning that it decides to drop its leaves in the fall and grow new ones each spring, sort of like birds molting. Most trees have leaves with one stem and a single leaf firmly attached. No so the walnut. It has from 7 to 19 narrow pointed leaves alternating along the main stem that may be up to 24 inches long. That's called a pinnately compound composition. Not nearly as complicated as it sounds, but feathery and very pretty.
English walnut trees, Juglans regia, adorn my yard, too. They are a southern European tree that invaded America. The squirrels do not shun my English walnut trees. They chew off the stems where the nuts grow. That makes for a different kind of mess because the leaves – compound also - fall and dry in bunches that really look tacky. I know the most commonly used solution. But I will not cut down the trees. Nor will I destroy the squirrels. They are here to stay as much as I am. So I shall continue to grumble at the squirrels while they chatter at the marurading cats that tease them in the branches.
I wonder what squirrel pie would taste like flavored with walnuts served beside a centerpiece of fur balls? But alas, I shall never know because I am not allowed to shoot them with my rifle even though it has a wlanut stock.
Naomi Sherer