to my beloved Walnuts

All of you reading this blog, know my "love" for walnuts and I am happy to report that the trees are slowing down....well, there aren't any nuts left on them.

A scary fact is, that Martin actually counted the trees and we have 16 of these #%***# trees!!!

No wonder, we have so many darn walnuts....

Anyways, I have a sitemeter on my blog, that counts, how many people view my blog. But they tell you more facts, like where those people are from or which pages they got referred from.
So today, I got one of these reports and I look through them and I see that someone did a Google search, so I clicked on it and I had to laugh: it was on COLLECTING WALNUTS.
And not just any kind of walnuts, no, MY kind of walnuts.

Even an article from an university was in there and recipes and ......

Well, Maybe I print it out and put it on the pile of walnuts that we made in the woods for the critters. Then, they learn a thing or two about walnuts and how to make them into delicious meals.....

What are you doing in FALL?

Do you like fall? Or are you of the ones that see the natures "dying"?

I am not. I have 100 bulbs sitting in the garage that need to be planted. Those are always my bulbs of hope. Yes, winter will come, but after that, the spring will bring my bulbs back out and make them bloom:)

I like the fall temperatures and the rain. That's the German for you. I wanted to take Mr. Whiskers for a walk in the rain, but the sun was back and, oh well, we never complain about sunshine!!



The only thing I didn't like about the rain today was, that it rained down more WALNUTS....
But I choose to ignore them. Maybe the squirrels will have some wild walnut orgies and consume most of them in one sitting////\\\\

A Sign Of Life....

Yes, I am still alive! I haven't been buried by my walnuts, nor haven't I fallen off mt bike, well I have, but not badly enough to not being able to write...
I just have been busy.
I started going to the gym twice a week with a friend of mine and that takes up some extra time. Martin and I have finally finished the garage. All the shelves are stocked and functional and it is cool to have a potting bench:) I had to try it out today and re-potted some of my snake plants.

Well, then there are my beloved walnuts. Today, I broke a record, by filling THREE wheelbarrows...and I planted more Mums, God I love these plants with all there gorgeous colors


And then, I have been working hard on my room/office/library. I had to clean it(=empty) out totally because I want to paint all the wood and the walls in there. While I was emptying, I did a lot of purging and sorting (and still do...).
I also have to go through my closet, because my weight-loss finally shoes up everywhere and I start to look funny in a lot of my stuff. I know that is a good thing, but not when you don't want to spent a lot of money on clothes....and I am still going "down", so I am literally buying a pair of jeans this week and in 2 weeks, they might not fit!?!?!?!

Oh, then there is the JOB-SEARCH...not very successful, but I have to keep looking!!!!
And I have been putting stuff on Ebay. Men, that takes a chunk of time out of your day, until you get all that stuff posted. I did that for the whole weekend. Hopefully, I will find some buyers. I need the $$

Oh, and I do bike in between all that, walk the dog, clean the house and what not...

So, that's why I was busy, but I promise to be better. I have two posts already in mind for my diet tips and I have some pictures to show you. Hopefully, did they turn out.

Well, I better go to sleep now. Morning is just around the corner and it is Mr. Whiskers preferred hunting time....

Diet Tip No. 2: Collecting a TON of Walnuts

As some of you know, do I live in a house with a big yard and mature trees.
I love the house and the trees for one "tiny" exception": the WALNUTS.

What you see in these pictures was the "harvest" from just one day.
But I have been doing this daily for the last week if I skip a day (because I paint the garage),
I end up with TWO wheelbarrows full of those suckers...
Some of them have the size of granny smith apples and you don't want to get hit by them.

I have to collect them, because they start rotting and "burning" wholes in the grass.

Oh, and have I told you that I DO NOT LIKE WALNUT?
I don't like to eat them. I am allergic to them and I hate them falling on me, my house, my plants,...

I wonder, how many nuts, I had in this load???

Sometime, I like to throw one or two across the street (there are no houses), but Mr. Whiskers brings them dutifully back....grrrrrr.

I don't hand-pick them because the rotted ones stain your hands. I used to rake them, the first year, we moved here, until I ended up in the emergency room with a bulged disk: OUCH!!!

Now, I am using a "pooper-scooper" and pick them up, 5 or 6 at a time....

Once, I have a filled load, I haul it over to the bank of the river and pile them up for the critters.

No complaints from any squirrels in my neighborhood please!

Garden Duty

Martin and I, under the supervision of Mr. Whiskers, worked all afternoon in the Garden. I mowed the lawn and picked up Walnuts, dead headed some flowers, planted some new flowers that Brenda, our neighbor gave me and played with Mr. W in his pool. Martin picked up even more sticks and fallen nuts and then he started a new flower bed. It has been in the planning for a while now, but I never got the vibe to dig around with the stones for the wall around it.
Well, he has done it now and I can spend my time one the fun part: filling it with plants.

I already know that this bed will be another specialty bed: I will only plant grasses in there, so I have to start reading up on them a bit more....

Oh, and tonight I watched the TdF, since a) I didn't make it out of bed in time this morning and b) Martin was watching Formula 1 this morning anyways...

Walnut Allergy is getting Worse

I am allergic to walnuts. I never really cared for walnuts anyway. I don't like the flavor too much, but that was before we moved here.

Our yard has lots of walnut tress:

The first year, that we moved in our house, the yard was covered with weeds and ground covers. It was in the end of October and the yard was covered with WALNUTS, leaves, walnuts and more walnuts...
Martin was working and I started raking. And raked, and raked, and...
until my back gave up.
I ended up in the emergency room with a bulged disk: ouch!
It forced me to take a long break from working out and biking.
And another reason to dislike walnuts!
Well, we got rid of the ground covers and weeds and I made it a habit now to collect the nuts as they fall. Still no fun. Plus it is almost a hard hat zone during that time:(
Then, when we had an arborist take a few trees down( Most of them, Martin and I took down ourselves) and he explained to us, that walnut trees "kill" everything that tries to grow underneath them. It's in the wood, the leaves and the WALNUTS!!
I am still able to nurture my flowerbed underneath on of those trees, but I don't like it!
Like I said, I am "allergic" to walnuts...
Today, I think was the crowning moment. I came home from an appointment and noticed that the wind gusts had blown down loads of sticks and branches, so I decided to clean them up, until this thing came down:
Heilige Scheisse!! A huge branch (actually almost half the tree) of one of the walnut trees came down right in front of me.
That's it.
I DO NOT LIKE WALNUTS!!

Do you have any cure for my walnut allergy? Is there anything useful, that can be done with either the wood, the nuts, or whatever?