Extremely Nutty

Everything Ricky and I plant in our yard dies. Too much water. Too much fertilizer. Not enough water. Not enough fertilizer. Snails. White flies. Evil squirrels building nests. I don't know what it is but we have bad foliage karma. Except for the nut tree in our front yard next to the driveway.

I say "nut tree" to illustrate the degree of tree knowledge that I have. There's a tree that's been in our front yard for the 14 years we've lived here, and it's never before dropped the avalanche of nut-like objects like it has this year. You can hear them ping off the branches as they pinball their way down to our driveway where they patiently await our coming and going which will mark their besplattered deaths. Crunch, smush, ooze.

Today I decided to deal with them because they had become a nutty blanket covering the grass and driveway. It seemed only a matter of time until they started to get that stench that rotting organic materials emit. And it could even be that they were attracting the squirrel that had set up its condo in the palm tree on the other side of the lawn.

As I raked, the little brown balls mocked me by continuing to plink-plunk their way down to the ground one seemingly benign projectile after another. As I began to realize the true bulk of their numbers, I decided I needed to document this. For this purpose, what better resource than a teenage girl watching TV, Skyping, Googling and texting right inside my very own house?

"Amy! Come do me a favor, will you?" I shouted through the garage door. "Come outside and take a picture of my pile of nuts."

Amy looked up from the 47 different electronic devices she was using simultaneously and said, "Is this a joke?"

I convinced her it was worth getting off the couch and disengaging from her assortment of tech tools, and the picture you see here is her handiwork. Whereas my handiwork was much, much, much nuttier.