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Comment by tomcam | Hacker News Reader

In tangentially related news, I have a huge, 250+ year-old black walnut tree here in Seattle. It bears one walnut a year, and this time a local chipmunk got it before I could. He then carried it up next to my second story deck and tormented me with it while I watched helplessly a roof away.

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Tangent from yours: I have a very old pecan tree in my yard that'll easily fill a couple of 5-gallon buckets. More pecans than I could possibly want in a year. I thought this was great when I bought the place.

Instead what I get to do is fill a couple of 5-gallon buckets with green, unripened nuts that the fucking squirrels decided to remove from the tree 2 months before they're ready. Last year I found exactly 0 viable nuts. They were all stripped off the tree before their time.

I just convince myself that their happiness is my happiness. And the shade is still good.

Preach! We have lots and lots of blueberry bushes that are apparently here on earth only to feed deer. We've never managed to get a single blueberry. We do get a lot of beautiful deer (and coyotes, and bobcats, and raccoons, and bears).

That seems accurate. I have a mulberry tree (quite tall!), and if I don't pick mulberries every morning during its 4-week fruiting time, I just end up with purple poo all over my yard instead.

Many years ago during one of the big corporate training events in room of about 80 people we had a little icebreaker activity, where we had to say something interesting about ourselves that nobody else knew. I don't remember what I or anyone else said, except for one lady. She was a high powered account executive or something, but as aside, she said she owned a peach and nut orchard somewhere in California, and she had a big permanently loaded shotgun in her car to "kill the f*cking squirrels" (her exact quote) as she drove through the property because otherwise "they'd get nothing at all". Great vivid picture and great icebreaker!

Growing up I lived near a Russian couple that had emigrated post revolution around the time of WWI. They had a good amount of property that they covered with various vegetables in the summer. Very industrious people.

The husband despised the squirrels for ruining both his garden as well as his bird feeders. Being handy, he put one bird feeder on a metal articulating arm out the kitchen window. And then he wired it to the outside light switch.

He got much joy out of flipping that switch and shocking the tree rats!

Grab a Gamo .177 pellet rifle. Enjoy a cup of coffee while you pick the squirrels off one by one.

I think there is no more beautiful tree. The shade is truly worth it.

The black walnut in my yard usually bears hundreds of stinking fruits that the squirrels chew the rinds off of all over the place.

One would be a pleasure.

We also have a black walnut that drops lots of fruit. The previous owner generously left the nut gatherer they used to pick it all up and it made the job super easy. I share this with you now in the spirit of stinky walnut hands.

https://www.gardenweasel.com/garden-weasel-products/garden-w...

Any clue how it got there? seems super rare, planted by Native Americans?

Oddly, this area seems to have had a black walnut industry here a couple hundred years ago! My 10 acre homestead was once a black walnut farm.

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