Nuts.

During these last few days we have had some windy weather. Not might I add as windy as it has been today but sufficient wind to cause lots of my hazel nuts to drop off the tree.

I thought that the first ones were blind. That is to say, there is no fruit in the not but this was not the case, Anyway on Saturday I decided to pull the rest of the nits off the tree. With the husks there was almost 5lb of fruit. After I took the nuts out of their outer casing, there was still well over 4lb of nuts. I found it back aching work collecting the nuts, not much better taking the nuts out of the husks, it was not easy and took me about an hour to remove the husks. Now I have lots of nuts just waiting to be opened, using the nut cracker.

It bought back a memory of I would guess 25 years ago at least.

I don't think I told you, but my late Mother was disabled. It happened overnight when I was about 12 years of age. She went to bed and during the night her leg seized and after many months she had her leg straightened and stiffened. It went a little withered so she had to wear a caliper. Mind you, after a while stopped wearing it.

Anyway she used to come to mine after the school holidays, mainly to see the regular holidaymakers who would call every year.

She loved to go nutting as she called it. She could not walk well but she was happy.

This September day I told her that we would go nutting. I had been there to see if there were any nuts and there was the odd hazel tree.

It was off the main road,I guess it was a B road, if there was a C road it would be in that category. Well I took her up to the verge and helped her out of the car we then started to look for nuts, we had found about a dozen or more when this Porsche 928 came along. I was surprised as this seemed a deserted road, behind the car was an elderly man riding a bicycle.

As the car drew nearer I noticed that it was driven by a woman. She almost came to a stop, giving us a glare that was unbelievable. She then very slowly drove off. This cyclist came along and then said. "She thinks she rules the worrrrrrrrrld," as he rode by. We both bust out laughing. We managed to find a few more hazel nuts and back home we went. My Mother was thrilled to be tasting once again fresh picked hazel nuts. More soon.