Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Pecan harvest has begun.  For the last couple of weeks, we’ve had a continual obbligato of “bonk . . . thunk . . . thump . . .” on the roof of the house as the nuts fall from the trees on their own, and the squirrels knock down three for every one they manage to eat.  I badly need to mow the front lawn and rake the back so I can see what’s going on, and get the crop harvested before they’re trodden into the ground.

Last Friday I got out and crawled around on my hands and knees for an hour or two, searching for the little Mahans which are on the other side of the front yard.  I haven’t even touched the harvest from the trees in the back yard, a Burkett and another tree that I’m provisionally identifying as a Comanche.

I don’t know what I’ll do if this turns out to be another good crop year, because I still have twenty pounds or more of shelled nuts in the freezer that are left from the 2001 crop, which was enormous.  It may be time to go giving some more away to friends and loved ones.  But not the Barretts, though.  Those little thick-shelled native varieties are so much work to shell that I keep them myself.  I have to love someone an awful lot to give them a pound of shelled natives.

Johnny B. Goode harasses the Alpha Centauri pendant.  Fnord.