Thursday, June 12, 2008

Happy Accidents



I believe nature is full of happy accidents; things you didn't plan, but turned out pretty well anyway. The picture above is of the large walnut trees at the edge of our property line. (The yard in that area was recently dug up and cleared out, hince the lack of grass.) I believe these are black walnuts, as I have been told that's what grows up here. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Also, I love walnuts in general, but I've tried these and just don't like them. Anyway, I think one of our friendly neighborhood squirrels decided we needed more of these trees...








...and we ended up with this small walnut tree growing at the edge of our driveway. You can barely see the rocks around it, a product of work being done on our yard on two different occassions. We just had them piled up into a little rock garden. I don't know what the root system of a walnut tree is like, so at some point this one may have to be removed. For now, I'm enjoying the added "feature" to our yard...

4 comments:

Vicki Lane said...

Hey, Susan,

Looks like a walnut all right. They're beautiful trees BUT they're toxic to lots of plants -- tomatoes, potatoes and other nightshade family stuff plus a lot more. And black walnuts are, I think, and acquired taste -- very different from English walnuts.

Susan M. Bell said...

Glad it's growing in a place where I can't plant a veggie garden like I wanted to. I love English walnuts. My favorite thing at Christmas is buying huge amounts of those as well as Brazils, Pecans, etc and keeping a bowl of them ready. Love cracking into those nuts.

uplandpoet said...

Hey there! You can always graft a better grade of walnut on to your wild stock....
as to the roots, i believe they are tap root trees, so the surface roots will not be too destructive, but the tap roots will go down as deep as the tree is tall, as a rule, nut trees put out a canopy of small roots equal to about the edde of their tree limbs, but the big root goes straight down.

Susan M. Bell said...

Hey upland - Thanks for the info. I plan on trimming the top of that smaller walnut this fall in order to try and keep it small. I thought it was the kind of tree with the big tap roots. Am glad to know I was right. Now I know it can stay right where it is for a while.