A nutty tale with a twist of blurt magic

My last house where I lived for 12 years and where my kids grew into adults, was on the very edge of London.
The front was the last row of little terraced houses looking towards the smoke and bustle of London but the back looked over wild fields towards the M25 and the sprawling golf courses.

I could write a whole novel on that field at the bottom of my tiny garden which I named 'Pratts Bottom'. Named for my favourite neighbours, the Pratts.

Just beyond the ditch, with a thick plank to cross it, was a huge pine tree. Must have been a 100 feet tall with impenetrable brambles all around it. You can just see the top of it in this pic -

Pratts bottom was pretty much untouched for the first 5 years I lived there but it then seemed to be rented out first to someone to keep horses on.

Source: Pastel of 'Pratts Bottom' by ME

Not much changed to the right but down the middle appeared a new fence, a wider path and the left became a green field with horses AND BABY HORSES.

They stayed for a few years and we had some problems with the owner who tried to keep us (the locals) out of the whole field. We had a few nasty clashes with him and he took to vandalizing our little 'bridge' to try and keep us out and even building a fortress.

The territorial war went on for about a year ending with a dirty tactic on my part. For the umpteenth time I rebuilt the bridge but this time I planted a large dollop of dog turd under the end where he would have to grab it to lift it off again.

Horseman left soon after.

Then the pigs came.
The pigs changed everything. In just a week the Pratts Bottom side of our field turned from a colourful, jungle of wild meadow and bramble to a sea of brown mud. The best and most thorough ploughing of a wild field you'll ever see.

Sorry I have no pics of the pigs who were very friendly and ranged from giant horse sized pink ones to tiny brown and black striped tiny ones. Possibly rare breeds. To my never ending shame and regret one day they escaped their fenced area and I herded them back in with the help of my dogs. I wish I'd left them to their freedom as a week later we were woken in the dead of night to the most awful screaming and banging to find them gone in the morning. Off to the butchers? Very sad.

I got a little side-tracked with that short history of the fields but was laying the groundwork for the point to this whole post. I think it was when pigman was here that suddenly, on crossing the plank/bridge I noticed I could see a lot more of the field. Something was missing. OMG someone had chopped down the 100ft pine tree. It revealed a whole new scene.

I was angry at first and looked for someone to complain to. A few months later though I noticed a tree I'd never seen before, just a part of the general canopy blocked by giant pine tree, had hundreds of funny yellow baubles hanging from it. I had no idea what they were, never seen anything like it. Was it a lemon tree?? Surely not.

I saw some of the 'fruit' in the undergrowth, fallen from the tree so picked it up and had a look. On opening it I discovered a walnut inside. It was a WALNUT TREE!!

So the walnut tree had been there the whole time but no-one knew and it had never produced walnuts before because of the pine tree which was right next to it, probably within 10 feet. I since learned about the antagonistic relationship walnuts trees have with 'neighbours' in that they're said to be 'poisonous' to other trees.

Plant science lesson incoming -----

Now in this case my newly discovered walnut tree was fully mature. It was BIG. The only reason I can see that it wasn't producing fruit (I mean nuts) before was because of the overpowering pine tree right next to it. So it would seem this 'allelopathy' works both ways.

I was over the moon to collect a large bag of yummy organic walnuts that autumn and very sad that I would not get to collect them again as I sold the house and moved out the next autumn.

So I woke this morning with a dream about the walnut tree fresh in my mind then on looking at my Blurt found I'd won the @blurtdiary competition but the weirdest part of it all was the mention of a walnut tree to my winning blurt which hadn't mentioned walnuts in any way.

This was a mad synchronicity which I had to write about then because my dream was telling me to plant one and where to plant it where it would be happy and productive and now somehow gardendiary was giving me the same message.

I know that it will not produce any nuts for 10 years possibly but my plan was always to leave a legacy for my children and their children so a walnut tree is going to be my 'piece de resistance' in my self sufficiency garden.

Now where to get a walnut tree seed from...........

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_{Posted from https://blurt.live}