Reflections on the Seventh Week of Fall – Ah, Black Walnuts! (Part 2)

Still Life of Husked Walnuts - Mashed, Wiped, and Scrubbed with Stainless Steel Pad

On a mid October afternoon, I stood on the garage driveway, picked up the three gallon bucket of black walnuts I’d husked, and pondered my husband’s question. Did I want to scrub the walnuts in the basement? Surrounded by piles of wood, seed trays, and tools? Trapped by the cement floor, the joist ceiling, and unfinished insulated walls?

“No. I’ll scrub the walnuts outside as long as the weather cooperates.”

Spence carried the bushel basket of tractor-smashed walnut fruits down the slope from the driveway and past withered bean and tomato plants in the north garden. “Then we’ll store them on the porch.”

I followed him to the porch. “Won’t the squirrels find the walnuts here?”

“They’ll be safe.” He put the bushel basket on top of the recycle cabinet.

Though I didn’t trust squirrels, I trusted Spence. I lifted the bucket and set it beside the basket on the cabinet.

The next day dawned sunny. I pulled on my walnut processing clothes―stained pants, a sweatshirt splattered with walnut-pulp, and an old red sweater that moths had ventilated. After setting the timer on my cell phone for thirty minutes, I shoved it in my pocket and stepped outside.

What looked like long grains of white rice were scattered on the top of the recycle cabinet. One of the grains wiggled. Not rice―maggots. Yes! The overnight frost had driven the maggots off the husked walnuts. I wouldn’t have to flick off maggots while scrubbing. With rubber gloves, I finger-brushed the maggots off the cabinet and over the railing then set up for walnut scrubbing at the end of the deck ramp.

I sat on a landscape timber with a bucket of water between my legs. To my left lay a cardboard box lid for scrubbed nuts. To my right―the bucket of husked nuts. I dumped some into the water and hoped they would sink. One bobbed to the top. Floating meant the nut didn’t have edible meat inside―no need to scrub that one. I tossed it into the woods across the street. Gripping a nut in my left hand, I used my right to scrub with a stainless steel scrub pad.

A bumblebee landed on my pant cuff. The bee cleaned its feelers and legs before flying off.

I scrubbed in a Pooh kind of rhythm―rubadub-rubadub, rubadub-rubadub, rubadub-rub―then turned the walnut thirty degrees and scrubbed again. The more I scrubbed the more the stainless steel pad shredded. When I finished a walnut, I pulled off strings of stainless steel, placed the nut on the cardboard lid, and reached for another nut.

A yellow jacket crawled up my pant leg. Better than gazing at drills and hammers, but not where I wanted the insect. I put the scrub pad down and picked a three inch fern from the grass. The yellow jacket flew away before I could tickle its feet.

When my phone beeped, I’d scrubbed two dozen black walnuts. The walnut pulp had turned the water black, and the cold, black water cramped my hands as stiff as an Amazon box.

Drying Walnuts - Scrubbed with Wire Brush

Three scrubbing days later, I had twelve dozen ready-to-dry walnuts and the remains of three stainless steel pads. I asked Spence to buy more at the grocery store.

When he returned with the groceries he said, “I checked. They don’t sell stainless steel scrubbers at Giant Eagle.”

How would I clean the rest of the walnuts? Scrape them with a knife?

He set two grocery bags on the table. “There’s a wire brush in the garage. Do you want it?”

So back outside with sunlight glowing through yellow leaves, I wielded the wire brush. It bang-bang-banged against the inside of the plastic bucket, turned the cold water into a frothy brew like a draft porter, and splashed walnut dye into my gloves. I ignored the liquid sloshing around my fingertips.

Over the bang-bang-banging of the wire brush, I heard clucking. Was a flock of turkeys grazing in the woods across the road? Chattering joined the clucks and bangs. High-pitched twitters turned up the volume. Then the woods resounded with a crescendo of warbles and whistles. Not turkeys, starlings.

Pausing my walnut work, I gazed at the starling show. A few shuttled between the woods floor and low tree branches. When a pickup truck drove down the road, a thousand starlings rose with a deafening roar of wind created by their flapping wings. I’d never witnessed a flock, called a murmuration, of starlings so close. Amazing! But their gathering sounded more like a raucous rout more than a murmuring. The starlings swirled around trees, twittered, then settled to the ground. Warbles and whistles resumed. A few birds flitted from the ground to branches and back.

Another pickup drove past, and the murmuration of starlings rose a second time. Holding my breath, I watched the birds soar en masse. Then they drifted further into the woods, and their twitters diminished. I exhaled and savored the silence they left.

On Halloween morning, I dressed in my black walnut costume one last time.

Spence looked out the sliding glass door at the wind tossed trees and steady rain. “You could work in the basement today.”

Surround myself with man-stash in a windowless trap and miss the chance of being thrilled by nature? I grabbed a stack of newspapers and opened the front door. “I’ll be fine on the porch.” I covered the cement floor with newspapers and sat on a wooden box. Rain slanted through the woods and washed leaves off the trees. No insects came out in the changed weather. No birds either. I shivered and scrubbed the last twenty-two black walnuts.

Two hundred eighty-one scrubbed black walnuts dry on screens in the basement―away from scavenging squirrels. In a month, I’ll dust off the long handle anvil nutcracker to crack the nuts. For now, I’m content to rest my hands and wait for nature’s next surprise.

Nutcracker