I'm nuts

This huge mound of walnuts and chestnuts are so Christmassy. The smell of roasting chestnuts is so evocative of long gone by Christmases of my childhood when my father used to roast them in a shovel on top of our coal fire. I loved when they sizzled and burst open.

I also remember tossing them from hand to hand till the chestnuts were cool enough to crack open and eat.

I have a lovely old walnut tree in my garden and when I moved here (29 summers ago) I used to get a large crop of nuts. Now the prolific grey squirrels enjoy them and the only evidence of a bumper crop are the shells which litter the lawn