Walnuts.

Today, there should have been an outing to a Scottish valley; I have an acquaintance there who keeps a few colonies of Colonsay bees – they're the protected Scottish black bees. She lives in such an isolated part of the country that she has yet to discover the problems of bee keeping with all of the pests and diseases that have appeared above the horizon in the last 25 years. During the morning, while the sun was still shining at home, I had a call to say that the meeting had been postponed due to the torrential thunder storms in the valley. I generally disapprove of such actions since all the food has been prepared and bee keepers do like to sit and chew the cud over a cup of tea - and there is much to talk about in the bee keeping world at the moment.

So, today's Blip is rather mundane; when we first moved here forty years ago, the north east side of our garden was overhung with walnut trees. True, the fallen leaves seemed to subdue all plant growth beneath them and, the nuts were never properly filled, but the scent of those leaves made raking them up a joy and the fresh nuts, even though incomplete, were delicious. All of the trees, except for this one have now been taken down to prevent them from falling and, with this year's weather, I have every hope that there will be a good crop of full walnuts landing in the garden; with a good crop of honey nearly ready for harvest, I wonder if there's a way of combining the two.


Note: a fresh walnut is to a supermarket's Christmas variety like a jar of Roslin honey compared to Gale's finest.