Hoarding, Hoarding Nuts

This has been a terrific fruiting, producing summer, and the hazelnuts are no exception.

The trees in the front lawn are raining the little plonkers constantly.  I’m not alone in relishing the harvest.  I can often look out of my upper floor window and simultaneously see two kinds of gleaners down below ...the fuzzy, fat-tailed collectors racing along on the power lines with treasures stuffed in their mouths,  and a hand-and-knees, bum-in-the-air  human scavenger dragging a basket along the ground and  throwing in nut after nut ... plink, plink, plink.

I find myself out there too, picking up nuts, when actually I had thought I was meant to be hanging up the wash, or making lunch.  The allure of fallen nuts is powerful.  I fill my pockets until they prevent me bending over and then I waddle into the house to dump my load.   I wish my cheeks were more capacious, to save me trips. 

A basket full of nuts is like a cupboard full of gleaming, full jelly jars.  And a freezer loaded to the gills with bags of the summer’s beans and blueberries.  Like a shelf full of books, a box full of tools.   Like my collection of sewing thread ... every colour is represented there ... every notion of sewing project is  possible, every eventuality predicted.    Bags of nuts in the larder bring peace of mind.  They are abundance and plenty and having reserves.  

And here I am again ... out on the lawn, under the trees, my rapier gaze glancing this way and that through the grass,  for yet one more, one last, nut.  It’s become an obsession.  And how can I not be fascinated by them?   Each nut has come from a perfectly-fitting swaddling blanket that’s frilled to perfection.  They are either ready to be popped out with a gentle finger-thumb squeeze, or, instead, have launched themselves from the tree for an Olympian dive, splashless into the turf.  Either way, I spot them and collect them into my bucket. 

This has been going on for several days now.  Plentiful nuts.  And I can feel I haven’t finished, though I’ve got my own sufficient supply, spread out on newspapers on my spare bed.  Have I picked too many?  More than my share? I’ve filled several buckets and given them away. 

The trees are still loaded and other people have been filling buckets, too. If I tell you I’m hoarding nuts, do you then think I have gone too far?  Hoarding...is that bad?

I look in the Oxford dictionary to check.  Hoard ... it’s an old noun from 1663 meaning a treasury, a repository, a cache.  Or it’s a verb meaning to put away and preserve for future use (squirrels are mentioned).  

Gerry says that it’s built into us ...we’re a northern folk and need to store food for the winter.

I’m feeling somewhat reassured.  What will complete my peace of mind is for me to invite you to come and share and pick nuts too.  But hurry!  Winter is coming!