Cloudage again

Amongst other thing I’ve been washing walnuts today. Quite a grubby task. 

Many nuts have fallen with their green coats still on. Normally the coats open while still on the tree and release the nut in its shell from within. Then it’s easy enough to pick them up from the ground. 

But possums and possibly rats scamper among the branches at night, breaking them off. They manage to open some of them, but many are left for me to find in the morning. 

As a result as well as picking up the clean shells that fall during the day (when the pests aren’t active), I’ve been collecting these others  in the hope they will mature and release the shell from inside. 

Nope. The outer coats just go black and slimey.

So today I put them into a bucket of water and left them to soak for a while. Then I scrubbed each one and was left with a pile of shiny clean walnuts still in their shells. They’ll dry out for a while before I crack them. There’s a poor-quality photo as an extra.

Walnut slime dyes whatever it touches, so I have dark brown splashes on my t-shirt and trousers. And my purple kitchen gloves, which I wore to scrub each nut, are now a weird yellow colour.

I remember a Ladybird book about Robin Hood from my childhood in which he disguised himself by dying his hair and face with walnut juice. Thus he was able to avoid capture.

I know what to do should I ever need to evade the Sheriff of Nottingham.