Nuts (and Pods) to You

Last week, as is my habit at this time of year, I spent two hours one day raking locust pods off my front lawn to the curb. Raking pods is my least favorite garden chore, worse than turning the compost pile (which I don't do every year), worse than cutting back the dried ornamental grasses in the spring, worse than replacing fence posts and deer netting. But I feel compelled to do it, with or without MH.

Acorns on lawn (Margo D. Beller)

Pods are ugly to look at, heavy to rake when enough of them are put together and have a sickly sweet smell. My leaf blower isn't strong enough to move them and I am not buying or renting one of those hurricane-strength fans I see others rolling along to blow leaves and what-not clear across the street. So I must rake them. Pods are good for nothing except feeding some of the birds (I've seen woodpeckers whacking them to get at the seeds) and making more locust trees. If left alone I would have a forest where the lawn is now.

Each year I wish I knew who came up with the idea of planting locust trees so I could punch that person in the nose.

I don't mind raking the falling leaves. I find it a calming activity when the day is sunny, the wind is light and the birds are singing. My rake is quiet compared to the electric blower and I enjoy the time outside. But in the years when the one female locust tree on my property is fruitful, it is literally and figuratively a pain. (I have discovered that, like many plants, there are separate male and female locust trees. Of the four on my property, three are males that do not produce pods. All are town trees I can't cut down and replace.)

Another thing I have in excess this year: Acorns. The oak and elm trees are having a boom, or mast, year - same as the locust. For weeks the squirrels have been running along the tree branches after the nuts. As they go for one they drop five more. As they were with the apples, they are sloppy eaters. Acorn caps they tear off and pieces of the nuts they are gnawing on fall from the trees, whose long branches hang above my enclosed porch's roof and the patio. At dawn and dusk you can hear the loud "thwack" as the falling nut hits porch roof and bounces down to the patio, usually just in front of the back door. It has become so bad I must wear hard-soled shoes or slippers or I'll step on something and hurt my foot. I've been sweeping or kicking nuts away from where I walk with the bird feeders. It is particularly bad after a heavy rain or wind storm.

Trees overhanging porch roof (Margo D. Beller)

If I left the acorns on the lawn, perhaps the squirrels would eventually come get them to cache for the winter. But I do not want to wait that long for the same reason I don't want the locust pods sitting on the lawn.

Like the pods, acorns feed certain birds (jays, woodpeckers) plus deer, bear, squirrels and chipmunks. At this time of year I am likely to find deep holes in the lawn and next to certain plants behind the deer netting as the critters cache their acorns for winter or rob another's cache. I have found tree saplings in the spring where such caches have been forgotten.

In boom years, the increase in food fuels larger families of the eaters. In turn, more of those eaters, such as squirrels or chipmunks, become more food for those that eat them, such as raptors. This can also have a big effect on which birds I see this winter both at my feeder and elsewhere. For instance, according to the annual winter finch forecast out of Toronto, the pine and spruce trees there have been so prolific there is plenty of seed for the evening grosbeaks, white and red crossbills and redpolls, among others, which means they won't be heading south to the U.S. for food this winter. No purple finches at the feeder this winter.

Pods on the grass, alas (Margo D. Beller)

After the boom comes the bust. Somehow, by a process botanists are still not sure they understand, the trees "communicate" with each other and will coordinate their mast. Boom years create more nuts and create more trees, even with the squirrels, etc. Then come the bust years when the trees produce fewer nuts as a way of  regulating the populations of trees and feeders so we're not overrun with either.

Weather may also be a factor. In my area we had a lot of rain this spring, which might have contributed to the seed boom. In past, drier years, there have been fewer nuts or pods produced as the tree focuses on taking care of itself.

But that is not this year's situation. At some point, the acorns will be done. Today, after the town took away the leaves and pods at the curb, I looked out my office window and can see plenty of locust pods still hanging in the tree. They'll be down after the next storm. It is as regular as the sun rising in the east.