Some Seeds are Trouble

Have you had fun guessing the seeds? This is the last one. I'll be drawing for the winners this weekend. Two winners or who knows? Maybe three. And remember you don't have to have the right guess to enter. Just say you don't know the way Gail and Annette did on Sunday's post. But some of you did guess my Sunday picture or at least came very close. The picture is of a Chinese chestnut from a tree in our yard. 

Somebody gave my husband the seed years ago and he decided to see if it would grow. It did. But I have to tell you it is NOT my favorite tree. It was okay for several years, but then it bloomed. Not good. Very not good! At the time we didn't have air conditioning and depended on an attic fan to cool out the house at night. Chinese chestnut blooms smell very bad, or at least ours does. That first year I thought some poor animal had crawled up under our bedroom window and died -- days ago!! I had to hold my breath walking through the yard. I went from the wonderful fragrance of lilacs to these. Not a good progression. 

For some reason, this year the blooms didn't smell as awful. Of course the last few years we've had the air conditioning and haven't had to have our windows open to the stinking fragrance. And it may have not bloomed as heavily as it did those earlier years. 

But that's not the only problem with this tree. The outer shells of the chestnut is neat, don't you think? Well, it is also very, very sticky, and it is almost impossible to pick one of them up without getting small needles in your fingers. When I first discovered this, my grandson was about two and running around barefoot in the yard. He got a foot full of these stickers. Impossible to see, but painful. So I picked up every one of the chestnuts and even the bits of the shells I could find and removed it from the yard. 

Still, every tree has its own special charms. I'm sure someday I'll figure out a charm for this one. In fact, I went online to look the tree up and in the pictures I found the trees did look charming. Maybe I need to give ours some fertilizer or something. 

I do have to note a couple of the great guesses. Loretta guessed hollyhocks and took me back to my childhood when I loved playing with hollyhock seeds. Not that they looked much like chestnuts, but it was still a fun memory. Ann guessed a burr thingy. That could cover a lot of burr seeds. :) And Amy had the fun guess of a caterpillar. If you squint your eyes and use your imagination, you can see that caterpillar and then you can think about how in some weird way the caterpillar might be considered a butterfly seed. LOL. 

Thank you all for guessing and making this mystery seed contest fun. This post's seeds might be easier for you. So what do you think? Do you know what the picture of seeds is this time? I can't wait to read your guesses. 

But while I'm waiting for you to read this, I'm going to go out on the deck and look at the ocean a while here in Monterey Bay where I've been at a writers' retreat. I need to hurry because the sun is going down and the day is fleeing. Tomorrow, I have to get on the airplane and fly home. Looking forward to being home again too and seeing my husband and taking Oscar for a walk. 

As always, thanks for reading.

Mystery Seeds

"With every deed you are sowing a seed, though the harvest you may not see." ~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Are you tired of seed mysteries yet? When I walked this afternoon, I kept seeing more and more seeds. I could keep this up for another month of two, but I won't. The giveaway contest ends on October 31. Then I'll draw a couple of winners who will get one of my books and a grab bag book as well. All you have to do to enter is take a guess on these seed pictures. Or just leave a comment saying you don't know if you're stumped and can't think up a guess. Either one will get you an entry and you get a new entry on each guess of a new seed picture. Deadline is October 31, so only a couple more seed pictures after this one. Remember to leave a way to contact you. If you've left your e-mail on a previous guess, you're okay.

Feel free to check back the last few entries to guess on the previous seed pictures if you didn't get a chance to see those posts until now. While I've fessed up to what seed was in the photo and there won't be much suspense, it's still fun. 

Last week, most of you were spot on with the photo. They were grapes, but not the tame type that grow in your yard or gardens. They were wild grapes. Those that climb up on and around trees out in the woods and make vines for country kids to play on. Like me when I was a girl. I felt like Tarzan back then. 





And now my grandkids go out in the woods here on the farm and play on grapevines too. Some ways to have fun never change. 

When I was a kid, I didn't pay much attention to the wild grape fruit. I was all about the vines. People used to tell me the grapevines wouldn't break. They are flexible and pretty strong, but if you try to do some of those Tarzan tricks and swing through the "jungle" or woods, you might just get a close up view of the "jungle floor." Even so, you got to give it a try and swing. Right?

One of you guessing called them "possum grapes." A good name since little animals do feast on them. I never ate them, but my mother made wild grape jelly once just to see if she could. The wild grapes are very small, nothing like those grapes you buy at the store, so she had to gather a lot of them. But that was Mom. She liked trying things like that. I have no doubt that when she was a girl she played on grapevines too. Did you?

Now you've got a new picture to guess. I think this one might be harder than the wild grapes, but you all surprise me sometimes. So what is it? 

Another Seed to Guess

Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. (Genesis 1:11 NKJ)

Just as I thought, most all of you guessed last week's "seed." They were black walnuts. A few of you had interesting other guesses such as pears, pawpaws, hedge apples, fig, guava, and quince. But no, they were black walnuts. Here's another picture of them after they've fallen off the tree and are on the ground for the picking. The green hull comes off and inside the nut shell is black and very hard. It takes a real knock with a hammer or rock to break them. 

When I was a kid, we picked them up and put them in a low place on our rocky driveway. After the car had run over them a few times to mash off the green outer shell, we picked up the black nuts and let them dry for a while. Then Mom would break them with a hammer. She had a special nut cracking rock that I still have around here somewhere. It took patience to get the nut meat out of the shells with a nut picker, but those black walnuts were delicious in chocolate candy or divinity. Just thinking about how good that was makes me consider saving a few of the walnuts from the squirrels so I can make some Christmas candy like Mom did.

Another walnut memory was from when my kids were young. We'd go out in the fields and pick up the walnuts to sell. We'd have gunny sacks full and the kids would be counting their money before we finally got their dad to take the walnuts to the local feed store where the buyers set up machines to hull the walnuts. The kids never got as much as they dreamed they might get because the nuts weren't weighed until after the green hull was off. So even though we had picked up sacks and sacks of them, the pounds they were paid for was probably less than half that. Still, it wasn't a bad way to spend a beautiful fall day - out in the woods picking up walnuts with the kids. A little hard on the back sometimes. This year we are having a bountiful crop. My mother-in-law used to say that meant we were in for a hard winter, but industrious squirrels won't have to worry about going hungry. I watched one of them bury one of the walnuts in the yard last week to store it for later.

This week's picture is posted up top. Got a guess on them? Another one that might be extra easy for us country girl types. Remember you get an entry in the giveaway for the choice of one of my books and a grab bag book by another author every time you make a guess on one of the seed pictures. Just please let me know a way to contact you in case you are one of the two winners I'll pick on October 31. You don't have to get the guess right. Just make a guess or be like one of my Facebook friends and admit you are not a nature person and haven't the foggiest. :) That will get you entered in the drawing too. As always, thanks for reading.

"Anybody can count the number of seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed." (Robert H. Schuller)

Seedtime Guesses and More

Happiness held is the seed; Happiness shared is the flower. ~John Harrigan

Loved all your great guesses last week on my seed picture. Some of the guesses were of seeds I recognized - blueberries, huckleberries, gooseberries. But others of you mentioned berries that had me wondering. I'll be looking some of them up on the net. Saskatoon berries, farkleberries, Nantucket berries, Arrow wood berries and more. I definitely have to look up those farkleberries. That name is made to go in a story. But the one thing in common on all the guesses is that they were wrong. :) 

Funny thing is, I was wrong too. Here's a repost of the photo. I decided to make sure I was telling you the right tree, so I did an internet search and came up with a different tree. Well, it's really more of a bush. You know what? Now I know why the berries on that bush are blue while the bush next to it never has blue berries. They might be cousin plants but not sister ones. I thought it was a red twig dogwood, but instead it's a silky dogwood. 
http://plants.usda.gov/factsheet/pdf/fs_coam2.pdf 

But that's okay. The berries are still very pretty and the guesses didn't have to be right for you to get an entry in my book giveaway. Even better, this week I'm giving you an easy picture. I think most all of you will be able to identify these "seeds" without thinking twice. Remember you can guess on each new picture this month and get another entry in a drawing to receive one of my books (winner's choice) and a grab bag book by a different writer. I'll be posting more "seed" photos for you to guess until I draw for a couple of winners on Halloween. So you might up your chances of winning by leaving a guess on each post before then. Doesn't have to be right. Just a guess. 

A NEW STORY ROAD

You have to get up and plant the seed and see if it grows, but you can't just wait around, you have to water it and take care of it.                                                                             ~Bootsy Collins

That's true with most everything in life from planting a garden in the spring to beginning down a new story road the way I am right now. I'm at the "grow the idea in my head a little bit more" stage. In writing, the same as in planting seeds in dirt, you do have to actually plant the seeds. In writing, that means I have to put my fingers on the keyboard and type words that will grow into a story. At least, that will be my hope. 

The initial story idea is sometimes like an odd little tree sprout I might come across. I see the sprout there. The idea. But I need more. I need limbs and branches, leaves and twigs. And everything needs to connect and interact to make a story something like I envisioned when I allowed my idea seed to germinate and begin growing. 

The seed of everything is in everything else. ~Anaxagoras

As always, thanks for reading.