Rocket Surgeon: A person with less-than-stellar aptitude. A mixture of "rocket scientist" and "brain surgeon" This phrase describes a person who is neither.




Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The Sky is Falling!

Tomorrow is October and Autumn is descending. You can tell the season is upon us here at our house by the great abundance of acorns that clutter our yard and driveway. Our yard is quite small, but we have 78 oak trees. Maybe I exaggerate, okay then, 77 oak trees.

Beautiful trees.
These mighty oaks produce mighty acorns. And I exaggerate not. Just look at this branch.

Look closer. They actually grow like grapes in clusters. And then, they fall. And if I don't get them all picked up, they nestle down in the dark earth throughout the winter, and sprout as dumb little saplings in the spring, only to grow up and produce more acorns. It's a vicious cycle folks. And if I don't pull them when they are tiny, their roots grow deep and it is nearly impossible to pull out a little oak. Now, all you tree huggers don't get mad, I am a tree lover too. I'm all for trees. Look at the beautiful foliage.


Now look at the beautiful mess.

Pulling into our drive-way sounds like stampeding elephants on bubblewrap.
I have had so many acorns in the past 4 years living here, that I actually have sold them on Ebay. Yes, you heard me right! There are people who will buy acorns at the affordable price of 99 cents per pound. When you pick up acorns, you have a lot of time to think. It's a time consuming chore. It's tedious, boring, back breaking, and monotonous. Not exactly my idea of fun. As I was picking them up one afternoon, I thought to myself there has got to be a way to make a little money here. I mean I have an abundance, surely there is a market for these boogers. So I checked it out. It's not much of a market, but a small market just the same. With competition I might add. Others try to sell their acorns on ebay too.

This was the pic I took to post on ebay. See how huge they get compared to a quarter? One year, I sold 50 pounds. One lady fed them to a pet flying squirrel. A teacher did a unit of study on Native Americans up in Ohio and the class ground the acorns down to make bread......or something. I'm not sure what drove others to buy them, but I shipped some to New York and all sorts of places. Well sweeping, raking, and bending is a lot of work. So I researched and found a little acorn picker-upper.


Some ingenious person invented this. It is called the Nut Wizard and you can buy it online. It does make my acorn harvesting alot easier. You just roll it around, and it does the work for you.

When it fills up, you empty it.

The nut wizard has always reminded me of this little toy.

Maybe it's the shape? Maybe it's the vaccumming motion? Maybe its the little popping sound? Maybe I'm weird? I knew that already.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I need acorns....weren't you gonna send me some?