Acorns everywhere!

It's that time of year again, when squirrels are busy digging holes in the ground, getting their cute noises all dirty, and hiding acorns that will grow up to be big oak trees! That got me reminiscing...

During the past autumn, Toby and I took plenty of walks in the parks near our place. And we noticed a wide variety of acorns on the ground. I had no idea that acorns came in so many different shapes and sizes! So we collected some.




We put these acorns in the fridge over the winter, and were trying to germinate them. They seemed to get started, but unfortunately, the seeds got moldy. Ick. It would have been nifty to have had a tiny oak tree though!

Not only acorns, but we collected gingko seeds too! Did you know that most decorative gingko trees around are males? That's because the female trees are the ones bearing fruit and that fruit stinks! Imagine stale urine plus garbage juice on a hot and humid summer afternoon. Unfortunately for us, many female gingkos live in this city. I'm not sure how we missed the stench during our first fall in this city. Perhaps we were too busy trying to figure stuff out? Or maybe we just mistook it for city-smell? At any rate, fall of 2006 was a bounty year for stinky gingkos! And did they ever last! I think we had stinkiness in the streets well into December! I love their leaves, and would love to have a gingko some day. But it had better be a male one!