The end of an almond tree.

We don't have many almond trees on our land but the ones we do have produce big,  fat, quite roundish shaped almonds.  They are a variety known as Marcona,  special to Spain but getting more popular apparently elsewhere according to this cookery site.   There is more about the marcona  here  as well.  The other trees around us produce a much smaller narrow nut and they are harder to shell.  Harder because of the way we shell.  We haven't yet found a nut cracker that will break an almond shell,  the nut cracker gives up first,  the locals - well,  you see them with a small hammer and the almond on maybe a stone,  or a very old well seasoned log stood on it's end,   I've found somewhere over the past years a very handy hand-sized stone,  and I crack the nuts outside  on the  concrete top by the sheds.  All works well usually,  the concrete top has nut shaped divets now in it,  but the small narrow nuts are more difficult to line up and more often than not,  I'll end up with a sore finger where the cracking stone has caught my skin.

The nearest tree to the house is also the nuttiest and easiest to reach as it grows by the sheds and overhangs the roofs.  Or should that be rooves?  But it is also the only almond tree that always,  without fail,  gets an infestation of aphids,  sticky stuff,  ants and wasps every spring and on through the summer.  And so every year we spray  the tree with a soap and water mix,   it seems to work for a few days and the wasps go away,  then back it all comes again.  We get through a lot of washing up liquid!

And so going in and out of the shed is not pleasant,  especially for me as I have an allergy to wasp stings and swell alarmingly if stung,  the ground under the tree is just awful and sticky,  we made a flat work area to do small jobs,  maybe potting plants,  but can't use it,  so this year we decided that as soon as the almonds were off, and the leaves had fallen,  we'd cut it down and find a better use for it as firewood.

But the leaves still haven't fallen and now there are flower buds on it!   But better late than never,  so down it came on Wednesday.  All cut up into wood burner sized logs,  split if needed,    and the sticks and twiggy bits all put for drying as good fire-starters.  Should give us an extra good few weeks of warmth.