a few yellow poplars, survive our rugged
winters.

The project began with an attempt to collect native trees and expanded
to make room for some exotics, just to see what would happen to them.
Detours and by-paths included attempts to grow various conifers from
seed and persuade cuttings to root. Somewhere along the line nut trees
began to enter the picture and now these have an alcove all to
themselves. Perhaps it started when a neighbor offered me $5.00 if I
could tell whether a young sprout in his yard was butternut or walnut.
He died before I found the answer which was probably common knowledge to
most people. The color of the pith did not seem reliable, but at last a
book pointed out the little moustache a butternut wears just above each
leaf scar. It worked, and the thrill was equal to catching a 10 pound
wall eye!

I was raised on the prairie part of southwestern Minnesota and it was a
delightful surprise when I moved 140 miles east to find that one could
gather almost any desired quantity of black walnuts from remnants of the
old forest. After a few years these trips to the woods became less
glamourous and the pickeruppers more critical. Many of the wild nuts
were small and hard to crack. Perhaps a friend's Thomas tree in full
bearing with its heavy crop of huge, tasty nuts inspired a wish to grow
bigger and better producing trees near at home.

It looked easy to transplant vigorous, 6 foot black walnut whips which
could be had for the digging. It took 10 years to learn that nuts
properly planted would make larger trees in a decade than transplants.
Digging 2 deep holes to move one tree seemed a waste of labor when one
planted nut would better serve the purpose. Of course nut planting led
to a contest of wits with the squirrels.

It was a funny sight to watch a helper carefully placing nuts at regular
intervals in an open furrow and a big fox squirrel following 10 feet
behind him, removing the prizes as fast as he could scamper up and down
a nearby hollow oak. Our ideas concerning appropriate locations for
walnut trees did not coincide with those of Mr. Bushytail. We learned
that the simple way to plant walnuts in the woods was to pile a half a
bushel here and there. The tree climbers took their toll, but did a good
job of planting. Survival seemed better than when we placed individual
nuts and "stepped them in."

The desire for bigger, better and more useful nuts led to the planting
of a couple of acres to