Squirrels and black walnuts

Sometimes life gives you neat little coincidences, small convergences that brighten your day or give extra heft to the things you're doing or thinking about, sometimes shedding light on the web of connections we're all a part of. My friend Jeff, who lives in El Paso, told me that the very same Vietnamese Restaurant I visited and lauded in my blog three weeks ago happens to be maybe his favorite restaurant in the world (Nha Trang, Chinatown, Manhattan). A simple thing like that somehow seems to accentuate my sense of community and confirm the emotional experience I had eating there with good friends. Kind of silly, maybe? After all, it's just a coincidence, right?

Then this morning as I was finishing a conversation by phone with my mom, I watched a gray squirrel hop across the small row of potted herbs I have on my back porch with the pale-green fruit of a black walnut tree in its paws . It stopped at the side of my struggling dill plant and quickly and efficiently buried the racquetball-sized fruit in the corner of the pot. After a few more moments checking that the coast was clear, the squirrel scampered away down the porch.

The coincidence here is a little more nebulous, but interesting to me nonethless. I've been reading about permaculture and ecological design lately, which really emphasizes using nature as a guide and resource for creating productive and sustainable agriculture that also encourages (and is itself enhanced by) healthy wildlife populations, and watching this small mammal squirrel away his stash really put a succinct exclamation point on a lot of the ideas and concepts I've been thinking about. Of course, my little herb garden (5 small pots, and unfortunately my tarragon seems to be on the way out) hardly equates with any kind of permaculture system, or even any sort of real garden at all. Plus, squirrels are hardly indicators of good wildlife habitat, as they are everywhere (they do need trees, however, at least the gray squirrels we have here in the East). But it still reminds me of the complex world of life we live in, which is sometimes all I really need to make it through another day without a frown on my face.

I'm glad I was able to create a place that the squirrel was able use; and I hope it comes back to reclaim its tasty nut and fill its belly at a time when food is not so easy to come by (black walnuts, while a royal pain to dehusk, crack and extract, are utterly delicious and very distinct in flavor from the more familiar English walnuts). The chances of a black walnut tree sprouting and thriving in my dill container is nil.

Now to see if I can find the tree that the nut came from...