Chestnuts and Rubber Boots

Remember back to the last time you wore rubber boots. It could have been for a job that you may not have wanted to do, it may have been for recreation but one thing all of the situations probably had in common is water. Rubber boots always, always have a very interesting smell but another characteristic they have in common (as long as they are still in somewhat decent shape) is that they are waterproof. As adults we tend to take the magical powers of the rubber boot for granted, we exile them to the closet, the mudroom, the garage until they are needed again. Now I don’t remember the first time I realized the magic in the rubber boot, but I recently got to witness Neah discovering it.
Yin, Neah and I went for a walk around our “neighborhood” after a very rainy day. The streets that we were walking down are dirt/gravel so they have plenty of good puddles. For the first little bit Neah was walking around the puddles until Yin led her into one, she looked down at her magical boots under the water and a huge smile appeared. She then had to test the boots to make sure that one time was not a fluke so every puddle from the first one to home had to be walked through with a small pause long enough to make sure they are still working. So the next time you put on rubber boots you might want to go test them in a puddle and if they still work you might want to let the world know like Neah does with a little happy squeal.

Outside of the house we are staying in right now is a big tree, it is a beautiful tree but it always seems to be dropping things that I need to clean up. Now I am no great plant taxonomist but I do tend to be able to identify a fair share of plants and for most of the time that I have lived here I believed it to be a horse chestnut tree the fruit of which comes sealed in a very spiky container. Now horse chestnut is nothing to get excited about unless you are a middleschool boy looking to launch a projectile of pain at a classmate, as the nuts are not desirable. I would not have taken a second look at the tree until my mother in law took us on a hunt to find a lane where she would go to gather chestnuts. With my interest peaked and the song running through my head (chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at my nose) I was on a search for chestnuts. In my search I found out a couple of things; first, the reason I have not experienced chestnuts before is that a blight that effected the chestnut tree wiped out all of the chestnut trees in North America (if you have bought chestnuts back home they either come from Europe or Asia or are a hybrid tree they are trying out in the us). Second that the difference between a horse chestnut and a chestnut tree (beside the fruit) is the leaf structure, on the horse chestnut the structure of the leaf is almost a frond five leaves connected by a stem. On the chestnut tree they are very similar leaves only they are singles. So when single leaves began to fall from our tree I started to look at a the spiky casings and realized that the nuts inside are different so for the past month we have been gathering chestnuts we are letting them dry out a little bit before we roast them as we have tried some and they are not quite sweet yet. Looking outside I see it is time for me to stop writing and go outsde and rake leaves. I hope you enjoyed this installment of News from the Ned check back often to find out what a chestnut tastes like, and to find out if Neah finds out where the magic ends and the feet get wet.
Jesse