"She's Nutty as Squirrel Poo."

-- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

December, 2017. San Diego Botanic Garden. I was the squirrel.

The nuts - acorns from a cork oak (Querus suber), an evergreen oak, native to the Mediterranean basin. And important to a wide range of life forms, including the common wine drinker (Homo sapiens potator).

Obviously, cork is used as a stopper for wine, as well as for flooring and other useful things. What's critical is that cork can be harvested from the bark of the tree without harming the tree: the tree lives on to grow another layer of cork bark for future harvests.

Acorns w/tap roots

For me, I just wanted to see whether I could get them to sprout. So I loaded up my pockets and planted them in two large pots and waited. And waited.

And waited until I got so impatient (hard to believe, I know) that I dumped out one of the pots and was shocked by the long and sturdy tap root emerging from many of the seeds. Now what?

Reload the pot and wait some more. That was late March. A month later, baby oak trees started peeking out of the soil.

Now I did not need to be reminded (ahem, Michael) that we have no room for another tree. But there are people, a few of whom we know, who have space for a really cool, drought tolerant and handsome tree in Sonoma County. May they live long and prosper there!