Skip to main content

HUGE pine cone

My boss brought me in a very heavy "thing" yesterday from his mum's garden...



It is next to two large cookies and my 24 oz water bottle to give you an idea of its size. It weighs about 10 pounds- really! and it has sharp spikes. At first I thought it was a pineapple, then I realized that it was a kind of pine cone. But it really s VERY big for a pine cone. It turns out it comes from a monkey puzzle tree He said that they had to take down the tree because it had produced about 70 of these cones this year and was now like a lethal weapon. Imagine one dropping from a 70 foot tall tree! He said they had to check the roof every time one fell on it, and they had to stop anyone walking or working nearby. Amazing!

Comments

Linda Ayers Tarvin said…
Fascinating! I have seen a couple of monkey puzzle trees but never their cones. There used to be one in the front yard of a house on Peak Avenue close to Wright Avenue. There was also one at Gilroy Gardens.
10:52 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shrimp Artichoke Pizza With Cilantro Pesto

We are die hard home made pizza fans, and make one once a week- usually Friday or Sunday nights. They normally consist of a pizza base made in the bread machine, with toppings such us onions, peppers, mushrooms, and some kind of sausage with a good layer of fresh mozzarella. For a long time, Dick has tried to convince me that shrimp is good on a pizza, but I just didn't even like the sound of any kind of fish on pizza. If I've ever had shrimp on pizza it was a long time ago and they were small and hard after being baked. Yuk. However, last weekend we both ended up listening to a story on NPR about a winning pizza recipe in New York. It actually sounded good even to me, and tonight we made it, and it was lovely!
Post a Comment
Read more

Thank-full for health insurance

Having spent 4 hours in the emergency room last night with Dick, I am grateful that we have health insurance. It all started with a phone call from Dick saying he had fallen off his bicycle on his way home from work, and would I come and collect him as he was a 'bit banged up'? I rushed there and the first thing I saw was that I could hardly see his eyes- he was having a severe allergic reaction to something that was manifesting itself in his sinuses. All he could remember was having a huge sneezing fit after he 'woke up' having fell off his bike. 'Woke up'?? He couldn't remember hitting his head, although the scrape on the right side of his forehead showed he'd definitely banged his head. His first concern, naturally, was that the bike and his laptop were ok. However, we did not hang around to check them over, we just loaded them into the car- after he taken an anti-histamine that I always keep in my bag. For Dick to say he is hurting is unusual enough,...
3 comments
Read more

Labor Day weekend to Tahoe- Part Two

Plan B was to drive over the Sonora Pass instead- a route a little further north. So the next morning we drove the very twisty windy and beautiful route. 9624 feet up. The down side was it took us several hours. A long drive through western Nevada and we finally saw the eastern side of Lake Tahoe. So blue! We were staying at Northstar- a ski resort which turns into a mountain bike and hiking haven during the summer months. We arrived too late to go on the slopes but not too late to go and enjoy the sun going down over the lake. There was a really interesting cloud formation, and so the sunset was lovely.
2 comments
Read more