the Walnut Diary

“After you have had one shot of the vaccine, you still have a 10% chance of contacting the virus, but you will not need admission to hospital or the ICU, and you will not die.”

UPDATE: 19 April, 2021

I guess I should complete the story, though there are no perplexing or funny twists yet to be revealed.

My neighbour had warned me about the geography of the parking lot. His jab was a couple of days earlier than mine. He further told me that the whole thing was a class act with many, many staff and volunteers ensuring that it ran smoothly.

Come to think of it there was a complicating factor colouring my experience of the best of local health care, but it had nothing to do with the assembled, smart and highly-motivated individuals.

No, the whole thing arose out of my misguided attempt to impress my 4 year-old grand-daughter. Ada loves to forage. Her first task for me on the afternoon before the jab was to crack her some black walnuts. I dutifully retrieved the Duke Walnut Cruncher from the shop and resumed my seat in one of the three grandpa chairs on the lawn. Ada backed across the lawn to me, dragging the 5 gallon pail of black walnuts which she and her mother have been consuming since last September. It was now light enough she could move it on her own. I sent her back for the safety goggles which she stores under the stuff on the bench. I started to crack some nuts.

If you have cracked black walnuts, you will be aware of the forces associated with getting to the kernels. The shells routinely resist 750 pounds per square inch of force. The Duke cracker makes ingenious use of gears and levers as well as a large base to make the task feasible, if not easy for an old guy sitting in a lawn chair.

In any case, as soon as the nut cracks, swift and nimble fingers free it from the mechanism and the pieces of kernel normally disappear into Ada’s grinning mouth. This time they did not. She saved them for a salad she was making for her toy peacock. The kernels rapidly accumulated in the apple sauce container she had salvaged from the kitchen.

Then she dashed around the yard, first to the spice bed for chives, then to the walnut tree for some of the wild onions underneath it, then to the lettuce patch where the seeds she planted March 23rd were bearing fingernail-sized leaves. No kidding.

It looked pretty good, but was somehow inadequate to the needs of her peacock toy. Then she remembered my casual comment about the wild leeks that grow in the woodlot. “Come on, Grandpa. It’s time to get some wild leeks for the salad. Get the Kioti out and I’ll tell Grandma.”

And so away we went to the woodlot where we found a large and perfect clump of wild leeks. Ada picked a good handful for her salad and then commanded us back to the house.

She broke the leaves up into bite-sized sections and fitted them into the salad dish on top of the bed of walnuts and other green ingredients. She had just finished her task when her dad, finished work for the day, came out to find her. She shared her salad (peacock forgotten) with him, and with Grandma, and with me.

To everyone’s surprise, black walnut kernels wrapped in wild leek leaves are quite delicious.

The salad exhausted, the next logical step was to see if those leaves had bulbs under them. Charlie was up to the challenge, so he drove us back to the woodlot again and we harvested the recommended “quart” of leaves for a proper wild leek soup. The bulbs were hard to win from the entangled roots, but Charlie managed to wrench enough of them out to please his daughter, who was eating the clean ones immediately, but saving the dirty ones for the kitchen sink. More charming video footage ensued.

The outcome of this was Bet’s wild leek soup, served at dinner the day before the vaccine appointment. Neither Bet nor Ada would eat it, so I bravely had a double bowl of the earthy and interesting concoction. Then we thought no more of it until I was walking into the arena to get my shot, when I suddenly felt inflated by some malicious gas bomb. The woman I met asked me for the time of my appointment. I said 9:09. She asked me to return to my car for four more minutes. I mentioned something about wild leek soup and asked if I could please find a washroom. She smiled sagely, turned, and led me to the other end of the building, delivered me to the entrance of the Men’s loo, and asked me to return to the entrance and my car to serve out my remaining time when I had finished.

Blessing the woman, I made it to the washroom, and eventually was assigned a disinfected, numbered chair in the auditorium, spaced on a Covid-grid. Not much happened until an elderly fellow discreetly pushed a cart over to me, introduced himself as Doctor Stein (?) and told me about the Phizer vaccine which I would be receiving today.

“After you have had one shot of the vaccine, you still have a 10% chance of contacting the virus, but you will not need admission to hospital or the ICU, and you will not die.” That had a way of lightening my outlook. In fact, it made my day. I almost lasted through the 15 minute observation period before the leek soup intervened again, but afterward I found my way to the check-out desk where the attendant emailed me a vaccine certificate, gave me directions around the arena to the parking area, and bade me good day.

Ever since that blasted soup I have felt great.