A loud BANG wakes me from a deep sleep. It’s the middle of the night. Something has struck the house, either on the roof above us or on the deck outside our bedroom window. Anything hitting the outside of the house in the dark sounds like it’s raining bowling balls. I know this sound, though. It’s not an intruder. It’s not sporting goods being dropped from outer space. It’s a signal of the beginning of a five-month onslaught.

Nine ancient walnut trees surround our front yard. They frame our small wooded lot in a stately and quite attractive way. But beginning sometime in the late spring and continuing until Halloween, they drop their horrible fruit on our lawn and driveway by the thousands.

Every year, the walnuts attack.

As a homeowner, I take on the forces of nature with a modest walk-behind mower and a few ancillary lawn care weapons, including a Weed Wacker and a blower. Together this small but sturdy squad maintains the peace on the property and, for the most part, supports my personal lawn mania.

We have a smallish yard that pales in comparison to the multi-acre expanses of my country neighbors. They all prowl their personal kingdoms with giant zero-turn mowers driven straight out of a Star Wars battle scene. May the force be with them ... and their massive implements. But as I have noted to them for years, they don’t have to deal with walnut trees.

The walnut trees in our yard are very territorial creatures. They are not good neighbors. They actually produce a chemical and disperse it into the surrounding earth that inhibits........

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