We have been living in Michigan just over a year, and these past couple months have been even more of an adventure because we are seeing all the shit that goes on with our yard that the previous owner kept cleaned up so we were totally unaware.

Like these mounds of weird strings of seeds that were every-fucking-where in May.  I mean, they were on the driveway, walkways, covering car windshields, even coating our little pine bushes. 

The mounds looked like over-groomed Pekinese dogs snuggling up to my car!

WTF are these things? Well, I was this many days old when I found out.

Isn’t the saying that mighty oak trees from little acorns grow?

Well fuck that!

Turns out these things are oak tree seed pods.

More specifically:

“The yellowish-beige, wormlike danglers that are by now mostly on the ground are called catkins, more technically known as aments. They are the male flower parts. Each of the little bumps on these catkins is a male flower consisting of a bract (a highly modified leaf), a lobed calyx and some pollen-producing stamens.”

I eschew the term “catkins” and will from this day forth refer to them by their proper name: “those yellowish-beige, wormlike danglers”.

The acorns are the fruit of the pollinated female flower of the oak tree; which I believe makes them eggs and not nuts.

Just saying.

And as for those yellowish-beige, wormlike danglers.  I HATE THEM.  A lot.

And I think you have to agree that my comparison to those things to a Peke is very apt indeed!