Description

Valentine’s Day Walk

The subject of this art piece is the heart shape of the husk of the Black Walnut tree and its lover, a heart shaped stone, as they take a walk in the forest on Valentine’s day.  

The lover on the left is the husk from the tree called the Juglans nigra, or the eastern black walnut.  It is a is a species of a flowering tree in the walnut family, Juglandaceae, and is native to eastern North America.

The lover on the right is a simple unclassifiable common stone that had the good fortune of being heart shaped.

The male and female components of the walnut husk occur on the same tree. Imagine the two seeds born out of love between the male and female flowers that occur on the same tree (monoecious species) in a pod that is heart shaped. The romance between the two seeds is  within the same heart. The seeds unfortunately have been removed, likely by squirrels who tore into the heart out of the heart shaped pod – how cruel nature can sometimes be? –  But squirrels will  travel miles, and will dig deep to retrieve the glorious tasty reward for their tenacious effort.  As a result of the lost love, the husk looked for love elsewhere and found it in the heart shaped stone.  The heart shape for a stone is unusual but not uncommon.  In this instance, the stone was about the same size and was a natural choice for the couple.

The forest and the walk in the green of a summer day in February is appropriate for the Southern hemisphere.  In the Northern hemisphere, no forest looks like this at this time of the year.  In Boston, for Valentine’s day 2016,  we are in for a record cold day of -6 degrees centigrade and no lovers in their right minds would venture out of bed for a walk in the cold and unwelcome forest.