Rob’s birthday party number 3!

Rob invited various local friends for a birthday/open garden party. The weather wasn’t so good but we had a look round before heading in for cake and drinks.
It was lovely to see everyone, and we had a mystery solved! Several of our friends are naturalists and botanists, who inspected my damaged walnut tree. The new leaf stems have had their upper surface sliced off. I was completely mystified, so reported it to RHS. They suggested Leopard moth damage, but that doesn’t occur here. But Mike had a look at it and thought something must have sliced off the surface. He suggested squirrels trying to access the sap. When we looked that up on google, it seems he is right!
There’s a considerable amount of damage across the tree, but only to the young leaves and I don’t think it will suffer permanent harm. There’s some loss of nuts of course, but enough survive for my pickles!