Despite the fact that my husband, Mike, and I deliberately decided we would not plant a garden this year, we still have an unexpected bumper crop of a different type.

Although we raised very successful gardens for about three years in a row, we were losing the battle against the neighborhood groundhogs that were eating every plant that popped up. So this year, rather than fighting against Mother Nature, we decided to focus on other projects and maybe return to gardening next year.

Over the past couple of weeks, though, I noticed something other than vegetables growing like gangbusters — miniature black walnut trees.

You see, many years ago my dad, the late Jim Compston, decided to put a few walnuts he had collected in some soil to see if he could get them to sprout. He was successful, and he planted one of them at the edge of a property we own.

We left it alone and let it grow. Slowly but surely, it became a small tree that was taller than me.

However, it was in an area where a fence line between our lot and a neighboring field was a bit hard to maintain. One day Mike decided it was time to clean that mess up, so he cut down several small, wild cherry trees. In the process, he cut down my dad’s walnut tree.

Needless to say, I was upset about what had happened. While Mike was only trying to make our property look better, I didn’t take the loss of the walnut tree very well.

But low and behold, that stump soon developed a sprout and began to recover. We were careful to keep mowing and trimming around it without disturbing it, and soon it became clear that it was going to grow again.

Before long, it was taller than any building on that lot, and it spread its branches wide. In a few years it began producing nuts.

I would estimate that the walnut tree that wouldn’t quit is now 40 feet tall or taller, and it has produced buckets full of nuts faithfully every year.

Sometimes we have collected those nuts and shared them with friends and family. Other times we have raked them up to avoid throwing them with the mower. Still other times, we have allowed them to just fall to the ground and become food for the many squirrels and deer that visit.

This was one of those years. But something different must be going on. In the past, those nuts have mostly disappeared, either having been consumed or collected or just becoming part of the soil.

On occasion, I have seen one sprout and start to develop a new tree. When that has happened, though, the little starts have always been in a bad spot — too close to the foundation of a building or growing up through the fence. So, I have always eliminated them, usually just snipping them off with some clippers. They don’t generally grow back.

This year, though, I think at least half of the nuts the tree dropped last fall have tried to take off and become full-blown trees. We did have to cut some of the larger ones down, as they again were right up against a building or perched at the edge of a steep bank where a mature tree could easily come tumbling down.

But there are also tiny walnut trees popping up all over the lawn. I didn’t even know they were there until I noticed that I was mowing over them all throughout the grass.

I am not cultivating them or encouraging them at all, but still they are growing everywhere. I’m not sure what conditions are just right this summer, but they are definitely “happy little trees,” as painter Bob Ross would say.

There are a few small trees in spots where they could be removed and transplanted. I don’t plan on doing that, because I just don’t feel we have the appropriate amount of space for more than one large nut-producing tree. But, if anyone else would like to try starting their own black walnut tree, I would be more than happy to share.

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Without a garden, I’ve been getting my green thumb fix this summer threw houseplants and flowers. Another example of how amazing trees can be comes from a double red hibiscus branch my grandmother brought home from Florida in the 1980s. She planted that stick, and when she died we brought home a large flowering tree. Today, I have six of them, and I am still propagating more from cuttings for friends and family.