About 4 years ago I bought an almond tree - mail ordered. I found my planting spot, staked it, and waited (re-staking it several times since it wants to lean).

Finally, this year, blossoms! Then "fruit"! But wait. The leaves, blossoms, and fruit sure look like peaches. I match them up with my other peach trees. Sure enough, I got gypped! This isn't an almond tree. It's another peach tree!

So I moped around for the rest of the summer watching the peaches grow. But the fruit looked a little weird, plus, they weren't ripening like peaches. And they tasted horrible. But the pit looked exactly like a peach pit.

Alas, I plucked a couple from the tree and split open the pits. I tasted the "nut", and it tasted of marzipan! My peach tree really IS an almond tree!

I googled almond tree and discovered it is a species of peach! Wow! No wonder they resemble each other.

So the past several days, I've been cracking them open to extract the almond seed (No, it's not a nut). They're smaller than grocery store almonds, and about half the pits are worthless--almonds shriveled or rotten. They "explode" when hammered, so you have to be careful.

When finished, I suppose I'll "roast" them in my convection oven, like I used to do when I grew (experimented with) peanuts. What else do I have to do this winter?