Becoming naturalized

Harry the beagle, the Better Half’s new rescue dog, is settling in nicely. There’s still a few adjustments that are needed but the situation looks promising. Yesterday the Better Half got a COVID vaccine booster. Today it was my turn. Our diligence is due in part to self-preservation tendencies and also because we have a one year old granddaughter who’s not eligible yet for any COVID vaccine. Except for the last item, we can add each of these things to our list of what we have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

some mushrooms thrive on or near dead wood

Photo by J. Harrington

As of this morning, I’m adding to that list Aldo Leopold’s essay, A Mighty Fortress from A Sand County Almanac. I’ve read and reread his description of the benefits of tree diseases to many forms of wildlife, but it keeps slipping my mind every time there’s a new batch of broken branches covering the driveway and yard. Such was the case this morning after yesterday’s and last night’s storms. That’s when I get tempted to just "get rid of all these dead branches and diseased trees," forgetting once again that nature’s way is not the way of middle-class America’s tendency to excessive neatness.

brush pile and lightning-struck oak

Photo by J. Harrington

Most years by this time the brush pile in the backyard would have been reduced to ashes at least once and maybe twice. The folks at the Xerces Society have educated me to the benefits of brush piles for pollinators and other creatures. We’ll let the brush pile stand throughout winter and, barring the unexpected, let the dead oaks stay as they are. The pileated woodpeckers seem to appreciated that and, no doubt, so do a number of other critters we haven’t noticed.

The Nurse Tree

By Molly Peacock

Why waste away in a box

when you could be a nurse tree?

That’s what they call dead logs:

mushroomeries of the woods.

Your living room’s a wood

of couches, books, and chairs.

You’re dead not at all, but

could you be preparing

for things to grow inside

the chest of the log

you plan to become:

cherished compost heap

where heat turns the brown

mess of feelings, sorry,

that’s peelings, into comp-o-

sition? For we who love

our hands in dirt, a leaf skirt

decomposing seems an ideal

station between this life and

next: I visit your room

as on a forest walk. Passing

a fallen log — is that you? — 

I see a scarlet fungus cap

pop up from friable bark.

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