Life in the Soil

I've been nibbling away at Life in the Soil:  A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners, by James B. Nardi, for about 2 months now.  It was easy to read, but a lot to digest, I guess.  Much of it was essentially a list of the types of organisms that live in the soil, discussing each group's place in the life cycle/food web of the community there.  I've underlined copiously, so that I can flip through for quick tidbits when I return for information or for refreshment.
Probably the overarching lesson that I took away from this book is how alive the soil really is.  The complexity and diversity of life there is phenomenal, although we (as humans) see and understand relatively little of it.

If we can't see it, it isn't important, right?  Wrong. In fact, that's the kind of thinking that leads to dead soil and, ultimately, desertification and a dying world.  Many of the discussions on soil organisms had a summary list for each group, with a category labeled, "Impact on Garden".  The options for that category appeared to be "allies", "absent", or "adversaries", or a combination of those responses.  Allies vastly outweighed either the organisms with no impact or the ones considered adversaries.  Occasionally a group (e.g. nematodes) would earn the title, "allies/adversaries" when their impact could swing different directions, or when the different members of the group had very different places in the soil community.  Nematodes, for example again, consist of approximately 15,000 species.  It's amazingly simplistic to think that "nematodes", as a group, would ONLY function as allies or adversaries in the garden.

(An aside:  why do we always classify everything as "good" or "bad" based on how it relates, specifically, to us?  Maybe we ought to grow up a little and start realizing that we aren't, actually, the center of the universe.)

I learned a myriad of things from this book.  For starters, fungi and roots literally are intertwined, each feeding the other, each in the other's space, but both "...always respecting each other's integrity." (p. 15)  Fungi finds and transports minerals and water into the roots, roots feed the fungi with sugars from photosynthesis.  It's been shown that pine seedlings with mycorrhizae absorb more than twice as much phosphorus (as well as more nitrogen and potassium) than pine seedlings without mycorhhizea.

On a prairie, typically more than 3 times as many roots are produced as shoots.  There is literally more than 3 times as much life BELOW the soil surface as above it.

"Roots mine the mineral resources of the soil, and roots make these 18 essential nutrients available to animals of the land.  In going from soil to plant, calcium, for example, is first concentrated eightfold; and in going from plant to animal, this elements is then concentrated five-fold more, for a total of 40 times the concentration found in soil  Animals are not only entirely dependent on energy that is ultimately derived from sugars produced by plants during photosynthesis, but also almost entirely dependent on plant roots for concentrating from the soil the many mineral nutrients that sustain their lives."  p.20.

I'll leave you with one other interesting interaction of soil animals....

Dung beetles recycle animal droppings, especially droppings from herbivores like elephants or bison or cattle.  Both the adult and larval stages of dung beetles rely on dung for food:  the adults eat the dung juices and then move dung underground where they lay their eggs upon it.  The dung beetle larvae then utilize it as their food source while growing.  Fly maggots also like animal droppings as both adult and larval food, and there is a frequent tussle going on over which type of insect will get most of the energy from this important food source.  Dung beetles (and rove beetles and hister beetles, two other types of beetles that commonly feed on animal dung and its inhabitants) carry tiny mites on them - up to 30 mites/beetle.  When the beetle alights on a dung pile, the mites jump off and eat fly eggs and newly hatched fly maggots, then jump back onto the beetle(s) to move on to the next food source.  Without the hitchhiking mites eating the fly eggs and small maggots, the beetles can't effectively compete with the flies to get the amount of dung that they need to survive and reproduce.

Gross?  Yes, to us.  But fascinating, too.  And a perfect example of nothing going to waste.

I would highly recommend reading this book to anyone who is interested in what's going on around them, especially gardeners.  It'll help you understand the importance and complexity of a garden's soil in ways you never even thought about before!  What connections will it make for you?

Hungry Hordes

Summer has finally arrived, seemingly for good.  It's 94 degrees outside, the sun is shining brightly, the wind is up and there is no rain in the forecast.  It's hard to say goodbye to the pleasant, protracted spring that we've had, but at least the real heat didn't show up until mid June.

I was able to get out and get a good solid 2 hours of work done in the gardens before the heat and biting flies drove me in this morning.  For the most part all was good:  I saw my first monarch of the year, I got one bed weeded, finished mulching another bed, and started weeding a third bed. 

But in weeding that third bed, I noticed something that sent shivers up and down my spine....

See this western ragweed (Ambrosia psilostachya)?

I had left it in the newly made bed last summer, figuring that at least it provided some green during a summer where it seemed that brown was the predominant color.  It's also good wildlife food.  This spring I am in the process of weeding it and its progeny out of the (now) precious bed space.

You can't really see them from even this close.  You have to get a little closer....

There!  Grasshopper nymphs.  Hundreds and hundreds of grasshopper nymphs.

I've seen them jumping up as I walk through the wild areas, but I hadn't seen many in the more domestic part of the yard...until this morning. 

I need chickens and guineas and any other kind of bird I can think of to come hang out and eat their fill.  I dread to think how many adults there are going to be later this summer.  We were hoping that the long, cool spring had decreased their numbers, but this morning's horde squashed that dream.

Chocolate covered grasshoppers, anyone?

Community Rules: Prairie Larkspur and Friends

Neighborly generosity ruled on Friday evening - Sid, one of my fellow Master Gardeners and also a fellow Clearwater-ian (?!), had called that morning to tell me he had prairie larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum) blooming in his pasture.  Did I want to take a look?

Did I want to take a look?  Heck, yes, I wanted to take a look! I wanted to take a couple pictures, too, if he didn't mind.  He didn't, so we set a time in the evening, when the light would be good, for me to drop by.  At the appointed time, my camera and I made the journey over to Sid's house and off we went on a tour of exploration. 

Sid is a descendant of one of the original homesteaders in the area.  Even more amazing to me is that he and his wife live on land that was actually claimed and homesteaded by his pioneer ancestors.  In a culture often characterized by rootlessness, Sid's roots run deep, right where he, himself, is planted. 

The first thing Sid pointed out to me were three trees, 2 of which he planted as seedlings about 25 years ago.

On the left is a bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa), in the center is a catalpa (Catalpa speciosa), and on the right is an osage orange (Maclura pomifera).  The differing growth patterns of these tree species are so beautifully highlighted here:  the lighter green, large-leaved, upright catalpa in the middle; the young, but soon to be rugged, dark green presence of the bur oak; the gently arching, bright green dignity of the old osage orange, allowed to grow into its natural form, rather than having been hacked back into tortured crippledness.  I'm hoping to get invited back in the winter to take a photo comparing their bare branch structures.

Sid led me up to the catalpa so that I could take a couple photos of its flowers.  They were high enough up in the tree that I couldn't get too close, but Sid snagged a couple individual blooms to let me take in their sweet, rich fragrance.

As we walked on, I saw purple poppymallow, yarrow, spiderwort (with its flowers done for the day), cats claw sensitive brier, and many other prairie natives.  There were several blue Baptisia plants and one large cream Baptisia whose blooms were done for the year.

Then we came upon the prairie larkspur...

and I realized that I had seen it before, from a car window whizzing by as we traveled 60 mph down the road.  However, I'd mistaken the dainty, white spires for a small species of Penstemon.

Up close, the spurs of "larkspur" were obvious in the blossoms

and the dainty, fern-like leaves also reminded me of my domestic larkspur. 

How in the world do those fragile leaves collect enough energy to send up such a large and glorious bloom spike?

In the same general area as the larkspur were many seed heads of another prairie plant it had taken me a long time to find and recognize: Junegrass (Koeleria macrantha).

To be sure that I was identifying this grass properly, several years ago I'd finally purchased a couple plants at the Dyck Arboretum plant sale and placed them in my flower beds.  They've done well there and it's become one of my favorite native grasses to garden with - not too tall, nicely clumping, with attractive seedheads that hang on throughout the year.  It's one of the few cool season grasses in the prairie, too, so it greens up, flowers and seeds earlier than most other grasses here.

There were many other interesting plants in the prairie, but the last one I'll share with you was a glorious blue wild indigo (Baptisia australis).

Walking back up to the house, I happened to see an older blue baptisia bloom spike that was developing seed pods, highlighted against the sun.  In the larger pods were what looked like drops of water - seeds just beginning to develop?  I don't know, but the richness of the colors and the image made me happy, so I'm sharing it here with you.

There is so much beauty around us: in nature, in friends, and in communities.  Here's a mental toast to that beauty in all its many forms!

"I Have A Little List": Connecting A Caterpillar

There are some species that I love to see, no matter how often I see them.  Monarch and swallowtail butterflies and caterpillars are on this list.  Toads and frogs and turtles of all sorts make it too.  In recent years I've added digger bees, digger wasps, and other native pollinators to my roll of favorites as well.  And I love sphinx moths, all sphinx moths, even the much maligned tomato hornworm.

Seriously, how can you not love moths that are easy to confuse with hummingbirds when they hover in front of a flower, feeding?

I've blogged about sphinx moths like this white-lined sphinx moth before.  This is no big surprise, as I do really enjoy seeing them and, occasionally, am even able to catch them on "film".  For example, in July 2009, I wrote about watching the white-lined sphinx moth feeding at my summer phlox; and last summer I wrote again about the white-lined sphinx moth, this time feeding on the larkspur, above, as well as about the snowberry clearwing feeding at the catmint blossoms.

Well, on Sunday night I made a new acquaintance:  a large hornworm feeding on my pink evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa) in the front garden.  Not being one to worry about caterpillars making a mess of my plants, instead of grabbing the caterpillar and squashing it, or (even worse) grabbing some insecticide and spraying it, I grabbed my camera and photographed it.

It was obviously a hornworm and, just as obviously, not a tomato or tobacco hornworm.  Because it was a hornworm, identification was not going to be too difficult:  I just went to my handy-dandy caterpillar guide (Caterpillars of Eastern North America, by David L. Wagner, Princeton University Press, 2005) and went to the Sphinx Moth family section, looking for a photograph to match the individual I was seeing outside.

And there wasn't one.  Damn.

So I started looking at the "Common Food Plants" section for evening primrose, which narrowed my choices down to 4 species of sphinx moths, one of which was white-lined sphinx moth (Hyles lineata), on page 275.  Hmmm.  Well, obviously I have the adults around here - and I'd never seen the caterpillar before.  Why hadn't I recognized the photo?

The first sentence in the Recognition section read, "Yellow and black or bright lime green with exceptionally variable patterning;...."  The italics was theirs.  The photograph was of the yellow and black morph - which is why I hadn't recognized it.  The other characteristics matched, as did the places of occurrence:  the head, thoracic shield and anal plate were all the same green color and speckled with minute dots, the thoracic legs were orange, and the horn was orange, plus the hornworm is commonly found in gardens and fields. 

When I checked with the images on Butterflies and Moths of North America,  http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/, I found images of the green morph which looked almost identical to my mystery hornworm.

Mystery solved.

The first photograph was taken in the evening, 2 days ago, with a flash to supplement the lighting.  This more up-close-and-personal photo was taken this morning in natural light.  Don't you think it looks almost sated and ready to pupate?!

So now I'm waiting anxiously for my fat little hornworm to disappear and undergo its mysterious metamorphosis.  Then, for any white-lined sphinx moths I see feeding at my flowers this summer, I can imagine their "childhood" chowing down on my pink evening primroses and wonder if I've made his/her acquaintance before!

A Few Scenes From Early June....

It's the time of year that all gardeners love - when many plants are in bloom at once, the air is balmy, and the skies are bright blue.  Even in south central Kansas.

Here, then, are a few photos from around the homestead....

The lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) is doing beautifully for me.  It seems to last longer than other Coreopsis species, and occasionally even gives me a few seedlings that I can transplant into new homes in other beds.

The spiderwort (Tradescantia sp.) is in bloom all over the yard.  Here is a small plant near one of my favorite little watering holes....

...and another, larger individual growing wild along the edge of the vegetable garden.

I can't seem to decide which spiderwort I have growing naturally on my property.  Anyone able to help me out with this?  It tends to grow about 24-30" high....

When we first moved out here, I started calling this time of year the "Blue, White and Yellow" season for its coordinated blooms:  blue spiderwort, yellow western salsify (Tragopogon dubius), and white yarrow (Achillea millefolium).  The drought has kept the display to a scant minimum in recent years, but this year it is, once again, outstanding.

The photo below of spiderwort and yarrow was taken on May 23rd, so the plants have been blooming for 2 weeks now and show no sign of slowing down.

Along the back garage, the roses have been putting on quite a spectacle.  We cut out 2 large, very overgrown old spireas from behind the pink rose and now I need to actually design the bed, which may very well involve moving at least one of the roses - a prospect I don't look forward to.  Most importantly, though, take a look at the little bee shelter on the side of the garage trim....

Here is a closeup of it, showing the many filled tubes.  The orchard bees have been hard at work this spring.

I was finally able to get an okay photo of my prairie rose (Rosa arkansana) patch, just beyond the draw. 

The roses scattered among the grasses simply make my heart happy.

And I'll finish this post with 2 different kinds of milkweed, just waiting for the first monarch to find them and lay eggs.  First is the showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), whose buds are almost ready to burst open....

...and then the green antelopehorn (Asclepias viridis) - not as showy, but incredibly abundant and floriferous this year.

Monarchs, we're ready and waiting for you!

A Bountiful Harvest of Strawberries

We've been away for about 10 days, visiting our daughter down in Florida.  I spent the week prior to our departure trying frantically to get all the plants in the ground (and I mostly succeeded at that!), then I just chilled out on the trip, enjoying the fruits of other people's labor as I noticed beautifully blooming plants or oohed and aahed over vegetable gardens that we passed.

When we got back home, our gardens had outdone themselves in growing while we were gone.  For better and for worse, the growth spurt included weeds - lots and lots of weeds - so I have a lot to do before I feel  like I have a handle on everything again.  Thankfully our weather is fairly cool, especially compared to the last several years, so I'm not fighting unbearable heat when I'm outside working.

I had assumed that I would be jumping into battle with the weeds as soon as I got home...but our garden had a different plan for me.  Thankfully, we thought to go out and check on the strawberry patch before starting any other projects - and, lo and behold, it was just jam-packed with ripe strawberries.  There were plenty of over-ripe berries, too, but even after throwing those away, we were left with just over 10 pounds of strawberries, seen here ready to go into the kitchen!  (Yes, a lot of the green you see outside of the strawberry bed is composed of weeds, but that's work for another day.)

Getting a closeup shot of the berries allowed me to crop out the weeds and just focus on the mouthwatering goodness of the berries and the plants themselves.

I spent the rest of yesterday figuring out what to do with all these berries (it's the best harvest we've ever had at one time)...and then doing it!

We ended up with a delicious mid-afternoon gorge on freshly made strawberry shortcake, plus 2 trays of individually frozen, sugar dipped whole strawberries and about 8 1/2 cups of strawberry puree.  Mmmm-Mmmm, good! 

NOW I'm ready to start on all that weeding!

Planting Problems

[Note:  I wrote this piece last week, after a particularly frustrating day.  Since then, I've planted some of these plants, purchased others, and been given even more. Thank goodness it's been a slow spring so far!]

Okay.  It's confession time.  I find that planting - actually putting plants in a specific place in the ground - is getting harder and harder to accomplish.  In fact, it's getting downright painful.

It's not that I'm getting older and stiffer and fatter - although all 3 of those are, unfortunately, true.  No, it's different from physical difficulty.

I'm experiencing a mental disability about planting....

Let me backtrack just a little so that I can try to fully explain what I'm fighting against.

I am a plant collector and I have a plant collector's garden.  To those of you who don't know what that means, just imagine "One here...one there...3 over here...one way back there..." on a garden-wide scale.

My plant passion is basically "native" plants - here in south central Kansas, that means prairie plants.  While the idea of gardening with native plants has caught on fairly well in many other areas of the country, it's still in its infancy here in the heartland.  For that reason, there aren't many places to find native plants around here, especially native plants that have any local provenance, which is ideally what I'd like to have in my gardens.

Oh, the garden centers carry a few - mainly just the perennials with horticultural varieties that create a splash.  Even the box stores have a few plants that are native to the prairies, but they are even more likely to be horticultural varieties.  My two best sources are 1) a man who lives a county or two to the east of us, who drives in each Saturday morning during the spring and early summer to sell the plants he's grown at the Farmers' Market, and 2) a biannual weekend sale held at Dyck Arboretum, about an hour north of us.

With such transitory sources for my plant material, I tend to buy... 1) what I intended to buy - if they have it with them or in stock, 2) anything that looks particularly healthy or good that I think I can use, 3) anything that might work in place of what I wanted to buy that's out of stock, and 4) anything that's particularly interesting or unusual that they may never have again.

Thus, I always end up with more than I intended.  And all of it is COOL, COOL stuff.  Stuff I can't just waltz down the street and buy at 123 Nursery.

Now, here comes the hard part.  I'm home.  I've got a couple boxes crammed full of plant material, most of it unplanned purchases.  Much of it is actually something I've only seen in books or, if I'm lucky, out in the field.  Sometimes the only reason I come home with it is because Kevan says, "Oh, you'll love this!  You've got to try it!"

Now I actually have to find places for all my new plants.  Places that give each of my new little sprouts a chance to grow and mature and strut their stuff.  Places where they can be seen, where they won't get lost or hidden by their neighbors.  Places where they look "right", where they look like part of the garden and, better yet, like part of a plant community.

Most of the time, the plants I planned on purchasing were sought to fill specific holes in my flower beds.  Okay, those go in quickly.  That 20% was easy.

Now to find spots for the rest of them....  "This one will be perfect here, at the back of the bed.  And this one will slip right in there, near the front.  But I've got 12 Liatris of 3 different species!  Damn!  What were their differing requirements?  I know that mucronata is basically like punctata...but I don't really have any open spots that are dry and sunny.  I used some of those for the common milkweed...and there's that area of the corner bed, but there's still some crown vetch lurking there and I don't want to accidentally Round-up the wrong plant.  Hmmm.  I'll have plenty of room when I get the Bermuda weeded out of that new bed I've outlined, but can I get that done before the plants die on me?  I've been wanting to put a couple perennials out in the tallgrass under the fence!  Would these work there?"  And on it goes...and goes...and goes.

With luck - and good weather - I might get them all in this spring.

Each planting day, though, is filled with decisions and counter-decisions, with research and tentative placements, followed by more research and rearrangements.  Then, to make matters worse, as I start the tentative placements, I start finding the tombstones.  You know what I mean - the little tags left over from the last plant you tried there, the one that didn't make it.  "Oh, blast.  If Jack-in-the-Pulpit didn't make it here, will rue anemone fare any better?  And will THIS spring's Jack-in-the-Pulpit's - which look better than any I've seen for sale look before - do okay over there?  Or will that site be too dry for them?"

I remove the tombstones and put them in a pile.  Some day I'm going to go through and figure out which plants I've tried - and killed - and tried - and killed - and tried again - and killed again.  Maybe I'll remember not to buy them again, then.  Meanwhile, as the pile mounts, I start feeling depressed.  "Why am I even bothering?!  It is so hot and dry and cold and windy and awful around here!  Why do I even TRY to garden?  Why don't I just give up, plant grass, and let Greg mow it while I sit inside and read?"

"No. No. No. No.  What would I read about?  I read about plants!  Besides which, I'd go stir crazy!  Okay, I can do this.  Next time I won't buy so many plants, though.  Let's see...."

And the agony goes on.  Am I the only one who experiences this planting pain?  Please, tell me that others share my neuroses in this regard!  Misery truly would love company.  And maybe, then, Misery would feel less depressed and could even get all her plants in the ground in a particularly timely manner this spring!

Red-Tails at Home

A couple weeks ago, Greg and I went on our first big outing in the new dogmobile, complete with The Boys in the back.  We decided to head down to Elk City Reservoir to check out the hiking trails there.

The wonderful hike we had that day is fodder for another blog post, but we lucked out on the way there, too.  We were just getting on to the Turnpike when I noticed a big nest in a cottonwood near the road and asked Greg to pull off so I could catch a photo or two.  As we stopped, I thought I saw a head in the nest.  Zooming in confirmed my sighting.

While I was taking a photo or two, the hawk on the nest stood up and started looking around....

At that point, I thought to take a shot with a wider view to document some of the surrounding landscape....

Suddenly, through the lens, I realized that a second hawk had swooped in to the nest.  Hawk 1 flew off, as Hawk 2 flew in.

It didn't take much time at all for Hawk 2 to settle in; obviously this was a well rehearsed changing of the guard.

Hawk 1 flew off to a nearby tree and settled in for a break from nursery duties.

The excitement seemed to be over for the moment, so I got back in the car and we resumed our trip.  Not bad, though, for a brief roadside stop!

Visitors from Other Kingdoms: Red-Eared Slider

As a "natural" gardener, one of the experiences I look forward to most is a serendipitous meeting with one of the many creatures that share the yard with us.  Last weekend, we had one such encounter.

It was Greg that saw her first.  He motioned for me to come quickly.  I asked if I should get the camera and, since he nodded yes, I grabbed it and came running.  There in the grass was a good-sized turtle, almost a foot long and at least 100 feet from the nearest water.  Since we've had rain several times this spring and most ponds and creeks have at least some water in them, I assumed this was a female, presumably away from water to lay eggs.

From her shape and size and color, I knew she was either a red-eared slider or a painted turtle, but since her head was mostly pulled back into her shell, I couldn't tell which.  Greg picked her up and let me take a quick peek at her lower shell (or plastron):  she was a red-eared slider (Trachemys scripta).

He only held her aloft for a few seconds, but she was NOT happy about the experience.  When he placed her back down, she pulled deeply back into her shell and did not reappear for about 30 minutes...

...all of which time I spent watching her.  From past experience, I knew that once she emerged and determined that she was safe, she would be gone in an amazingly short time.  At first I simply stood about 20 feet away, watching.  Then I decided that my standing silhouette might be concerning her, so I sat down on the ground.  After about half an hour, I decided to try to become even less conspicuous, so I lay down on my belly and watched and waited for her to make a move.

It wasn't long after I shifted to fully prone that she finally decided to stick her nose out again. 

Slowly it came out.  Then it came a little further.  A little further.  About 20 minutes after she first started to see if I was still out there, she had relaxed enough to have her head almost fully extended.  Almost immediately, she turned and looked directly at me.

I could swear that, at one point, she was looking down her nose at me, sniffing haughtily!  

She stared at me for several minutes, then looked around a bit.  Unfortunately, I made a small motion that startled her and caused her to retreat partway back inside her shell again.

It took just over an hour for my wandering red-eared slider to gain the courage to put her legs out and start moving.  Her first move was to turn away from me, and away from the direction she was originally traveling, to move obliquely away from me.

As she went, she passed a couple bright dandelions, which seemed to be worth a careful look-see, but she didn't stop to investigate further or to sample. 

She straightened back onto her original trajectory and determinedly headed towards the tall grass area.  Beyond it was the creek.

As she went through the bright patch of henbit that was just on the edge of the tallgrass, she stuck her head up high to look around one last time, then she disappeared into the taller standing grass stems.

I got up to take a final parting shot as she headed on her way.  From the time she started moving again until I quit photographing her was 4 minutes.  Perhaps not a speed record, but startlingly fast compared to the 60+ minutes she stayed essentially motionless until she felt safe enough to travel.

For those of you old enough to be a child before the big turtle/salmonella crisis of the early 1970's, this is one of the species whose young used to be sold by the millions to children as cheap, easy pets.  Many a turtle died while providing kids a first hand experience with nature.  My brothers and I had a couple of baby turtles over the years as we grew up:  a cheap, clear plastic dish with the fake island and palm tree in the middle of it, and the doomed little turtle, paddling around, trying to find some way out to its rightful place in the wild.

My heart clenches quite a bit over the fate of all those little turtles over the years, but in a way they were also serving as ambassadors, helping children connect firsthand with nature.  How do our children do that these days?  Or do they ever get a chance to truly connect with the natural world, in a firsthand way, at all?  Touching, holding, watching, feeding, even getting stung or bitten - these are all important ways for children to connect with animals, to connect with nature.  Watching TV isn't a good substitute at all - for all the fancy closeups in a good nature film, there is no sense of reality, no hands-on touching, no seat of the pants adventure or excitement.

I don't want baby turtles to sacrifice their lives to help our human children connect with nature any more...but I sure would like to see more families care for their gardens and their landscapes naturally, so that kids could, once again, have real world adventures in the real world of nature.  

Rock-A-Bye...Raccoon?

One advantage to owning two large German shepherds when you live out in the country is that they HAVE to have their morning walkabout.  In the last several weeks, we've had several "cold" snaps, accompanied by snow or freezing rain or ice pellets.  These are definitely NOT considered sufficient reason to stay inside by The Boys.  It doesn't matter how ugly the weather is, they need a bit of romp time...and so I "suit up" to suit the weather and out we go.

Although it's hard to convince myself of the positive side of these walks when I'm donning waterproof shoes and wind-and-rain-resistant coat, facing cold winds that will cut through everything I have on, I do get to see some things that I'd probably miss otherwise. 

Sometimes I even have my camera along to capture the experience.  Here, for example, is one such time....

Look closely at this photo.  See anything much besides a bunch of snags and last year's dead plant stems, waiting to decompose?  I took this photo a week ago, on the day we woke up to snow.  This was taken about mid morning, after most of the snow had melted but while the temperatures were still quite chilly.

Look more closely at the center of the photo, right at the top of the broken black willow, where the top part of the trunk heads downwards at 90%.  (Yes, it's ugly.  No, I shouldn't have had someone out to "take care of it."  And this is why!)

See that bundle of gray fur?  I think it's a raccoon, perhaps the one that I photographed a couple weeks ago, climbing up a nearby black willow that was similarly "past its prime."  It could, however, be an opossum.  Anyone who is better than I at identifying fur is welcome to chime in with a positive identification!

Whichever it is, this is evidently a favorite hangout, especially (weirdly) in cold, wet, spring weather.  I saw it again this morning, similarly curled up, with enough rain falling that I'd taken neither my camera nor my binoculars along on our walkabout.  There it lay, seemingly snug as a bug in a rug.

Raccoons denning in hollow trees.  Raccoons napping in snags.  Woodpeckers nesting in holes, drilled into standing dead trees.  Insects overwintering in standing dead plant stems or snuggled deep in leaf litter.  We humans may see dead plants as ugly trash, messing up our landscape, but wild amimals view dead plants as shelter - safe, comfortable places to weather storms and cold and rain.  Secure places to raise the next generation. 

So, before you automatically cut down that dead tree at the back of your property, stop a minute and really analyze the situation.  Is it likely to fall on a building or a person passing by?  By all means, cut it down, and the sooner, the better!  But if that dead tree is not likely to cause any harm, then consider leaving it as a sort of wildlife hotel.  You never know what may decide to take up residence there!