If your property backs onto an unmanaged forest, you can expect the unexpected.
- Bugs will fly up your nose without warning.
- Birds will plop their poop on your patio furniture. Frequently.
- Cottontails will nip off every single viola bloom in your flower containers. And leave the stems.
- Deer, especially pregnant does, will mow off the top two inches of all your flower containers, eating every bloom, bud and tender new leaf. Lavender, rosemary and other herbs are the exceptions … so far.
- Evergreens will drop needles, cones, branches, moss, pollen and more. Nonstop onto your patio.
- Slugs move a lot faster than their name implies, and eat more than you can imagine. They manifest in large numbers some years and then will seem to be extinct during others. (This is my pretend extinction year.)
- You will generate enough yard waste for a small town.
On the other hand…
- You’ll see sunbeams glimmer through tall trees and hear a chorus of bird trills such that you expect to next see angels floating into sight.
- Early in the morning you’ll see curious towhees, busy juncos, or newly fledged robins with their white-ringed eyes each take a dip in the bird bath outside the kitchen window.
- Tiny green frogs will live in your watering cans and, when you forget to check, will leap wildly out of the water, making you laugh.
- Pollinators of every kind will entertain you as they busily investigate every open blossom. Butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds, wasps, and many different bees will all visit, sometimes clambering over each other, sometimes squabbling, sometimes napping. So far this year, bumblebees and honeybees have been scarce even though a selection of their favorites are bobbling in the breeze.
- A doe might quietly emerge from the forest in the spring with a newly unfolded and speckled fawn tottering along behind her, still working out the rhythm of its legs.
- You could look out your office window one grey fall morning and see a splendid five-point stag standing in front of your six-foot arbor hedge then leap over it with room to spare.
For those few precious minutes, you’ll sip on your coffee and feel your stressed muscles soften as you give thanks for your little patch of the world.
Literary wanderings 