forest ecosystem – I Just Have to Say…

Ever since about age eight or nine, I have been outside in April looking for spring to start in the northwoods. What I look for is a flower so small it is easily missed, but it is usually the first one to appear here. It has a special place in my heart. It’s called hepatica, mainly because of the leaf that has lobes like a liver (the prefix hepa refers to the liver). The leaf often turns dark under fallen leaves and snow but doesn’t completely deteriorate, which is probably why its flowers appear so early.

Mostly brown with a few pine greenery thrown in

I walked this week in the woods, hoping to get some inspiration from my friends, the trees. The woods are still pretty barren. The buds on the trees aren’t prominent and the landscape is pretty brown and grey. But I am delighted to have seen some spring – the flowers are here.

We always called them mayflowers, but I think that was descriptive of when they bloomed, not their actual name. White, pink, purple, blue are their usual colors and their stems have a delicate fuzziness to them. Sometimes a plant will have multiple blooms, sometimes just one. But they are life in the forest and I get a little thrill when I start finding them. It’s still April, so they are a bit early.

The leaves are from another plant, not hepatica

Maybe it’s because I am getting older that I notice aging in the forest more than I used to. I notice the older pines that are losing their lower branches, the ground around them littered with boughs that wind and snow brought down. I notice the dead trees, with bark peeling off and holes where birds have been hunting insects. Sometimes it’s a large tree that lost its hold and crashed down to the forest floor, its root bed sticking up in the air. There is a lot of destruction and death evident as a natural feature of the ecosystem. The woods looks quite messy at this time of year.

Sometimes it looks like there are more dead trees than living ones. Sad.

The woods can be a violent place of damage, destruction

Soon though, the ferns will be up, hiding much of the mess on the ground. Green leaves will cover up the mess above. Everything that died will continue to make its way back to the soil and nourish other life. It’s a beautiful pattern and has many lessons embedded in it. The patient, ever changing forest…

Maybe I was inspired out there, to record what I saw. It is a comforting thing, that spring has come at its appointed time once again. And I imagine that summer will come soon after. Seasons can be counted on, at least for now. This season, spring, is all about new things coming to life. Look for them. Just sayin’…

The early beginnings don’t shout to be seen, but they are there for those who will look.

The Woods

That’s what we called it when I was growing up, “the woods”. Even though there were trees in lots of other places, when we said “the woods” we all knew which trees we were talking about. It was a lot of several acres covered with hardwood trees of various kinds that had been left forested when the land around it had been cleared for farmland. It was behind our house and it never took more than two or three minutes to slide between the fence wires and run across the small pasture to the edge of the shady, cool greenness.

A slightly crooked view of the Owen Smith farm with the favorite woods dark behind the buildings.

I spent a lot of time there doing “kid work”. I cleared paths, made moss gardens, forts from branches, and climbed trees. My favorite trees had names. I knew where to look for the first flowers in the spring, the small ones. They were soon replaced by a green and white carpet of triliums, then the jack in the pulpits, the columbine, the ferns, princess pine, and wintergreen. All this to say that I was blessed, early on, to have developed a love and respect for a forest ecosystem. I would almost say that I need to have ready access to that kind of place to be truly happy.

Which is why I like to think that I’ve been blessed again, by a knowing God, to live in another woods. This one I call “the oneacrewoods”. I’ve watched this acre of Florida bloom and grow since 1994. It never ceases to amaze with its century old live oaks, palms, citrus, kapok and pine trees. It has bromeliads, cactus, orchids, and many kinds of exotic ferns and grasses. We see land tortoises, raccoons, possums, armadillos, squirrels aplenty, large hawks, many smaller birds, and an occasional fox. I can’t adequately describe how beautiful I find this place to be, how special it is, how favorite to me.