By Devon Higginbotham
Suncoast Native Plant Society
If you are like me, you want your yard to look neat. You mow the grass the moment it starts to look unruly, clip the hedges into geometric cubes, rake the fallen leaves and pick up the dead branches. You may even be compelled to eliminate any pesky bugs that may munch on your favorite shrub, leaving them with unsightly bite marks.
Isn’t that the human way?
But why is it we feel it so necessary to be in charge of nature? We love how it looks in the parks and natural areas, but in our own yards we feel we must help out, somehow control and shape nature into our ideals of beauty.
But are we really helping out?
I have a couple dead pecan trees in my yard and periodically they drop large dead limbs with gobs of moss. It’s been a long time since I have seen a green leaf on either of them. The wood is so decayed and crumbly, it’s not difficult to collect the fallen limbs, but I have been dying to chop them down.
Last month, as I lugged another fallen limb to the trash pile, I looked at one trunk that had slowly dwindled down to 20 feet in height.
There was a hole at the base of the tree large enough for a family of hobbits to pass through. In the interior, dark and mysterious, I envisioned a raccoon charging out, obviously very inconvenienced by my snooping into his home. But peering in, all I saw was darkness. No one seemed home.
I suppose it’s time to get rid of them, I queried to myself.
I imagined my neighbors quietly asking the same question. Why is she keeping those behemoths? What an eyesore!
It’s time to take them down, I decided.
I made a mental note to call my neighbor, Jerry, the next day and have him push them over with his tractor and drag the hulking masses of decaying wood to the trash. I would be rid of them. My yard would be tidy once again.
But the next day, while walking past one dead trunk, I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker. Looking up I saw the shy creature as he slipped around to the backside out of view. The woodpeckers were still finding insects in the wood, but the trunks look so dead. The woodpeckers will find food in other trees, I thought.
The week before, listening to Shari Blisset-Clark talk about Florida forest bats, she described how they spend the day in hiding in hollow trees and craggy bark, and I thought about the pecan snags in my yard, an ideal habitat for sleepy bats.
Maybe I should let them linger, I thought.
The bark was perfect for slumbering creatures and the gaping hole in the trunk must already be home to multiple species of wildlife, even though I didn’t see them.
As I tidied my yard last week, I heard the distinct call of the red-shouldered hawk. Looking up I caught a glimpse of two hawks mating at the very top of one of the snags.
Yeah, the snags are staying!
To find out more about the Suncoast chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society, visit SunCoastNPS.org or attend a meeting at 7 p.m. the third Wednesday of each month at the Seffner UF/IFAS Extension office, 5339 County Road 579, Seffner.