We once had a nice big birch tree that shaded our house. Unfortunately it died and I had it sawed down. (Photo below) I was curious about when that was and when I did some research I was surprised to discover that it was exactly 6 years and one day ago.
We loved that tree and hated to see it go, although it was nice to glean some birch firewood out of its death.
The other day, the stump appeared through the melting snow and I was amazed at how many things were making a living off of that old birch stump. I hadn’t really paid much attention to it over the last 6 years and was quite surprised at how it now looked. The stump is now home to a myriad of living things; moss, lichen, and fungus could be seen on its surface. No doubt there are other things living inside the decaying stump. The dead birch stump is supporting a whole community of living organisms.
All of those things are extremely important to the environment. They break down and recycle the nutrients left in the dead things. Can you imagine a world without them, where when things died they just remained. All the trees and other plants, all the animal corpses, just piling up on top of each other and not disappearing. These recyclers do good work.
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