After months (mid December-mid April) of not seeing the ground, it appears as a revelation around here, and I find myself entranced by the ghostly beauty of last year’s dead and rotting leaf-litter, holey logs, all manner of other dead plants, and the occasional animal bit, all before the bursting green profusion just starting now. I suppose in general it’s viewed as so much unappealing compost, but I find that nature rewards in proportion to attention given, and there is an abundance of elegant, melancholic beauty in these bodily sacrifices to soil-building.
We are made of this same stuff; walking, talking heaps of soil. We spring forth and we die back. Onward living soil!
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All photos above are from Vermont. The photo below shows Rhododendron skeletons from the Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle.