Rewilding My Lot

One of the first things I did here once the Bermudagrass had been removed in the back yard was to create a pile of logs and to let a Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora) plant scramble over it. Then I pretty much left it alone to be occupied by whatever wildlife wished to use it. In the months since then, I have seen visits by bees, ants, spiders, lizards, butterflies (on the Frogfruit), and various other critters.

Over the year, the Frogfruit had started to invade neighboring areas and since its season as a host plant for Phaon Crescent butterflies seemed to have past, I thought it was a good time to cut and pull it back.

The photo above was the “before” and below is the “after.” Unfortunately, the Frogfruit volume that I pulled up is too much for my compost system to handle and so this will have to be discarded.

Here are some specific features of the wood pile that I see.

Ants have moved soil around to make mounds. The biggest one that I can see appears to be currently unoccupied. Ant activity underground serves to aerate and feed soil, so if they are not in my way I leave them.

Insects have bored holes into the wood and I see that several of the holes are now plugged up, perhaps occupied by over-wintering creatures.

There are various crevices at ground level and above, so these are access points to whatever is going on inside the pile. I’ve seen bees and lizards go in through the gaps.

Some of the logs have softened to the point that they are beginning to crumble. This is what I had hoped, because that decay activity all helps to increase biological activity on this lot and contributes to the “rewilding” process here.

When I was pulling up the Frogfruit, I tried not to disturb the soil too much. So very likely I’ll have to do a little more tidying up in the area, but for now there is some more ground available for new annual plants to emerge nearby.