Nestled in a neighbourhood of homes with manicured lawns, trees, shrubs and resident selected plants is a plot of wild land. Untouched by man, there is absolutely no evidence of human interventions within this small city block. Only a very natural mix of plant life thrives here without any need for gardeners, sprinklers, landscapers or even the weed man! No specialists at all are needed here as every living thing within this area inherently knows how to thrive!

Trees young and old, broken and flourishing are randomly scattered about. At their base and surrounding them are thriving ferns and myriad mosses, lichens, fungi, ivy and thorny wild bushes. The sky high flourishing trees sway gently with the breeze while smaller plants down below creep merrily across the shaded forest floor. Many of these small plants have emerged from seasonal debris, a soft bed of crumbled tree bark and dead leaves. Age-old tree stumps also provide nutrients for new life, supporting another new generation of it’s kind and even other varieties of trees and plant life. These stumps also provide homes for millions of insects and other tiny forest critters, which surprisingly don’t bug them at all!

It is evident that harmony exists in the wilderness. Life and death co-exist in miraculous ways. The seemingly dead tree stump holds as much life as the forest floor. Appropriately named ‘nurse stumps’, they literally nurse new life even though their own flourishing ended long ago. Interestingly enough, these nurse stumps naturally turned into medicine bowls … the perfect evolution to support continued thriving in the wilderness!

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Pexels.com