In the garden, the log pile is a whole world. I hear frogs croaking from within it, I watch wrens foraging for insects. It’s a mixture of different species: apple from neighbours who were cutting a tree down, walnut from a pollarded giant at the allotment, hawthorn lost to a storm.
There’s also oak, elder, hazel, willow and birch. I stop tree surgeons and ask if I can take a log or two, replacing the sadness of another felled tree with the hope of the life its dead wood will support. I like taking new logs home for my log pile.
In death, as in life, different tree species support different insects and fungi, so a greater diversity of logs means more diversity of those that use them. The only fungi I identify is jelly ear (Auricularia auricula-judae), but there are brackets and strands of other things, a pink slime mould. The way the wood is arranged also brings different species: buried wood attracts stag beetles, wood at height attracts wasp beetles, and then there are the specialists of bark and softwood, the solitary bees that lay eggs in abandoned holes, the wasps that carve their own. In the soil, detritivores help it decay, fungi and bacteria eat it back into earth.
Today, I dismantle it to make room for a hedgehog box that I will hide among the logs. I work carefully. The top layer is dry, but as I reach the bottom there’s a sweet earthy smell, a crumble of wood and leaves, a party of frogs and toads. One toad is female, gravid with this year’s unlaid spawn. In a hollow log, four frog faces gawp at me. I move them to safety and keep working, uncovering beetles, springtails and centipedes and earthworms in the rich soil. I add a paving slab so the box doesn’t rot with the heap.
I replace the logs: softer ones on the soil and drier ones around the box. As spring springs, grass and other plants will grow into and around it, the box will be hidden and amphibians will crawl back into place. If I’m lucky, a female hedgehog will find the box and complete the heap – what a gift it is to have one.
