A
few years ago, trying to rediscover our youth, we spent all of a rather long
day wielding pruning shears and saws. No
shrub or tree in the yard was safe. Needless to say, we left a trail of
assorted cuttings behind as we let things “fall where they may”. We’d read about recycling green things
on-site and the evils of adding a bunch of prunings to the landfill. So we
hauled the brush to an out-of-the-way corner of the yard, thinking somehow it
would compost rapidly and magically turn into garden soil.
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| Curved-bill Thrasher |
It
didn’t. Instead we had a 5-foot tall
pile of brush that is now totally brown.
(It’s now 7 feet tall, too).
It
wasn’t going to disappear, so we thought of a “controlled burn”. After all, it
was all dead, dry wood and would burn away to nothing. It would work, if only
open fires didn’t create pollution, and weren’t illegal in Denton and most othr
north Texas citires.
About
then, I saw a rabbit poke its head of the brush pile, and duck back in when he
(she?) saw me. Then, being quite still for several minutes, I saw half a dozen
Mockingbirds (or did I see one Mockingbird six times?) fly into the brush pile
with beaks full of who-knows-what. A noisy little Bewick’s Wren guarded a home
in there too. There were probably lots of other creatures in there as well.
No
way could we burn the brush pile. Since
then we’ve seen Cardinals, Wrens, Chickadees, Mockingbirds and several birds we
didn’t recognize go into, or leave, the brush pile. Once a Roadrunner sat on
top of it for a few hours, probably hunting down lizards.
The
brush pile (actually, what’s inside it) is now something to be proud of. If we had it to do over again, we might
contain it more decoratively, but certainly wouldn’t get rid of it. Every yard
should have one, if only to provide a mini bird-sanctuary. Here’s how;
A brushpile is just a random pile of
branches. Ideally, the first foot or so should be made of branches 3 to 6” in
diameter, criss-crossed to leave lots of empty spaces inside. Above this, pile
trimmings randomly leaving plenty of nooks and crannies for birds to find.
It only works if you exclude small stuff like lots of leaves and grass clippings. That’s all there is to it!
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