The soundtrack of summer is heavy with insects. Male crickets and katydids play long, repetitive concerts in the forest. Busy pollinators bring fields to life with the buzzing of their work, similar to the hum of offices except that it directly creates food and new generations. New generations of office equipment require new resources and make the obsolete equipment into waste.

Forests and fields make plenty of waste, it just gets put to use. Excrement and dead organisms enrich the soil. Compost is a human adaptation of a very old process. Like a wild sourdough, the trick to a good compost pile is to create a hospitable environment and allow the ubiquitous agents of decay to populate it.

This evening I walked out to our bin in the hot, steamy air which is much more conducive to decomposition than outdoor recreation. The pile smelled more earthy than putrid until I disturbed the surface with a pitchfork. Almost all the kitchen scraps which had spent the week in the pile had lost their identity. Straw-colored stalks and matted leaves clung to form, but dark clumps of nearly finished compost filled in the gaps. Lush green potato plants grew up the sides of the bin, satisfied with the state of decomposition.

Unfortunately we’ve been more focused on the baby than our kitchen, especially during the long labor when food was left all around the house. It’s not that nature abhors a vacuum so much as that a vacuum represents an opportunity, and when we exclude most scavengers but have plenty of food around, there’s an open niche for what can get through. Which in this case was an invasion of tiny ants. They’ll disappear when the counters are clean, only to form long lines for foraging when banana peels take too long to make it to the compost.

Our society is rather fastidious, perhaps too fastidious considering all the power humans exert over our environment. We spent last week at my parents’ house along the River Between Two Countries. A dead carp had washed up on their beach and emitted an aroma of fishy decay that hung about their lawn. We weren’t the only ones to notice the smell. As we discussed whether to push the carcass out into the water and let it wash up on someone else’s shore, a large bird swooped low past the house. We crept out to startle several turkey vultures off the bleached body. Thus began a regular stream of vulture, crow, and even gull visitors. All of them busy cleaning the beach while trying to stay out of our sight.

The other day I wandered into the forest without the dogs, a nice break from the task-oriented world of early parenting. The exuberant green of early summer had given way, under an onslaught of insects and summer weather, to a more matured visage. The vegetation frayed at the edges, and even the once robust umbrellas of mayapples staggered about in tatters.

The brittle soil waits for the rain that never seems enough when it comes. For the previous two years we lived here, frogs reproduced in pools created by the spring rains. By this May, these vernal pools had become thick masses of black mud that pulled at my boots. The dark liquor on top was no hospitable environment for masses of jellied eggs, or darting tadpoles. Wood frogs which rely on these ephemeral bodies of water had to breed elsewhere, and hopefully not across too much inhospitable territory in this fragmented landscape. According to AmphibiaWeb, the average wood frog only has 3 or 4 years to reproduce before death. Some amphibians managed to breed, judging by all the tiny frogs and toads that have been crossing our paths.

Babies abound in the woods. Ruffed grouse chicks meander across the driveway. Miniature rabbits infiltrated my garden, to the detriment of my beans. The wetlands where I work are very productive. Young muskrats graze on strips of lawn, only bothering to move away when I lean in for a closer look. I suppose they’ve had no opportunity to learn the dangers of man, though considering my coworkers there’s not much danger for them to discover. Other wildlife takes a dimmer view to our presence. As I walk the trails, the hiss of crossing guards halts my progress – Canadian geese escorting their gray goslings from one pond to another.

Raising young is time consuming, which is why the vast majority of organisms don’t bother. They compensate by creating vast numbers of offspring which the world will winnow out. Most of the mass of frog eggs won’t make it to a reproductively mature adult, though wood frogs are a common species. Even with parental support, many song birds don’t make it to reproductive age. Migrants have come here specifically to breed but they face many obstacles. Back in June I watched the phoebes catching bugs at a frenzied pace to bring to a changeling. A brown headed cowbird had laid an egg in their nest which grew to a burly chick that bullied its nest-mates. As I watched, the nestling opened its wings angrily, knocking its adopted parent off to find yet more food. Fortunately, phoebes arrive so early that they can often renest, and the young fledglings from this second brood are still hanging around the house. Despite all the challenges, parenting succeeds often enough that we’re all here.

Berries of summer

Blue cohosh, developing its color.


Raspberries growing in the bits of sun along the driveway.


Jack-in-the-pulpit berries emerging from the remains of the flower.


A fertile frond of a sensitive fern. These structures dry and stick out from the snow all winter.