It was only 4 pm but dusk was falling as I walked into the old woodland. The path was strewn with storm debris: broken bits of rotten branches and lumps of ivy.
December is here. Earth month. Trees sleep, leaves rot back into the soil and all of nature spirals slowly downwards into the dark, quiet earth.
I picked up a damp, half-rotten twig. Paradoxically, deadwood is essential for a healthy, living woodland. Lots of it is needed to provide homes for invertebrates, fungi, lichens and even some birds. Biodiversity needs the dead as well as the living.
A reminder on a grey December afternoon that death and decay are both part of the cycle of life.
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