April 23, 2026
#542
Gentle reader,
First of all, I want to thank you for your continued following of my blog. Readership is reaching 750,000 which just blows my mind! Thank you SO much!
This is a photo from 2017, it shows just how thick with trees our backyard was. Was is the key word. Because one day, I was talking with our next door neighbor and glanced at our backyard and said, "Oh, no!" He asked me why I said that? "Turn around and look at the tops of our trees." Sure enough, the tallest Oak tree had bare branches sticking above all the other trees. "Our tallest tree seems to be dying!" That was in 2021.
We called a tree "surgeon" and they confirmed what I feared. That tree was dying. They quoted us a price and recommended taking down the Tulip Poplar tree which was next to it, since Poplar trees, while being Hardwood, are the weakest of all Hardwood trees. I knew this and agreed to let them take both down.
This little girl was Mini. She and her twin sister, Maria, were Prague Ratters. A 600+year-old dog breed bred in the Czech Republic to hunt rats. She would have barked herself hoarse if I'd let her watch from the deck. She was happy to "supervise" from inside the dining room.
Mini on the left, Maria on the right. So silly how womenfolk like to dress up pets. In fact, Maria looks less than pleased.
You will have to look closely at this photo. There IS a man, the actual "surgeon" in the tree.
Each step these men went through safely and neatly reduced the two trees to stumps and after they were done, they completely removed every trace of their work!
He did this to both stumps to prevent them from trying to grow back. The Poplar actually started growing a new branch from the side of it's stump, but I divested it of that idea.
With the sky now visible, Nature took over and things began growing around and between the stumps.
I put a "face" on the Poplar stump and decorated the Oak stump to look like little elves lived in it. Nature had other ideas.
A Pileated Woodpecker, (isn't he gorgeous?) began tearing the Oak stump apart looking for grubs behind the bark.
Sometime later, he showed up again. This time on the ground. I told my brother, Jim, about it and he said, "They never land on the ground!" This image proved him wrong. The bird worked a long-ago-fallen tree from one end to the other finding all the grubs inside it and turning the log to saw dust.
Various vegetation began growing on and around the two tree stumps. Including different types of Fungi including mushrooms.
NONE of what you see here, did we plant. They just took advantage of newly available sunlight and started growing!
An Acacia Tree spontaneously started growing between the two stumps. Note the Blackberry vines too.
Then, one day, these showed up overnight. My wife freaks out when she sees wild mushrooms. But, she came to see what I found anyway.
They look like a type of edible Mushrooms called "Golden" but, we were not going to find out if they were! They were all around the tree!
The closer I looked, the more types of Fungi I saw, all working in concert to slowly reduce the tree stump to dust.
These, I believe are also edible. The Chinese call them "Tree Ears". They are an ingredient in Moo Shoo Pork and other Asian meals.
AS the Lambs Ears grew, our resident Gold Finches noticed something tasty, insects, perhaps and were feasting on them. Every Spring, the same large flock returns to our yard. Every Winter, the unattached females choose to winter over here since they don't have mates.
Action stopped thanks to fast shutter speeds.
We could see the uninterrupted sky in that direction for the first time.
There are all kinds of ways that Nature breaks down dead things.
The bark began falling off of the Poplar stump.
Just keep watching...
Wait for it...
Yum, yum...
"What you looking at?"
The big-leafed things are called Lamb's Ears. They have kind of softly fuzzy leaves.
A closer look at the Lamb's Ears.
These were around the back of the trunk. Note the blackberry vines.
And these, around the left side at the rear.
Two days later, this is what they looked like!
What follows below are a series of photos of earlier types of Fungi which began growing behind the bark. Eventually, all of the bark fell off. Look closely, there are several different varieties.
I have always loved Nature and being outside. This photo, colorized by a Facebook friend, is me back in the 1970's in the Colorado Rockies. My brother, Jim, and I were climbing an 11,000 foot tall column of rock. I don't know if it had a name.
We were so fortunate to grow up in Marin County, California during the 1960's through June, 1971, when we moved to Denver, Colorado. SUCH a beautiful place to be at any age, but especially as a child. Our parents let us do things back then, which would have Child Protective Services descending upon our homes to arrest our negligent parents! Times were so different that long ago.
Those peaks are Mount Tamalpais which is part of the Marin Headlands. Marin is very strict about "Development" which preserves Nature's beauty for all to enjoy, hopefully, forever.
The "Tree Ears" have been there for quite a while.
This angle shows why the "Tree Ears" name came about.
The original black and white photo, below.
Mount Baldy, in Marin, which we were allowed to go climb any time we simply asked.
I hope that you enjoyed a look at Nature doing it's thing. It has been doing so for millions of years. All very efficiently. Nature invented "recycling".
Again, thank you for taking time to read this article about how Fungi plays an important role within Nature. Feel free to leave a comment below, or on Facebook.
Scott Robb
April 23, 2026
#542
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