the back field

This empty field is full of life. Such a variety of plants grow here, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries in season, shrubby alders and tender birches, and all manner of wildflowers. Deer browse here, and racoons and porcupines and skunks sometimes prowl, and at least once something larger, we're guessing it was a bobcat from the track we found in the snow. And birds are busy here, waxwings looking after the worms, and finches teasing each other after a snack of thistle, chickadees hanging from the spruce boughs, and many other songbirds when the chokecherries and rowan berries and shad berries are ripe. Crows and cardinals perch in the treetops, calling to one another. We live just on the other side of the trees, and we see this field as a patch of paradise.

And this paradise is a dump, if you dig down and look closely. The field is strewn with huge hunks of concrete and pavement and who knows what other kind of fill. But what that means is now one will be building here in the near future. We have it all to ourselves -- we, that is, and our neighbours and all the wild plants and creatures who are at home here. Nature, after all, can thrive anywhere!