The Stone Garden of Moss -- An entry for xpilar's competition no. 27

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This post is a response to @xpilar's competition no. 27, and the art is used at the artist's direction for this #contest...

xpilar's stone garden of moss (used by permission).jpg

As a winter wren, I enjoy the benefits of an accident my grandmother had at the old quarry.

She was carrying moss home for her nest, and was surprised by a hawk. She dropped the moss in her effort to get between a place in the stones where the hawk could not reach her.

The moss fell into a little spot on the floor of the quarry, in the summer that it was being cleared of what most of its humans call usable stone. The moss was trampled again and again, and so the moss was broken up and spread. Just afterward, a late summer thunderstorm filled out all the little puddles left in the empty quarry floor, between its remaining rocks, and flowing in all the ruts worn by wheels taking stone to and from the site. That water was enough to keep the moss alive until the rains of the fall. The winter was mild, and so the moss survived and began growing in the spring, survived the mild summer, and grew again until the whole floor of the abandoned quarry and all the remaining rocks were covered in it.

Grandmother's happy accident has now led to our entire family of wrens having easy access to fresh green moss, from fall through early summer. Of course we have to be careful … that hawk has grandchildren too, and they are always hungry. But it is still a beautiful thing, in the fall, to come flying out of a silvery-blue fall horizon and see that the stone garden of moss that God, Grandmother, a hawk, and some humans combined to make has again come back to life!



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