Not All Things Dead Are truly Dead

Leaves in the woodland understory

I often use dead wood in the understory of my plantings

Birds, like this Palm Warbler forage in the litter

As this social distancing thing moves forward, I find more and more solace by working in my landscape. Truth be told, I spend more time observing things than actually working. I've got the time to do that now and the freedom to do it without guilt. One of the things that never ceases to impress me is how "dead" things bring life to a landscape. Most bring far more life to a landscape than the living ones do.
When I first moved to Florida in 1987, my first home had 3 queen palms. As a newly baptized acolyte of the native plant movement, I despised them. Nothing actually uses a queen palm - at least not in the way they would a native species. Two of the palms were in my front yard and easily accessible to a landscape company. I sold those two, made very little money from it, but the sale opened up room for plants I wanted in my landscape. The third was inside my chainlink-fenced backyard and not accessible for the landscape company. Resolute in my convictions to eradicate this species from my yard, I climbed an extension ladder and cut the top off with a hand saw. Most palms are killed by the removal of their top as they cannot regenerate a new one from the cut trunk. That was true for this palm. I left most of the 20-foot trunk in place. Soon thereafter, a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers excavated a cavity in this trunk and nested. The second year, the cavity was used by a pair of northern flickers. My "dead" tree was more alive during the years before it decayed and fell over than it ever was when it was green and growing.
I purposely use "dead" materials in my landscapes and I've added them here in this new one.  I collect large logs from places where  it is legal to do so. Large dead wood does not decay rapidly, but it provides invaluable places for lichens, mosses and ferns to grow on. It also provides hiding places for a great many reptiles and their food organisms. I've moved much of what I have now from my former landscape and I expect it to be with me for as long as I survive this world.
The dead leaves, however, are the most valuable "dead" thing on my property. I will never understand the use most folks make with ground-up woody material for mulch. It makes for a solid trail, no doubt, but it generates virtually no life in a landscape because it doesn't decay. To me, mulches are the foundation of a living landscape. They create soil conditions that are vital to a healthy soil. By doing so, they feed a vast array of invertebrates and these feed my birds. As I watch my developing landscape, birds of all types of species, spend time in my leaf litter, flipping the leaves everywhere, looking for insects. Lately, it has been especially important to a pair of catbirds that are still my neighbors. They do not use my feeders. They forage in the leaves. Someday, I hope to be lucky enough to have created conditions favorable to thrushes and ovenbirds in migration like I had in my former landscape. There, I documented every species of wood thrush that passes through Florida as well as my favorite ovenbirds, and worm-eating warblers and water thrushes. Leaf litter decays. It generates woodland soils and it generates invertebrates.
My dream is that someday, some entrepreneur from a northern state will be wise enough to bag and sell their leaf litter instead of bagging it and throwing it away. In Florida, some of those same types of people now rake and sell pine straw the same way. Bags of northern leaf litter would be golden to those of us down here trying to create living landscapes. The leathery leaves of a live oak do not decay as easily as those of a sugar maple or pin oak. Until then, I will use the leaves my deciduous trees produce and collect leaves I can come by from others.My developing woodland is deciduous for a number of reasons. One of them is that they generate the best leaves for my mulching needs.