The Fall and Rise of Bug City

In 2021, the fall of a large dead birch tree on to our newly created garden, ‘The Flowery Dell’ presented a challenge. It was too heavy to lift, and so the council cut it into (just) manageable chunks. These were firmly buried upright. Potential home to numerous bugs. A veritable city for the bugs. As an outward and visible sign that this was their city, a ‘skyline of skyscrapers’ was assembled on the top of the tree trunks. The skyscrapers were created with a few spare offcuts of wood and a lot of ingenuity by one of the volunteers.

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Fast forward five years, and the foundations of the skyscrapers were starting to crumble. Of all the timber from our woodland trees, birch is the quickest to rot. The solution was to remove the remains of the existing skyscrapers, saw the birch log nearly to ground level and bridge the remains of the log with a newly created set of skyscrapers. This was supported on either side by stout posts, cemented into the ground. The offcuts of wood this time are larger, all carefully glued and screwed. So ‘Bug City’ rises once again, even taller than before. The bugs can make their home in the rotting wood below ground, the sawn off log being part-buried again further down the site. The bugs, so I heard tell, are also pleased with their even taller skyscrapers. Indeed, one was heard to remark they had their very own Empire State Building.