Thank You People Who Let the Wild Things Grow

The other morning, I was sitting on the patio reading the newspaper when I glanced up to see a group of loud, endangered wood storks had landed in the high, soft branches of an old stand of cedars about 200 yards off.

It was the third day of exciting sights and sounds coming from that little stand of old cedars just south of Lake Ellen.  The night before, I was very surprised and amazed to a big scary owl hooting in the distance.  The day before that, it was a murder of crows chattering and playing.  For a couple of years now, these cedars have been the home to a few hawks that keen as they circle the neighborhood hunting prey.

I was thinking, here we are between old Carrollwood and Lake Ellen, and just one little old man's decision not to cut down these trees on his little lot has added so much to my quality of life.  

When I'm driving to the Walmart up Old Ehrlich Road, I cringe when I see the new McMansions on the neighborhood lakes that have ripped out brush and mow to the water line.  Not only are they contributing to the pollultion (via run-off) of the very amenity they prize, but they are depriving themselves of these special nature moments.  And, yes, they deprive the rest of us of these delights, too.  

In this day and age, it is impossible to ignore how our minor landscaping decisions destroy habitat one yard at a time. Habitat preservation is easy; it can be as simple as letting the weeds grow.  Did you know that those ugly cat-tails are some of the best water purifiers available?  They are used in low-tech water treatment applications here and abroad, yet homeowners pull them out as if they were trash on the bank.  

So, thank you to the little old man with the house on the pond just north of old Carrollwood who has not succumbed to the obsessive tidying that is ruining one of the best things in old Carrollwood--its wildlife habitat.