Trawling

Barley, a dog, sniffs intently along a margin of dead leaves between some grass and some shrubbery.

Given the amount of rain we get through the winter months, I remain sort of fascinated by the durability of leaf litter. I don’t doubt that all sorts of good decomp is happening to the benefit of flora and fauna alike, there’s still a lot of leaves that seem not to have changed all that month. Is it more that there’s a crisped outer layer, a bit like a crème brûlée, where leaves at the top get dried out by the sun while the moisture remains in the dark layers beneath? Does this stratification hold up in the face of a season’s worth of wind gusts? I guess what I’m asking is, just how worried should I be that Barley’s going to find something truly dicey under all those leaves? 😅