Winter quarters

Another few old photos; these are from last October.

Woodbug in rotting pine cone, with snail.

Every fall, I pile some of the current crop of pine cones underneath a potted cedar, to help keep the cold out. In a pot, without the insulation provided by the surrounding soil, a plant is more vulnerable to cold, so even when the plant itself is winter-hardy, I wrap and cover its pot.

Over the winter, the centers of the cones rot, liberating the seeds. Some of these sprout, but that's not the point. The tightly-closed cone becomes a mini-compost pile, its own heat source; even when the ground is frozen hard, the center of the cone stays cool and moist. So it's a winter home for the small animals that don't necessarily go into stasis during these months.

Several times during the cold weather, I bring in a few cones and break them up to see who's living there. There are always a fair number, all wide awake.

In this batch, I found several snails, a family of woodbugs, a few baby slugs, earthworms, two species of springtails, millipedes, and one plant louse. Smaller things scuttled and slithered out of sight as fast as I broke off the scales of the cone; probably more 'pedes, and a spider or three.

Cyanide millipede

Another millipede, sleeping. And the head of a long earthworm, plowing through the composted wood.

Plant louse, exploring a sheet of paper on my desk. Seriously cute.

A pinhead snail, not the same species as the one above. He hid when I moved him to the paper, but a minute later, set out to explore the desk. I put him back in the cone.

When I was done, as usual, I collected the remains of the cones, critters and all, and replaced them under the tree, covered with a layer of duff for warmth.

They made it through the winter; this afternoon, when I moved a couple of pots in the garden, they were all there, with a crowd of their friends and relations.

December dig

Well, that was a short winter. Or maybe not; maybe it's just a practice run and the next edition will be the real thing.

A week ago, I was still seeing moths on the wall by our door, sometimes half a dozen at a time. The weather was mild, and garden plants were putting out spring buds. My lobelia and bacopa were still flowering cheerfully; there was even one pallid nasturtium in the few inches of garden where the sun still hits occasionally.

The first of December, the average temperature on the beach at White Rock was 9.3 degrees Celsius, almost 50 Fahrenheit, with a high of 11.2 in the afternoon. A week later, it was -4, dropping to -8; over 19 degrees difference. (Or a drop of about 34 degrees Fahrenheit.) And with the windstorm, the wind chill brought it down to -15 on the beach, -20 inland (like where we live.)

Our southern BC gardens aren't prepared for that kind of a shock. The rhododendrons curled up their leaves into tight tacos, the winter-hardy hellebores drooped and shrivelled, the evergreen bergenia gave up and lies dying, even though I covered it against the cold. Even the sausage vine up against the wall, well wrapped up in six layers of heavy paper, became instead a taco vine. And there are no more moths.

And today, it was over. Monday, it snowed, just a fine dusting, but the temperature climbed to zero. This afternoon, it was raining. Back to normal. I watered the hellebores with warm water to thaw their soil, and they rewarded me by poking a new shoot an inch into the air. The old leaves won't recover, but the plants still live.

I started to wonder how the residents of my soil handled the sudden drop. This afternoon, I brought in three full flowerpots. I couldn't get any garden soil; it was still frozen too hard, too deep, to break off even a chunk.

In the first two pots, all I found alive was a tiny, tightly coiled cyanide millipede. As soon as I removed it from the pot, it unwound itself and started to explore.

Just under an inch long. Doesn't really mind the cold.

And that was it. There were no snails, no slugs, no woodbugs, no beetles, no worms. Not even their frozen dead bodies. No tiny mites, no springtails, no spiders to prey on them. Nothing alive.

Except. All through the soil frozen yellow balls were scattered. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, in sizes varying from a pinhead to a small pea, the colour of grapefruits. A solid yellow while still cold, they quickly became translucent when I exposed them to room temperature air.

They rolled into the channel around the rim of my tray.

I accidentally squashed a few; they were liquid inside. I found a few empty ones. These had a yellow skin on the outside, and a chalky coating inside.

I don't know if they're slug eggs or snail eggs. All the slug eggs I've seen around here have been colourless and transparent. I'm keeping a couple of dozen inside, in potting soil, to see what emerges, thinking it's spring.

The third pot has a bulb in it, and was protected on a base of leaves inside a bucket, and under one of those paper garden bags half full of leaves, and stashed in a corner of the wall. This soil was frozen, too, but the bucket held two tiny running critters, one lively small wasp, and one springtail. A handful of old moss harboured one aphid. Still no mites or spiders or woodbugs, dead or alive.

I wonder where they went? Did they know in advance that the weather would turn? Are they smarter about the weather than us? (Probably.)

Cyanide millipede

Among the browns and greens of the leaf litter on the forested slope of Watershed Park, a yellow dotted line appears, moving slowly from one rotting leaf to the next. Don't touch him; he will release toxic cyanide if he's annoyed. It has a pleasant, almond scent, but it will irritate your skin. Let him be; he's busy turning last year's leaves to this year's soil.

Harpaphe haydeniana

This one has 19 or 20 segments, but I couldn't count his feet. Males have 30 pairs, and females 31, for a total of 62 feet. Not the thousand that its name implies.