Just beyond the brush, something shone in the sun. A puffball mushroom? Like a bleached skull in the dead leaves it was white and smoothly rounded. But this was the wrong season for puffballs. A giant egg? A raccoon thought so, dragged it out of the Woodcreek Condos dumpster and gave it some serious chewing. Disappointment – hollow inside as most plastic balls are.

That’s my version of the story anyway. So how do you classify something like this?  Trash, alternative nature, on-it’s-way-to becoming something else, raccoons empty egg?

How about this one?

Long ago discarded booze bottle finds new life as excellent habitat for a tiny spleenwort fern.

And finally, the lost toy.

This little man on the tractor, minus an arm and part of his face, is becoming one with the earth he used to farm.

Finding these remains is one of the perks of working in a forest in the city. Here and there lie pieces of the human experience embedded in natural processes.

Is it nature yet?