Back to the Earth

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When I stepped outside to fill the bird feeders the other day, this caught my eye:

It seemed as though I were looking down on a large farm on a spring morning: Here were extensive fields, delineated by long, straight dirt roads, their brown earth tilled for planting; pools of standing water left by an overnight rain, reflecting the silvery sky; and a large stand of trees bursting with the verdant finery of spring.

Of course, it is my old deck, where mosses and lichens have taken hold, inexorably breaking down the wood, converting it back to the soil whence it came.