Gardening with Galligan: Succulents (and ants) on a log

When last we met, if you recall, I was contemplating a fallen log, and wondering if I’d gone round the bend, but really, really wanting it for my sofa table shelf, planted of course with succulents. When I’d visited it, several times, I’d been very uncomfortable because it was lying on a slope and I found the footing precarious. And there was nothing to hold onto. So I don’t need to go into detail about my worries over a guy with a chain saw on uneven ground.

But when he came with a friend as requested, I gave a lecture on safety, insisting that we had to give up if it was dangerous, They agreed. I worried they were macho. We got to the site and they seemed entirely sure-footed. I apparently was the only one who doddered. Oh, well. Anyway, in less than 100 seconds they had chain-sawed out a section and had it in the trunk of the car. Amazingly enough, it was hollow! Which was probably why the tree had fallen down in the first place. They carried it into the living room and we stood, all three of us, staring. It was large. We put it in place.

At first it seemed too large. But the longer we stood and looked at it, the more certain I was that it would work. It is resting now on a tarp on top of my dining room table and work has been underway for several weeks. This has involved several things – the hardest deciding on design. How many pockets? How deep? Exactly where?

Consulting with my fellow gardener, Steffi Sareyani, I followed her advice. Follow the rule of always planting in uneven numbers. If you’re putting perennials in a bed, buy three, for two behind and one in front, or five, three and two, etc. The log has a significant knot a little past the halfway mark, so we decided three on one side, two on the other for the major plantings, plus all the smaller , natural indentations for additional material. We also admired the hollow endings, contemplating something special for them.

I have to depart from gardening format for just a paragraph to tell you of a minor log event. I knew when I had the log placed on the table that naturally there must be at the very least a few bugs living inside, and actually as I would work, one or two would emerge and I would squash them with my thumb and continue. Heartless. But then I witnessed the following: when I came downstairs one morning, there was a quarter-inch wide procession of ants, whose name I don’t know, but the teeniest ones. They were coming from the log, across about two feet of table, another eight inches or so underneath to the table leg, down the leg 28 inches to the floor, across some four feet to the edge of the stationary end of sliding glass doors, up the side of the six feet of glass frame to a hole at the top so tiny I couldn’t see it and out. I went outside to the deck and yes, there they were, all over the side of the house and disappearing behind siding in a hundred different places.

Is that amazing or what? How did they know where to go? They had to have sent out scouts, didn’t they? And I know this will sound absurd, but if you had seen it, I think you’d agree. If you watched carefully, you could see that at intervals there were ants that weren’t marching but running back and forth on the edges of the procession. I could almost hear them shouting, “Faster, faster! Stay in line! Hurry, she’s coming with the bug spray!” Except she wasn’t, she was watching, rapt. It continued all day and was still going on when I went up to bed. By the next morning, they were gone. Tell me that’s not astonishing.

I did look them (the ants, I mean) up online, making sure I had not just arranged for that side of the house to fall down and came away assured that they were unlikely to stay and would be moving on. I wanted to look up great marches from history and calculate how far the ants had traveled by multiplying their body length, and make some comparisons for this article, but I never got to it. If anyone reading this wants to do that, please be in touch. I’m in the book.

Next column, I’ll keep you posted.