Nature is reestablishing itself on our property after all the construction, landscaping, and upheaval before our move here almost four years ago. Small trees are coming up and filling in where trees came down or were taken down, the land is settling, and wildlife is moving in again.

Two days ago our daughter came home and showed me a video on her phone of two long black snakes slithering into the rock wall as she came up the stairs. Wow! They looked quite impressive. We had never seen anything bigger than a garter snake in our garden. My husband quickly identified our new garden companions as harmless black rat snakes. The next morning both slithering reptiles were out sunning themselves, but quickly disappeared into their rocky home when they sensed my footsteps. Later, one of them visited the herb garden. But they are shy and run away from us.

My attitude was ambivalent about these two new garden buddies. Should I be scared? Should I mind? How to share my private paradise with what would send many a friend to flee? But these two snakes found a perfect home in the chunky rock wall, they are not dangerous to us, and they attest to the fact that nature is healing after all the upheaval we inflicted on it.

I have decided to make friends with them, share my garden with them, appreciate that animal life is moving back into this wooded territory we so rudely disrupted for our own purpose. They have moved in for good and will undoubtedly keep the chipmunk population in check. I look out the window and see if they are out sunning themselves. They can have the garden when we're not around, and they willingly cede it to us when we want to be outside. We will coexist peacefully. After all we need to learn to live in harmony with nature again.