A stack of tree bones lie on the ground, left overs from pruning a plum tree. What to do with tree bones? The thicker bones can be turned into coasters. Cut the coasters from the same bone, and you can later stack them and they’ll look like a single log.

They also make good firewood. Next fall or winter, this pile of tree bones, dried through the summer, will keep the house warm for a cozy evening. When you cut and stack these hard tree bones, it’s hard to imagine that most of the material in them came out of thin air. But it’s what plants and trees do, breathe in the carbon out of the air and turn it into mass. When I burn it, most of the mass will go back into the air, only to be sucked in and made into mass by other trees and plants. When humans die, we often say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” When trees and plants die, we should say, “Gasses to gasses, water to water.”