The evolution of the forest...

wonderful. I assume the bucket is for collecting sap at a guess maple syrup. I love the way plants colonise an area. I used to take 6th form to an old disused tennis court for them to recognise secondary succession. It gave them a snap shot of how bare substrate changed over time in primary succession, naturally.

There is a pic of a thicket of small spruce which were shelter for the deer herd for a few winters...then they began to drop needles and die out because they were so tightly packed together... after that, the neighbour's pigs went thro and took out the wildflower rhizomes and dug up the grasses searching for who knows what... It has taken almost 5 yrs for the area to recover. The ash trees (and I don't have many) seed everywhere...crowding the birches, poplar and small pines that start the process of succession... every step of the process seems to have interlopers that delay it. Now the large ash trees are threatened by a borer and they're dying.
I love the old quote about the very nature of the optimist:.. a person who plants trees he will never see mature. Watching the plants that shade the giants when they are young makes you appreciate nature's master plan.

that is what makes Capability brown's gardens so incredible. the people who commissioned them would have to live for 100-200 years longer to see the results.

But as gardeners many of us plant for the future generations don't we?

What a wonderful array of assortment in the whole area Lori your so lucky to have such surroundings.

Lori I found this blog quite moving. Its all quite wonderful. Do you know what the two feathers at the foot of the tree are? They seem to have fluffy tops?
Its interesting that you are tapping your maple syrup into an open bucket - don't you find that insects drown in it?

Thanks SBG...Capability Brown has been a hero of mine. can you imagine the challenge of those commissions? What he did was exceptional and amazing in his forethought and planning. On a smaller scale the gardens at Givernay also make me awestruck. Here I am mucking along with my "never to be" pond and trying to keep ahead of the deadfall in the forest... wish I had a work crew. I hope to be able to make this spot a bit more like a 'cared for acreage' not quite a park but pleasant to discover and an enjoyable walk.
Thanks 3d! now if we could just have some spring. Winter continues to dump snow and try to freeze us up solid!
Thanks Stera! every season has it's wondrous aspects but winter wears thin about the middle of January... lol. The feathers are wild turkey feathers... a fox had a winter meal of a straggler and all that was left when I found it was the feathers. They have a brilliant irridescent shine to them. We've counted 28 turkeys marching down the valley. The older birds and the poults are the most vulnerable to the extreme cold and the snow covering their food sources. Our neighbour has a large feeding yard for the deer and for the turkeys so we see them trouping along heading out for dinner!
I took the top off of the pail to show the spile and hook for the bucket. The things most apt to get in the sap are bark, twigs and water droplets. The only insects I've seen when tapping are "snow fleas" and the occasional gnat. it's too cold for them in March...but in April and May the blood suckers (blackflies and mosquitoes) emerge and make being in the forest a complete misery.