The forest of balance and serenity..

Very Few have come and visited seen and possibly enjoyed hanging out in my back yard. Though who have notice that it is covered in Fir trees, alders, oaks, and other various lush green plants of the forest.

Quiet, slight breeze most of the time, a few combat hardened critters (gotta be with my cat around, Yes it has beat up the raccoons), Raccoons, deer, porcupines, and such.

So as I was back enjoying the silence, I simply projected myself forward in a fast forward mode to think of how it would be say, when I’m 80.

Then I realized the serene forest and quiet balanced location compared to the disruptive environment of suburbs and cities, and well..

The realization is, the forest is anything but serene. It’s in a life and death struggle for the superiority of species, much like the different races in the lord of the rings.

The alders grow fast create a thick canopy in order to starve others of their food source, the sun. If sunlight hits the tree it will throw branches out to gather as much sun as possible. If there is not enough sunlight it will drop its branches to give all its energy to those in direct contact with sunlight.

The Firs, grow all year around, much slower, however because they are slower growing they are capable of surviving this shadow casting tree. Though the starts are total smothered in the dropped leaves in fall which kills them.

The problem with the Alders is because they grow so fast their wood is less dense, and at a certain height the wind takes ‘em down with the annual wind storm.

The Firs however can withstand the wind storm. And if they get past the height of the alder’s “layer of death” then the Fir’s establish a “beach head” which then forces the Alders away from them allowing more Firs to gain foot hold

When we humans interact and cut things down, the alders literally take over the area choking the other trees out. The Firs don’t grow fast enough to respond to human intervention.

Where the pines are established, then the Alders are chocked out and don’t make it.

The oaks are similar to the Alders in that they branch out and attempt to “choke out” other trees around their base. They are a bit slower the Alders, however they grow taller, Withstand the windstorms a bit better (but still not as good as the Fir trees) and are more of a toe to toe competitor with the Alders, having all out battles that take decades to unfold.

So to us, we see quiet green leaves, slight breeze, quiet, peace. However if you took life and ran it fast forward by a factor of x300 you might really see this battle going on, and you would have a completely different view as a handful of species battling for life while trying to knock out its competitors for the food source known as sunlight.

Now for the plants..