My other pear tree. Picture taken this summer. Very tall old tree. I thought it was dying in 1982, but had pears for several years afterwards. It's still alive today, just barely. Tough old bird. Has a mate nearby in equally bad shape. Just as I was about to leave the farm yesterday, I tried the saw, again. This time it STARTED! So unreliable. Took advantage and cut one large limb out of the little pear tree near the driveway. It was a tangled mess. Took forever to get it cleaned up and hauled off. Ran out of time.
In the United States, at least, most people tend to view words like forest, woods, and wilderness as being synonymous. They are not. A wilderness is simply an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region, and it may not have any trees at all. I can remember wondering, in church, where Christ found a wilderness in the desert areas that he frequented. I know that I asked the pastor that question once, as a child, probably during catechism class. I think he would have preferred we memorize things than ask questions. I don't remember what he answered, but it was unsatisfactory. I think he said that there were areas of the Holy Land where there were trees, and that was where Christ went. There may have been such areas, I don't know, but it wasn't necessary for Christ to find a forest in order to be in the wilderness. More likely, it was an area of even more inhospitable desert than the rest of the Holy Land. A forest is a large area that is covered with trees. I suppose there are degrees of forest, and areas that could arguably be called either a forest or a woodland but, for the most part, a forest will have a thick canopy cover. In older forests, the tree leaves and branches often meet or interlock. In a virgin forest, one that has suffered little or no human intervention, trees might share a root system, where trees ten miles apart might have joined roots, so a source of water in one part of the forest might sustain trees miles away. A woodland, shortened to woods in American English, since we're far more conservative about letters than are the wasteful English, is less densely populated with trees. In a woodland, there are many open spaces, and there tends to be more distance between the trees. There may still be a canopy but it's not as complete as in a forest. With its open spaces, light penetrates through to the ground. Woodlands are often areas, like what I have up north, that were once agricultural fields, but where trees have been allowed to grow. While larger animals may seek the forest for shelter and safety, there isn't a lot for them to eat there. Since sunlight doesn't penetrate to the ground, there is very little in the way of vegetation in a forest. Even those animals, like deer or moose, who eat trees, it is saplings that they eat, and saplings only grow where they can have access to sunlight. In snowy winter climates, like Maine, deer and moose will often winter in the forest because there are fewer people there to hunt them, but mostly because the thick forest canopy doesn't let snow reach the ground in the quantity that it is found in a woodland, so they can easily walk around in a forest. Unless there are some small openings in the forest, however, they will find little to eat there, so they tend to be very thin in the spring, and many of them don't survive the winter. The largest amount of life is found in a woodland, since there are ferns, berries, other fruits, and saplings growing there. My land is great for wildlife because it includes a portion of a thick cedar forest, which is known as a cedar swamp for some reason, although the ground is not particularly swampy. Moose winter there, I know. But it also borders on a woodland that makes up most of the land. There is a five acre potato field that the potato growers plant in various grasses every few years, which are eaten by moose and deer, and in the area most distant from the cedar swamp, we have a brook that has been turned into more of an actual swamp with the help of beavers. So we have a pretty healthy ecosystem on that one hundred acre area. Plus it borders on thousands of acres of paper company land that includes both woodland and forest.
“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
@Nancy Hart We saw the stuff growing out of control down in Mississippi. It was incredible how it could completely encircle gigantic trees! Frank
Hey Nancy, I have not been on here for awhile and I don't know why. Maybe late summer sluggishness. I am ready for Fall...seem to have my best energy then. Did you get your closet finished? And don't even ask me about the floor! LOL I am going to get it done before the end of the year, I promise! Been trying to find someone to fix a double walk through gate(chain link) that the tree removal people damaged in April. No one wants to do a small job. Maybe a handyman service? I have been looking on Youtube and I think I could do it myself. It is just one gate of two and with some parts, I think it would be an easy fix. It's never ending!
Hi @Pam Sellers! I've been thinking about you. School started here Monday and the traffic is a mess. Lots of new people in town who don't know where they are going, and trying to move their stuff in. It will settle down in a couple of weeks. New neighbors on both sides, but haven't seen them yet. First major football game on Sept 8th. I bet UGA loses, since I'm still psyched for football from last year. You can do a chain link gate. They are easy, unless the pole the old one was mounted on got bent. I jiggered one up to use in the barn. It's not heavy stuff to work with either. I was going well on the closet drywall and realized I made a mistake. Debating whether to take a couple pieces down and rearrange them, and that, and this tooth surgery, ruined my momentum. I used to like summer better than winter, but that might be changing this year. I can't keep up with the growing things, and Rusty is not helping at all out at the farm. He is spoiled and refuses to eat weeds anymore. The place is growing up. Mowed the whole lawn this evening, front and back, in less than an hour. I love that new Honda mower. It seems to have kicked into working just like new now. Don't be a stranger.
Three boys in the older house in the back just came by to tell me they moved in, are having a cookout tonight, said if they got too loud to let them know, and invited me over. I told them the only thing that bothered me was barking dogs. They said they didn't have any dogs, but accused each other of barking at times. I told them to have a good time. I think they are going to be good neighbors.
Oh dear, it just dawned on me what they might have meant about each other barking. I meant barking dogs, not barking dawgs. The famous dawg bark: