FRONT YARD PLANT SUCCESSION, AND FEELING LIKE A DAMNED FOOL

PIONEERING PAPER BIRCH AND WHITE PINE DOMINATE..

SHADE TOLERANT RED OAKS AND MAPLES WILL SUCCEED THE PIONEER BIRCH, PINE AND SUMAC...

...DITTO...

...DITTO

Tuesday,  9:00 AM.  32 degrees F, up from 28 or lower earlier. The wind is N, calm to light. The sky is mostly to partly cloudy, the humidity is 80% and the barometer stands at 30.43".  We had our first hard frost last night and many of the trees are shedding their leaves this morning, simply giving in to the inevitable and letting them go.
   The southwest corner of the Ode property is a mini-woodland which is quite beautiful, especially in the fall.  The dominant trees are a maturing (perhaps twenty-five years old) multi-trunked paper birch, which hopefully will live another ten or fifteen years, and a young white pine of about the same age, which, absent any intervention, may live another century.  These are both pioneering species, which often are established after fire or blowdown, and thrive in full sun.  Sun loving trees do not reproduce well in heavy shade, and thus their own seedlings do not normally thrive under the parent plants.
   Instead, the seedlings of more shade tolerant trees grow under the maturing pioneer species.  In these fall photos it is easy to pick out the yellow-lleaved sugar maple saplings and the red leaves of red oak saplings growing up under the birch and white pine trees.  They are also springing up under and around the clumps of sun-loving sumac on the steep bank. Also in this successional mix are two shade-tollerant young balsam fir trees, which are difficult to see in the photo.  If I do not manage this collage of plants in any way the shade-loving trees will soon take over and dominate the original trees (but probably not the massive white pine).  I do some thinning and pruning of all the trees and shrubs to optimize the esthetics of the grouping, but by and large plant succession is taking place the way nature dictates.
   I managed budgets and contracts for government and non-profit agencies my entire career, always under the watchful eye of boards and committees, and always under written rules on the bidding process.  So I am virtually dumbfounded by the venality of spending (I guess legally, at least by present analysis) over $600,000,000 on the Affordable Care web site contract without competitive bids.  And by all recent accounts the work was given to a Canadian firm, an executive of which is a personal and professional friend of the First Lady.  The fact that there are evidently no rules in place to prohibit such malfeasance makes congress and both political parties complicit in this unarmed robbery of the American taxpayers.
   I do not understand why there is not more popular outrage over this blatant misuse of public funds, and it makes me feel like a damned fool for worrying about and accounting for every penny of public money I ever was entrusted with.