Chrissy came with me to the farms today so she could take pictures of me with my trees to give perspective of size.
First two pictures are my longleaf pine in Freeman, planted in 2012. We (DoF Adam Smith) burned them in February 2017. Next two are from the SMZ. There are some very big loblolly there, beautiful. Last is one of the baby longleaf (2 years old) on the Brodnax place.
I mentioned the longleaf and had pictures of how they had grown. The first two pictures are t2-year-old loblolly from the Brodnax place. Last is the 22-year old loblolly recently thinned in Freeman. Good to show the size with a human scale. The 2-year-olds are doing very well. As you see, some are more than six feet high and they are coming over the brush. You can well understand why people plant loblolly. They are so easy.
Chrissy & I are in Durham, NC for a meeting of the Forest History Society. I am interested in forests and I am interested in history, so I am going to be on the board of directors of that organization.
The Forest History Society has a research collections on books and documents related to forests and ecology. They also publish a magazine on forest history and one on ecological history. They are just finishing a new headquarters. I expect to see it tomorrow and will include some pictures and texts. Durham is the home of Duke University. The city was in long term economic decline, but has been doing better since it became part of the research triangle. Recently, it was featured in the book “The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts Are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation.”
Anyway, we got to Durham this afternoon. Seems a nice place there are lots of places to get a beer and we visited two of them.
The first, featured in the first two pictures, was the Bull & Burger. Next we visited “Taproom.” You pay by the ounce and fill your own cup. We tried a few different kinds and then settled down to a game of shoots and ladders. We used to play this game as kid. It is only random chance, but there is moral lessons. If a kid does good things, he climbs a ladder. If she does bad things, she slides down the shoot. As I recall, I won.
