It Pays to Volunteer

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If you examine the photo above you will note a forest to the left.  These trees were planted in the spring of 1998 and they've grown into a nice stand of hardwoods and conifers.

The stand to the right are big tooth aspen.  In the winter of 1997-98 The Frau and I went in there with a chainsaw (a wedding gift to each other) and cut-down several hundred mature aspen along the northern line fence.  As a consequence of the patch cut new popple sprouted from the root clone and they are now a nice mature stand of newer aspen growth. 

The little conifers you see growing in the foreground and just now getting above the height of the grasses.  Those weren't planted there at the hand of man.  They just showed-up.  Seed progeny from the white spruce that were planted in 1998.  They are volunteers.  

Planting trees is the gift that keeps on giving...