Surprise payoff on past investment

Three years ago I collected all the cones I could find from our tallest Douglas-fir. I put them in a little dirt pit with some dry sticks and I burned them. Douglas-firs grow their cones mostly near the tree top so that they bake instead of burning to cinders during fire. The seeds in the cones, as I understand it, only (or perhaps especially?) become viable after being burned. Hence the need for forest fires—destruction isn’t just a part of nature, it’s 51% of it—for this and many other species to continue. I planted the burned cones in a row along the creekside and forgot about them after nothing turned up that year.

Today I was weeding out the creek side and discovered a foot high sapling where I’d planted scorched cones. Maybe just around the time I die it will be as tall as its parent and when my grandkids die, if this property—the creek side is mostly park—is still taken care of, perhaps it will be a 200 foot monster where eagles nest.