Primary Succession

This is cool.

Norderoogsand has sprung up from beneath the sea like a kraken of sand.  It has since become home to 50 plant species and a bunch of sea birds.

Photo: Telegraph

  Dunes rise above sea level all the time and usually sink just as readily, but this one is different.  What makes it different is the same force which has driven our evolution from bacteria to human beings: luck.  Call it chance, fate, divine intervention, whatever.  The right factors were in place at the right time.  Those factors were a mild sea and the presence of spores from simple plants.  The mild seas didn't destroy the proto-island, whilst the spores grew into simple mosses and lichens.  Those mosses and lichens put down roots and bound the sand into a basic soil.

  Once a moss organism dies it decomposes into compost, adding organic matter to the sandy soil.  This organic matter - or humus - contains carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements.  Birds drop guano containing further essential elements and ions such as calcium, potassium, sulphates and phosphates.

  Over time, the soil becomes rich enough to support more complex plants.  The seeds for such plants are also carried over in the stomachs of birds.  These plants have deeper and stronger root systems which will help bind the deeper layers of the soil.  When they die, their roots will decompose and leave humus in the deeper layers.  Eventually this process will clear the way for shrubs to take hold.

  There is a selective pressure here.  A selective pressure is a natural force which says "A can live here but B cannot".  In this case it is the salt water.  Sand doesn't hold rainwater very well by itself, so for now all the moisture is seawater.  Only those plant which thrive on beaches or in areas with high salinity will be able to live on Norderoogsand in the early stages.  Once the soil is rich enough in deep humus to support shrubs it should also be absorbent enough to retain rainwater.  Even so, it will still be quite saline.  Coastal shrubs will be best adapted to these conditions.

  The potential for trees to grow on Norderoogsand is uncertain.  Soil that sandy might not hold a tree firmly enough.  Deposits of lime from bird droppings will gradually improve the soil structure.  Clay would make a nice addition, but it will not arrive there by itself.  If sufficient generations of plants live, reproduce, die and decompose that peat has a chance to form then that is perhaps the best chance we have of seeing trees arrive on Norderoogsand.

  Higher land animals are highly unlikely until the ground is very very stable and the plantlife is sufficiently fecund.  Likely it'll just be birds and amphibians until the trees appear.

  Alternately, the island could be helped along.  A little clay, a little peat, a couple bay trees and this island would be halfway toward a climax community.  This won't happen though.  Biologists and geologists will argue - and rightly so - that Norderoogsand should be left alone to be observed.  Primary succession is a rare occurrence, so the data which can be gained by watching it happen from scratch is scientifically invaluable.  It can tell us something about our world that we do not yet know.  The process of succession is slow, but when seen from end to end is a miracle of nature.  I urge you to keep an eye on it.

I wish I was there...

So why Biology?

Be warned: there's no gardening in this one.

  Before I start, I just want to give a shout out to London's navvies.  Tonight the rain is amazingly heavy and the wind is frankly extraordinary.  I saw it at Clapham blow the rain thirty-odd feet off plumb in the space of a ten foot drop.  It was in the eyes, knackering my visibility.  It was in the boots, numbing my feet.  It was under the boots, denying me a comfortably sturdy footing.  Ridiculous conditions.  Then as the train went through St. Margarets I saw the Men In Orange preparing to walk the tracks.  Such a brave and dangerous thing to do, but if they don't do it then one night my train might not deliver me home to Strawberry Hill in one piece.  I take my hat off.

No great shocker that I'm presently nursing a hot chocolate with a decent glug of Bailey's in it.

  So I've decided that I'm no longer going to try and get a head start on my fees.  £27k is either ten years' saving or a bank job.  If I want that slip of the paper which says I can probably try grownup science then I'm just going to have to swallow the debt.  Fucking Tories!  I want to do Natural Sciences, and having been unable to choose between Biology and Geology I'm looking at the possibility of taking a major/minor split with Biology being the major.

  I've just finished college this year, a fact that my circle seem to be quite proud of.  I get asked what I'm going to do next and it's always "so are you going to do Medicine?"  Up until a year ago I would've said yes, but something has changed.

  When I was sixteen I enlisted.  I applied at first to join the REME, to become a mechanic or a spark.  Joining up is quite an involved process, and there's all manner of screening to go through.  When I completed my psychological profile I was taken to one side by a recruiter who said that being an electrician would suit me, but that being a medic might suit me more, and with a BARB score of 80 (the intelligence test, the average score is around 50) I might enjoy the mental challenges of medicine.  So I ended up joining the RAMC and training as a medic.  One conversation really can put your life on a different path.

  I was earmarked for the 16th before my legs got busted and I was honourably discharged.  I landed on my feet in civvy street and found work as a nurse in acute stroke care.  I spent a good few years in stroke and loved every minute of it.  When I was 20 a patient had what was from my perspective the worst possible outcome.  Not just a death - I'd had my first at 17 and a good number since - but a death in which a choice I'd made had affected things.  Let me be clear: the patient was not going to be walking out the front door whichever way you slice it.  Still, when you're young and you find yourself in that scenario, how things are explained and handled in the first few hours can make or break you.  It broke me.  It messed me up, tore my mind apart so badly that I spent a week under observation, and I'm not the same person since.

  That is not the problem.  Far from it.  It hurt, and it should hurt.  It should hurt so that you don't make the same mistake twice.  It should hurt so that you don't assume, you don't gamble, you question everything (most of all yourself) and you kick your own arse into doing the very best you can do; because you never want to feel that again.  Then a year ago I found that I had accepted it, that after more than half a decade I'd made peace with myself.  This was unnerving, because I don't want to ever become hardened to such things.  I've already lost a part of myself, and I don't want to know how much more of myself I'd have to lose in order to wear so thick a shell as that.

So no Medicine.

  Medicine was always a second choice.  I'd never really aimed to have a career in healthcare.  I was a geeky kid who liked circuits and snails, minerals and fossils.  I was always interested in the natural world and how it worked.  Medicine appeals to the right person for the right reason, but is also just a popular way for a scientist to get a paying job.  What I really want to do is give the Universe a poke to see what it does, and I always have.

  I started college two years ago at 25.  A late bloomer, but what the hell.  That could've been shit, but it wasn't.  When you're a hyperactive genderqueer autist with a fucked up knee and a half-palsied hand you find you can have quite a spread with teachers and with authority figures in general.  Maybe you'll be pitied, or ignored, or seen as a curiosity, an interesting case study or test subject, or someone to tick a load of boxes for their diversity cred.  I lucked out in that my lecturers did none of that shit.  The experience gave me a renewed confidence, not only in my aptitude for science but also in my ability to carve out a place for myself as a scientist.

  Going out and studying the natural world no longer feels like an impractical pipe dream.  It's real and attainable and if I could spend the rest of my life doing that then I would be a very happy person indeed.

Now, if I am going to give the Universe a poke then I'm gonna need a bloody long stick...

Your input is wanted.

My garden is on the North side of the house.  This means that the soil gets full sun for more of the year as it gets further from the back wall. On the arable (East) side fence I want to paint four diagonal lines, showing the line of full direct sun.

The blue line I'll paint at Noon on the Winter Solstice,
The green line I'll paint at Noon on the Spring Equinox
The yellow line I'll paint at Noon on the Summer Solstice,
The orange line I'll paint at Noon on the Autumn Equinox.

I think it'll be useful and will also look kinda cool.  In my head it'll tie my garden in with the passing of the seasons.

Is there a better way of doing this?  Can I make it look better?  Your input is most welcome.