Everyone knows someone with a cool job. Well, we used to kid one of those folks that they had the "second" best job there was (more on the best job in a later post)....and that job was to help develop superior Loblolly Pine trees. They would take tips off of big trees found in the woods (often by shooting them off), graft them onto a base tree stock, then cross pollinate that type with other "super" trees found in the wild. They would keep doing this until they had a few "superior" trees which could be used in replanting trees that had been harvested for the timber industry.
We used to say, in addition to working outside most of the time, that everyone would always get two chances. If the first cross didn't work out well, you wouldn't know it until about 15 years - then the second chance would take 15 years - and then it would be time to retire.
This argument held up until they developed a way to speed the process up with green houses. They could grow the second, third, and so forth generation trees in green house conditions which reduced the time to 7 years. I guess this is now a job just like all the others.
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