The concept of ecosystem states should be familiar to anyone with a home vegetable garden. The garden is a small ecosystem that the grower attempts to keep in a specific state, namely the maximization of fruit and vegetable production. To achieve this, the grower is almost always intervening in the dynamics of the ecosystem; they remove unwanted plants that begin to grow and perhaps spray insecticides and fence off the patch to stop insects and other animals from consuming the vegetables. Since maximizing vegetable growth is an inherently unstable state for the ecosystem, the grower is effectively keeping the ball on a slope. If the grower stops intervening, even for a day, the ecosystem, that small patch of ground, will naturally begin to shift to a more stable state. Vegetables may still grow, but yield will almost certainly be lower as other plants crowd out the vegetables and wildlife consume the produce.