Adventures in bonsai 2: Azaleas (5/21/2019)

What the heck, I will continue writing about bonsais today. For one, I have been really into them since it is somewhat the height of the season. Secondly, we went to visit the club show of the Virginia Bonsai Society at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens this week. The show was nice, I may have one complaint and that was that the trees were shown in front of open windows and you had to squint to really look at them in detail. However, it was fun and there were some beautiful trees. 

A nice 22-year old Japanese black pine in the exhibit at the Norfolk Botanical Garden show.  This was a nice example of one of the older trees in the exhibit.

Coming back from the show, I was inspired and I knew it was time for me to work on my azaleas. These plants have a somewhat interesting history. 

As some of my readers know, our back yard runs into Newport News Park. A quick search on the internet shows that our park is the largest city park in the country, totaling 8,065 acres (3063 hectares). It connects to the Colonial National Historic Park (no fence in between) which is another 9,349 acres (3751 hectares) making up a connected natural area that is more than 47 square miles (70 square km) in size. This is great for us, we love nature and to hike and bike, but as you can imagine, nature is full of all kinds of pests including deer. These deer have found a highway through our and our neighbors’ yards into our subdivision. Even this morning while walking the dog, you could watch them scurrying back into the woods behind our home after a night of debauchery on our landscaping plants. Finally, an additional problem has become all the ticks that these deer drop in our neighborhood. When watering my plants, I have to be vigilant and make sure I did not pick up a few of these critters; Lyme is always lurking around the corner.

The woman that we bought our home from had planted azaleas throughout the yard, and if there is an ice cream plant for deer, well it is the azalea (and maybe the hosta). Considering we have been living here for almost 19 years, these poor plants have been hit by deer for more than 20 years. The only way they were able to survive was either to try to grow out of the reach of the deer or to hide themselves and grow as low as possible and creep through the plant litter. Over the past few years we discovered a few plants that held on for dear life (pardon the pun), and so I decided to dig them up, save them and torture them in a completely different way! I dug up three, three years ago. One did not make it, but the two that did rewarded me the next year with a full canopy of white flowers. This past spring they did it again and finally this past weekend I worked a bit on some preliminary styling and removing all the spent flowers. Because of the creeping habit one is a natural cascade, while in the other, I am trying to encourage a new leader or main stem.

This azalea has been in this pot for two years.  As you can see it is very one sided, and I therefor decided to make it a cascade.  I pruned it to develop four foliage pads and clipped off all the spent flowers (very meditative).

This azalea is two years out of the ground.  I am trying to develop three foliage pads and hoping to develop a main leader (that crazy shoot in the middle).

This winter I decided to save one more azalea. To my surprise, when I started digging, the plant had spread itself over the ground through the litter so much that some of the branches had air layered themselves. Air layering means that they had rooted into the soil while still connected to the mother plant. Two of the branches only had a few roots, but they did have some. Feeling brave, I cut those branches off stuck them into a pot with my soil mix, figuring I had nothing to lose. I am happy to report that I now have four happy azaleas growing. It will be some time, before I have something to show for, but it sure is interesting. Never a dull moment. 

This is the mother plant that I dug up this winter (early spring).  I did some heavy pruning and stuck it in a pot.  It is really doing well.  Based on the leaf color, I expect this guy will be blooming red. unlike the ones from two years ago which are white.

One of the air layers.  This one had a long bare branch with a lot of roots along it so I needed a large pot to put it in.  It is thriving.

These two air layers just had a few roots coming out of the branches and I thought what the heck, I might as well try it, I have nothing to lose.  Well, they took.  Not sure what the root system will look like in the long run.

Adventures in bonsai (5/13/2019)

As you may know, my blog posts are all over the place, which may be why I do not seem to have a large following. But then, they are partially a diary for me that I share publicly (at least that’s how it all started, as a photographic diary); partially a way for me to educate my readers in some of the things that I believe in, especially in the natural and environmental fields; and sometimes to bitch about the political climate in this country. At rare occasions do I throw all these three subjects in a big hat, mix them together and barf them all out on a computer screen. My posts are partially selfish and for the other part altruistic. However, I want to change the subject today.

I have been trying to grow bonsai for the past 30 years or so. This is the 12th post of the 363 odd posts in my blog where I mention bonsai. I started out in New Mexico with seedlings and eventually ignored them. I never really gave up, my plants traveled with me from two locations in New Mexico to Ohio and finally to Virginia. When people asked, I grew bonsai, but I never did anything with them; I ignored them except for watering them. A few of my plants died, I never repotted them. Most of my plants still looked like the seedlings that I started in the late 1980s. The poor Siberian elms, the New Mexico privets, the Japanese pine and the azalea that I had started in New Mexico were holding on to dear life. 

Finally, about five or so years ago, I was bitten by the bug, once more (or I really never gave up). I decided that I better take care of them or get rid of them. My poor trees were root bound; it was difficult to untangle the roots. I tried a little bit, but I was way too careful; afraid to kill them. I potted them up in the hope the roots would somehow sort themselves out. YouTube to the rescue. It were Nigel Saunders from “the Bonsai Zone” and Ikbal Khan from “Mikbonsai” who opened my eyes and showed me that you could really hack at the roots and the plants could still survive. I have been doing this now to my trees the past three or so years to get them in shape, and this is not what I really want to write about today, but it seems to be working. 

So this winter, I used what I learned from all those YouTube videos, Google+ (rest in peace) pictures and had some fun around our yard. We had this huge (8 foot tall) privet growing that we needed to get rid of.  Based on some of the pictures I had seen, it would make a great bonsai after a few years when carved, so here I went at it. One February weekend it took me two days to excavate the plant cut the roots with a saw; some of them were two inches thick. After that, I stuck the plant in a tub of water and covered it with a wet towel (I had to go to my regular job). Two days later, I bought a big kitty-litter box mixed enough soil and stuck the plant in there. My wife predicted it would die, and I figured she was correct. Little did we know. Just look at the pictures below. 

Here I have just finished excavating the plant in early February.   It is too heavy for one person to lift.

After some more soil and root removal I was able to fit it in this litter box.  We were absolutely thinking I abused it too much.

Loo and behold, by mid March there appeared to be life in the tree.  There was hope that I would have a few branches to play with.

By early May this is what I am looking at, the plant has gone absolutely crazy and I have more than a few branches to work with. 

The weekend after that I figured that I needed to get rid of a mimosa volunteer in my yard. I had killed the mother plant 17 years ago and I still had the root trying to sprout volunteers. One of them was very tenacious and it had a 1.5 inch trunk that we had cut at ground level over the years. However, it had sprouted back every year. So, I put a shovel in the ground and tore it off. To my surprise, a root came out that looked like a 2 inch thick carrot with a few small roots coming off it, including one long thin root. I thought, “Nothing to lose” and stuck it in a pot in my bonsai mix. Well look at the picture below! 

Here is the mimosa.   Part of the root is sticking out, but my pot was not deep enough.  I did not dare to cut more root off.

There is an old abandoned asphalt road in the woods behind our home.  It is a favorite of bikers and walkers, alike.  It is partially covered by leaves and plants grow in it.  Once the trees get old enough they die.  One morning in January this year, I just pulled a loblolly pine seedling out off the litter.  It's roots were spread horizontal all over the asphalt, looking for that crack where it could go through. Guess what?  As you can see in the picture below, it is doing great in a pot on my bench and we'll see how it develops.  It is thanking me for saving it from it's imminent demise.

The little pine that I picked up in January this year.  I have no idea how to train it yet, or what to do with it.  We'll see what comes from it.

Finally, we have a sassafras tree in the back yard that was throwing off root sprouts. Again, this winter I cut one off. It just had a few roots, but was still connected to the mother plant. Not expecting much, but remembering Nigel’s programs, I stuck it is a pot with my mix, and the photo below shows you the result. 

Finally the sassafras.  I have not yet seen a sassafras bonsai, so we'll see what we can do with this guy.  For one, it is doing fine right now.

Especially the mimosa and the privet seem very droughty. I really need to make sure that I water them a lot. This is most likely because of their limited root mass, but I have high hopes they will survive and make great bonsais or fun bonsais in the future.  Moreover, all the plants will need years to develop into credible bonsais, but that is the fun of this hobby.  I recommitted myself to working with my plants; it is fun again and I will continue. My major problem right now is the lack of sunlight in my garden.

In one of my next post I will write more about my azaleas, two years ago I dug two up and this year I dug up one; however, that's what I thought, but it ended up yielding four.  More in a subsequent post.

The threat of extinction (5/8/2019)

(if you allergic to the F-word ... you better turn around, I don't usually do not employ it much in my blog post but I could not help myself here in this post) 

So this week the word came out that more than one million species on this earth face imminent extinction. Over a hundred scientists from 132 countries concluded this in a 1,500 page report which will probably not be read by many people, very much like that other report that recently came out (but more about that some other time). The major conclusion of the report is (and I am putting my own spin on it) that in the current times that we are living, or the Anthropocene, we have such a huge impact on the world’s ecosystem that the abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more. Moreover, this is just the beginning and lot more of a decline can be expected. The current decline seems to have happened mostly during the time of the massive population explosion of the past century, during which we passed the 7 billion number when it comes to counting us people on this earth. Now combine this with global warming and you get the message. Folks we need to do something about this! It is not appear to be slowing down. 

When I say that we need to do something about this, I am not spouting some leftist socialist propaganda or ideology. Remember, we only have one small blue marble that floats in space where we can live on, if we screw this one up, we have nowhere to go! Even worst, if we fuck this one up, our spawn and their spawn have nowhere to go! It does not matter if you are rich or poor, republican or democrat, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, Catholic or Baptist, Muslim or Buddhist, black or while, brown or yellow, straight or gay, male or female, tall or short, thick or thin, you get the message, there is no escaping this. We need to take care of the place we live in or on. 

A photo I took early April at Sky Meadow State Park in Northwestern Virginia.  Pictures or sights such as this are under threat of climate change. 

So what is happening? Well I have not yet read the 1,500 page report, neither have I read the 38 page executive summary. Then, who the heck am I daring the write about it? I am a biologist, an ecologist and someone who knows a little bit about the environment. I have written many posts about the issue already in my blog (just scroll through the labels), although of late it seems they have gotten the least attention of the posts that I publish. Oh well, I will not give up. 

My understanding from folks, who have summarized the summary, there are a few things going on: 

1. For one, our little blue marble is rapidly starting to exceed its carrying capacity. This simply means that there are too many people on this earth. We all need to eat, and what do we do? We clear more natural areas, more nature. Eventually we are going to run out of land and we will not be able to feed everyone (Malthus predicted this already in 1798). However, in the meantime all that clearing is causing that crash in abundance and biodiversity that is being reported. Plants and animals need a certain minimum area to survive, and when the area gets to small, it becomes susceptible to invasive species that kill the natives. If you have ever been in the southwest U.S. you should have seen what Kudzu can do. There are many other examples like the brown-headed cowbird that I write about in this bog post. In addition, Driving back and forth to work it seems that I have much less bugs crashing into my windshield than 5 or 10 years ago. Where have they gone? It seems, that they may have been replaced by the ticks and mosquitoes in my back yard.
2. Eating animals in particular cows (beef) is very inefficient. I once learned that approximately only 10 percent of the energy that is stored in the plants is past on in the meat of animals once it reaches us. So when we eat plants we can get a lot more energy out of the same acre of land than when we eat a hamburger (we would need 10 acres for the same energy we get from one acre of plant based nutrition). This is an argument often made by vegetarians, I am no vegetarian, but I do try to eat meatless at least one to three days a week, and eat seafood at least once a week. 
3. Global warming does not help either. First, we thought that the warmer climate might actually increase crop production. However, what we are finding now is that the nutritive value of these vegetables is much less than plants growing under conditions without global warming (or fertilizer for that matter). 
4. Global warming has another effect, some native plants that grown near the southern most limit of their range in the northern hemisphere or at the most northern limit on the southern hemisphere are not be able to survive when it gets much warmer. The question becomes: “what will replace them?” Native plants from warmer regions might not be able to travel fast enough, and the replacements may be invasive species that contribute nothing to the local insects and animal species, which will starve and die off. There are actually experiments underway in Minnesota and Rhode Island where they are planting southern trees in the forests and watching them thrive.
5. Finally, let’s not think about what the warmer climate will do to diseases and pests for all the plants and animals and maybe even our crops and livestock. But then, maybe there is hope and it will kill off some of the population and restore the worlds balance (that makes me a fatalist doesn’t it). 

I know that there will be folks who will tell me that the climate of our blue marble has been changing ever since the earth was formed so many years ago. The issue is that at no time was the change anthropogenic (or human caused, or at least human accelerated or magnified) and in this case the scientists are unanimous. Others tell me that their god (note I am not capitalizing god) has given them dominion of the earth and that they could do with her what they wanted. As I mentioned, I do not think god gave them permission to fuck the earth up the way we are doing it at the moment. I think we were tasked to take care of her.

I promise that I will read the summary and provide you with a more detailed overview of what the report says about the state of our world’s environment. In the meantime folks be aware of what you are doing to the environment, recycle, reduce your footprint, if possible foster diversity of plants in your yard, use natives, and try to use as little pesticides and yard chemicals as possible.

Guilt? (5/1/2019)

I was listening to a program where they interviewed a lady (doctor/psychiatrist) who had written a book about her experience after accidentally killing someone. It was part of a car accident; she was 22, and was cleared by the police. A 6 year-old boy ran out from behind a set of mailboxes along a country road and she hit him. However, she never received any support or counselling, was devastated for more than a half year, could hardly move out of her apartment and attend classes . Even after that it stayed with her for life. Now at the age of 45 she had written a book about it and gives counselling to folks to whom this has happened as well.

The story brought me back to my own experience, something that is never really far removed from my mind, and will always stay with me.

It was 1978. It was the second day in Uganda and the medical superintendent of the leprosy hospital, where we I was going to work as the manager of a 2500 acre dairy farm, thought it was time to introduce us to the powers in Kumi, the town near where our center was located.  One of the persons on our list was the police commissioner.

At the time, Uganda was under the rule of a brutal dictator (Idi Amin) who had instilled fear and whipped up the masses to a frenzy. It was strange, there was a police state (or an army state), but at the same time there was a form of anarchy in the land and he had allowed people to pass justice like this by themselves, without proper hearings and trials (you could only hope that village councils or elders were impartial when it cam to passing judgement, if you could get that far). You could not trust anyone, not your neighbor and maybe not even you relatives. They could rat you out and before you knew it you could end up in a cardboard box in a banana plantation. We always joked about the crocodiles in the Nile that they were very well fed, because that's where a lot of the bodies of the assassinated folks ended up. On the other hand being in the village (or in the rural part of the country) was great. People were nice and extremely hospitable; however, as you could understand everyone was very guarded. You did not end up in those cardboard boxes in one piece, playing hide-and-seek, and lets not talk about what you looked like when you ended up as alligator bait.

Soon after our arrival at the police station, a riot broke out; a group of what I would estimate to be at least 100 people was running towards the building chasing a man. The man entered the building and the mob stayed outside; we noticed the man had torn clothes, was sweating, and had a noose around his neck.  He was standing very close to my wife, as in the hope that the proximity to her would give him some protection. When she moved, he would move with her, like her shadow.

The commissioner eventually explained that the man was accused to have stolen a banana on the market. Idi Amin had proclaimed that anyone caught stealing; however small an item, must be executed on the spot and that was exactly what the mob was trying to do. He had escaped the mob that was trying to kill him and made it to the station in the hope that the police would save him, and send to jail.

So how did this tie in with the program I heard over the radio?

While not completely correct, in Uganda it was the first time I somewhat came in contact with being a privileged person. As a 24 and 25 year old white guy I was treated as an important person, while the local folks were treated like dirt. We were sitting on stage next to the minister, the governor, the police chief, the director of the bank, the bishop, all the dignitaries when they came to visit. I was called the Swahili word "Mzee" which can be loosely translated to "wise old man." How is that for a 24 year old guy. When visiting a local village we were the center of attention, we were given gifts, it was ridiculous, a chicken, even a goat. People were poor and still we received gifts.

Well, a few days after our visit to the police station, I was the only European (or manager) at the hospital and got a call to come immediately. The medical superintendent, the anesthesiologist (who was the fixer, but that's another story) and the accountant had gone to Kampala on business. In the middle of our campus were a group of local folks from one of the surrounding villages. These villagers that were holding what looked like a 16-year-old boy.  The boy had a rope around his waist and a pig tied to the other end. Long story short, they accused the boy of stealing the pig and asked me what to do with him and pass judgement. Remembering my experience and the police station a few days earlier, I told them that I would take him to the police. However, after extensive negotiations, I was told that the boy wanted to be tried by his elders. I did everything I could to convince him that he was better off going to the police, but to no avail. My discussion with the crowd and the boy through a translator (both language and cultural translation) took close to an hour. Finally, being new in the country (I was there for about a week) and only 24 years old, I felt I had little authority and eventually gave up.

A few hours later, I was told the boy was dead.  He was stoned, just outside the gate of the hospital.  It seemed that he had been escorted off the property of the leprosy center and that was it! My assistant farm manager Mr. Opuno (I was the farm manager) and I drove to the place where people told us the body was located. The pig that was still attached to his body and actually had started to nibble on the boy's body. We had to untie the pig and after discussing the issue with Opuno we decided to inform the police what had happened. Later that evening the parents of the boy came and removed the body.

It is an amazing horrifying experience to see and touch a dead body at the young age of 24, especially when it is someone that young and someone you had tried to protect. I can only imagine what folks go through when their children die or get murdered.

To this day, I feel somewhat guilty for this boy’s death, or that I could have avoided it. I did not want to rock the cultural boat at the time, I was only there for one week.  My inexperience, my age and probably lack of persistence lead to his premature death. I think about this event frequently, if not daily.