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.

The Green Wall (6/7/2018)

Sitting in our gazebo and looking at the late May/early June woods behind our home, I am awestruck by what we euphemistically call our “green wall.” It is a pallet of different levels of green and different textures being contributed by different species of trees and shrubs. Sitting here I see a pyracantha that we are training up the gazebo. Behind it there is our red maple tree that survived hurricane Isabel in 2003 as a mere sapling, but now is a big tree. Next to it is a strange blue spruce that we got as a life Christmas tree one year and is completely out of place here in southeast Virginia. I also see azaleas, dogwoods, a redbud, a red tip, sassafras, a yellow popular (also known as a tulip poplar), white oaks, red oaks. more red maples, sweet gums, loblolly pines, American hollies, a winged sumac, beauty berries, paw paws, viburnums, one butterfly bush, a fringe tree, two magnolias, a Carolina jessamine, and a hawthorn bush. That is only in our small backyard; no wonder we had a shade garden. I am really hunting around to find sunny spots to put my bonsai trees. They really need sun to thrive. You can see that in the understory of our yard where we have a lot of ferns. However, in one sunny spot we have native sunflowers, goldenrod and milkweed. I hate to admit it, but we have a horrible invasion of Japanese stiltgrass.

Two photos from our back yard.  The bottom one gives the view from the gazebo.  As you can see it is pretty darn green out there,  with the sun peeking through the holes in the canopy, also known as sun flecks.   It is woods as far as they eyes can see.  The bottom photo may be a little fuzzy because the gazebo is screened in and I am taking the photo through the screen.

I am probably forgetting some plants in our yard, so be it. Our yard surely is not master piece of landscaping, that will come once we retire and can spend more time out there, and work on the design. But one thing will be for sure, I do not expect that we will change the aspect that our yard runs right into the woods behind our home. Having such a yard that runs into a forest, we hardly can see the edge between the two, and so does the wildlife and nature that lives in the woods behind our home. Although often frustrating, deer make our yard one of the first stopovers in their daily migration into our neighborhood. Tasty plants don’t stand a chance. Over the winter, they even pulled one of my azalea bonsais of the 5-foot-high table to nibble on. Oh well, they did to that tree what was long overdue and what I did not dare to do. In addition to all the plants and the deer, we have so many different bird species visiting our little plot; we have skinks everywhere, frogs, toads, a couple of snakes, bunnies, turtles, squirrels, mice, moles, voles, just to name a few. And let’s not talk about all those daddy longlegs that are out there in our yard right now.

This is the azalea bonsai that was pulled of the table this winter.  It is currently blooming, but as you can see the left side was completely defoliated by the deer that got to it before I got to the deer.  Anyway, the defoliation is probably long overdue.

But one thing is for sure, the green wall in our back yard is in contact and communication with the woods behind our home. Others in our neighborhood have cut all the trees in their yards, turned their yards into managed lawns, hit them with fertilizers and pesticides. They created a biological and ecological desert.

In his wonderful novel “The Overstory” Richard Powers writes a short story about a Ph.D. student who discovers how plants communicate with each other by releasing volatile chemicals in the air, warning each other of pending insect attacks. She gets vilified by the establishment to be proven correct years later after she has dropped out of science. While this is just a story or fiction, it probably comes very close to how communication between plants was discovered. It seems that the Soviet scientist Boris Tokin was the first to describe in the 1920s and 30s that trees gave off volatile chemicals. Boris had an inkling that this was for self-defense, but I do not think for communication between plants or as he called them “phytoncides.” On a side note, it seemed he was an interesting character and being a politically correct communist, he published about his effort of integrating the philosophies and thoughts about Darwin, Marx and Engels. As I mentioned in previous posts, researchers in Japan, among them Tomohide Akiyama and Dr. Qing Li discovered in the 1980s that some of these phytoncides were actually beneficial to humans and introduced the world to the concept of “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku.”

But it is not only through the air that plants communicate. We are finding that even through the roots and by way of mycorrhizal fungi plants can communicate with each other over large distances and even exchange messages and even food like carbohydrates with each other in times of need (watch this great YouTube video). I would therefore not be surprised if the trees or the plants in our yard are communicating with the others in the woods. I also wonder if people who put all those pesticides on their lawns, in particular fungicides are severing those connections and isolating the few remaining trees on their properties; making them weaker and more susceptible to insects and diseases, let alone weakening them by pumping chemicals into them.

I guess for right now I will not be able to prove any of this, but all I know, our backyard teams with biodiversity: the trees, shrubs, animal life, and as I described in one of my posts even the little spiders with their iridescent eyes that reflect light from our headlamps at night. I know that our backyard looks pretty darn healthy (with the exception of the stiltgrass); it has not seen many chemicals in a very long time and it seems that nature is thanking us.

No, it does not have to be perfect (10/13/2017)

Wow, two posts so close together!  But I felt I owe you one.  I have been on political and environmental rants or soap boxes lately and need to get off it; although today's post started out from lots of anxieties including a lot of political ones.  Rest assured, I will not go into them.

Working from home today, I needed my "smoking" or maybe I should call it my "socialization" break (I don't smoke).  I had just pulled up a few websites and all kinds of news items stared me in the face, and then my arm buzzed.  "Ready to take me for a stroll?" my Fitbit asked me?  That darn thing has a feature that reminds me every hour at 10 minutes before the hour that I need to get my 250 steps in that hour.  At least it does that when I sit on my ass that entire hour.  So as any good slave to their activity tracker does, I obliged.

Being a student of "forest bathing" and, as I already mentioned, not in the best of mental shapes this morning, I go for broke.  What the hell, I think let's just go for a little stroll out back on the path in the woods behind our home, and ignore all the ticks and potential chiggers.  I need to forest bathe!  Somehow the dogs also think they should forest bathe.

On the forest trail behind our home.

This is partially a serious and a not so serious post, so let's get the not so serious one out of the way.  We do not put our dogs on the leash in this area (don't tell the park rangers, please!), it is behind our house, there is never anyone there and I was only going out for 10 minutes.  Our beagle Lucy started eating grass all the way; in other words it was slow going.  This would have been fine, I wanted to forest bathe, and really relax.  However, this is fairly difficult with a loudly gagging dog behind you on the trail, disturbing the peace and quiet of the woods.  So I just walked a little faster, figuring out she knew where I was going.  I also wanted to stop on the way to take some photos and take in nature, so I was planning to go slow anyway.  This confused our other dog Jake somewhat: "aren't we waiting for Lucy?"

At least I got my forest bathing in, the smells and the sounds were great (with the exception of the occasional gagging behind me in the distance).  We've had a wet couple of days; it actually rained over 3 inches two days ago, so I expected a wet mess.  To my surprise it wasn't: the pond behind our home was still dry.  These (Grafton) ponds are groundwater fed and we've had a dry fall, so I am not that surprised.  

As you can see this pond is still dry despite all the rain we had the last couple of days.

It was just nice to slowly walk the trail, to smell nature, to observe the beauty and come to my senses.  Taking photos helps me see things more clearly.  The photographs do not need to be perfect it is just fun, it makes you slow down, look around and observe.  Get out there and do it.  Like my walk today, it was not perfect, but it was what I needed.  I would not want to change it for anything else.

The lichen on this tree grow on the north side of the tree that is mostly in the shade.  the south side has no lichen growing, probably because it is too hot and dry from the sun beating on it.

This oak had beautiful sloughing bark.  When I was living and working in the mid-West this was of great interest to us because this was where the endangered Indiana bat live under during the summer months. 

  

I just loved the seeds (nuts) of this sedge and how they hung like that.

And yes, even this post does not have to be perfect!

Newport News Park (4/5/2015)

Looking outside over the cityscape and skyscrapers of Richmond in the rain today, I have to reminisce about the wonderful weekend we had: the weather was glorious and the company (family) was glorious.  It was Easter weekend and that absolutely contributed to the great mood and atmosphere.  Having too many recreational choices: hiking, biking or sailing (you guessed right we are not great church people in our family), we settled on a good hike in Newport News Park.  I brought the camera and concentrated on wildlife (bird) photography.

There were plenty of cool birds to be found.  While my wife and I are birdwatchers, we took the dogs this time, and it is almost impossible to look through a pair of binoculars while a dog is tugging on the leash that is in your other hand.   Thank goodness our daughter was visiting, so I had my hands free to take pictures.  During our walk in the park we ran into a group of birdwatchers.  I forgot what the group is called, but I am sure they have the words “Hampton Roads” and “Birdwatchers” or “Birdwatching” in the name.  It seems that they meet every first and third weekend in Newport News Park (I think at 7 am), rain or shine to go bird watching.  We met them at the end of their bi-monthly trip and they reported to us that they had seen 73 different species.  Not bad for a Sunday morning, or for the park.  Birdwatchers are generally a great group of people, they are almost always willing to talk and just our inquiry, asking them if they had seen something interesting, resulted in a conversation that lasted at least 20 minutes.  I really think that is the case globally.

We walked almost the same way as the week before, so if you want to read more about the park look here or look in the labels column.  But, below are six of my bird pictures.

This is a blue heron.  You can see a pretty big turtle behind him going through the marsh. 

This egret just caught a fish and he is ready to swallow it.

Another egret in the forested part of the wetland, in the background you can see a swan on the pond.

This green heron landed right in front of me on a branch.

A white breasted nuthatch; their call is so recognizable and they are fairly easy to spot but difficult to photograph at times (they never pose).

Last but not least a picture that should be turned into a jig saw puzzle.  Two Canada Geese and a mallard.

Virginia Native Plants (3/27/2015)

I am completing the development of a class that will be titled "Plants for Erosion and Sediment Control & Stormwater Management".  I will start teaching this class next week and am looking forward to it.  Hopefully it will not bomb; from what I hear in the field, everybody is looking forward to it.  I have a huge responsibility resting on my shoulders.

In the process of doing research for this topic I ran into now three reference guides that I thought were very good:

1. A native plant guide for Virginia's Eastern Shore (click here)
2. A native plant guide for Virginia's Northern Neck (click here)
3. A native plant guide for northern Virginia (click here and you'll find it on this page)

All are really good and a lot of fun to browse through,  Yes my course will deal with native plants and alien invaders (as in plants).  The department I work in is spearheading the effort in creating these guides, and word is that the Hampton Roads will be next, maybe divided into the south side and north side.  

This division into the north and south side is so indicative of what is going on in our area politically and socially.  Everyone wants to make this the greater Hampton Roads area but the darn Hampton Roads and the tunnels divide us and it is hard not to see that as a barrier between us and them (who ever us and them are).  Oh well.

Back to my class.  I will let the readers know how it is going, these next two months of traveling will tell.  The photo below was taken two Sundays ago, and to me it is symbolic of a new beginning, a new class and more respect for nature in general and of native plants in particular.  Of course it was taken in Newport News Park just around sunrise.

Newport News Park (3/24/2015)

In his essays on conservation ethics Aldo Leopold wrote about how the removal of predators from the landscape was detrimental to nature.  The removal of the wolf in the western US by ranchers to protect their sheep eventually led to an explosion in the mule deer population and tremendous over grazing by the deer which resulted in a decreased food supply for the sheep and an eventual decline in income for the ranchers.  (Yes, I already wrote about this, but it is worth repeating.) It is amazing how interconnected our life is with the natural world.   It is even more amazing how humans now reached a stage where we can influence and alter the natural wold as opposed to the natural world impacting us.

I have seen this as well.  In the late 1990s, I conducted some research in Valley Forge National Park and noticed how small the deer were.  I am not sure if it was caused by malnutrition or whether evolution was at work here.  What I do know that the National Park is completely surrounded by residential areas, which have forced the deer into a smaller and smaller area to find their food.  Naturally,  they do browse in the neighborhoods, but it seems that they most likely consume native landscape plants while they leave a lot of the exotics alone.  With the lack of hunting and predators the deer population in the park must have exploded resulting in a lack of food.  Either the deer a scrawny because of that, but given enough time you can expect that there will be an evolutionary pressure for smaller deer that can survive and thrive on less food.  But mature deer in the park looked like they were miniaturized, or as I called them bonsai deer; mature deer stood two to three feet tall.

Zoom in on today's picture.  In my opinion we are creating a similar issue in Newport Nes Park as I encountered in Valley Forge.   We are allowing the deer population to increase without culling by predators or through hunting.  Deer have so overgrazed the park that most palatable plants have been pushed out.  In addition to the overgrazing the lack of forest management has resulted in a dense leaf bed through which very few plants can germinate.  As a result we have very little understory and the only plants that remain in the understory are unpalatable to the deer.  Deer are now invading our neighborhood.

That brings me to idyllic picture of a doe and her fawn.  It was around night fall and they were slowly migrating towards our yards for their evening meals.

Newport News Park (3/22/2015)

It is always absolutely wonderful to go for a walk in Newport News Park.  We drove to the entrance along Jefferson, and decided to take our regular walk backwards and visit the swamp to look for bird.  When were walking along the swamp we got the wild hair up our but to walk home from the park a walk that was approximately 5 miles.

The walk we took was fun.  We ran into all kinds of interesting things.  The following photos are just an example what we ran into: evidence abound about beaver activity.  The three photos below show the swamp that is partially dammed of by beavers.  I like the black and white picture a lot, but you can see the evidence of beaver in the foreground of the color picture.  Further along the trail you see the stumps of trees that look like sharpened pencils sticking out of the ground.  Again evidence of beavers handy work.  Park rangers are obviously trying to protect trees and there are a lot of trees that are wrapped with metal screening material; guess that beaver teeth don't like to gnaw on metal.  The last picture shows the lake that was obviously created by their activity.

The park is also the site of the struggle between the north and south during the civil war (and also the revolutionary war); and there is evidence of fortifications everywhere.  It is amazing to see all the trenches.  As one of the signs say, it must have been boring trying to defend the lines along the Warwick River.

After crossing into the National Park it was a scenic walk through the woods and we were finally able to cross the swamp to the union side where we were welcomed by an egret.

It was a pretty and also a pretty darn long hike, that we have done before by bike, but never by foot.  Worth the trouble.

Newport News Park (2/7/2015)T

This morning we again experienced that sometimes the road well traveled is not the most exciting road.  It is great to bushwhack through the woods and see where it leads.  We decided that the trails we always seem to walk was just not for us today.  The sky was blue, the air was crisp and we were not interested in finding the straightest line or the fastest ways between two points.  This was also evidenced by the mountain bike trail we crossed at times bushwhacking this morning.  Mountain bike trails seem to wind back and forth through the woods, not making much headway, but who cares.  It is the exercise that counts, or it is the trip that counts in my eyes, not the destination.

During our walk today we went through an area that was obviously cut over 20 or 30 years ago.  It is mostly covered with hardwood trees, and to our surprise there are some really large trees left.  Most of them are large beech trees.  The following is one between the "abandoned road" and the golf course.

But as I said we soon stepped off the "abandoned road"into the nature preserve, to just enjoy the trip, and nobody cared about the destination.  The dogs just love smelling everywhere and Jake, our pseudo lab loves deep pellets, which we now have coined doggy probiotics.  We just walked keeping the sun in mind, and figuring that if we kept the sun at a certain angle we would eventually make it to a trail that leads directly to our home.  We did not care if it was straight or what we would be running into.  Naturally it was one of the biggest beeches out back (I know of one or two more out there) that made us deviate from the course we had plotted in our mind, but that's the fun of it.

In the background you can see the general circumference of the other trees in the area.  It makes you really wonder why the foresters did not harvest these few beeches when they were at it.  Currently, with the advent of mechanical tools beech trees seem to be favorable trees throughout the world; they have very hard weed, and even here in the U.S. they seemed to be likes as lumber.  But I thank whoever for not harvesting these beauties.

The weeds behind our house have remarkably much relief, with some of the low areas occupied by the vernal pools that I write so much about (look in the labels for Grafton ponds, ephemeral ponds or maybe the Mabee salamander).  The last photo here shows a picture of Jake (one of our dogs) on a root crown of an oak near a pond.  I was impressed by the burl on the oak.  It seems that they are actually preferred by specialty wood workers and can fetch a lot of money,  

Amazing all the things you learn walking out back and when you are looking and enjoying yourself.  Sometimes not traveling the shortest distance between points give you the most bang for your buck anyway in enjoyment, relaxation and just fun.

Ramblings in Newport News Park (2/3/2015)

This morning I had the rare opportunity to take the dogs on a sunrise walk.  It was the result of a major screw up from my side.  The evening before I had opened the trunk of my car to put my little lunch bag in the trunk and somehow my keys had fallen in my bag and I had not noticed.  When I closed the trunk, I was locked out.  So I was standing in the parking garage, upset and completely disgusted with myself.  There is just too much stress where I work, and it does not look like things will lighten up soon.  Not knowing what to do, it felt like it would be cheaper to have my wife come all the way from home to save me as opposed to paying someone to unlock my car.  It may have been a mistake to do that, but we got a nice dinner out of it (we went out to dinner at Pasture, which is rapidly becoming one of my more favorite places to eat in downtown Richmond).  Oh well, we decided to sleep late and I would take the dog walking duties.

So back to my walk.  The sun was coming up and yes, since the earth is round, the top of the trees were the first ones being hit by the sun.  They were a fiery gold color.  This reminded me of a saying we have in Dutch: “hoge bomen vangen veel wind”, or translated “tall trees catch a lot of wind.”  Here I could say “tall trees catch the first rays.” 

Oh well, the Dutch saying is used to remind us that famous and important people receive all the scrutiny.  We can see that with the paparazzi and movie stars, or even politicians.  It all came together at that moment.  I had just watched a little thing on the CBS morning news how the Republican candidates for president were all pro-choice, at least when it came to vaccinating their children.  Honestly, who cares, but obviously they are the tall trees now and will get a lot of wind.  I’m not really looking forward to another political season.  It seems we are always in election mode.

But there is a deeper issue here, as well.  The important thing I’m learning over and over is that as a society we don’t care any longer about what the experts say and what the scientists and specialists have discovered; whether it is vaccinations or global warming.  And, the politicians just go along with them, they are catering to the lowest common denominator. 

Newport News Park (1/27/2015)

I have not been blogging very much this month.  Probably because I am busy and with the winter in full swing, we are kind of home bound.  But today I had to share something.  It snowed overnight, and if we are lucky we get one or two snow days each year.

Of course I needed to go for a walk this morning to see the effect of the snow on the ponds behind our home, and just to take it all in.  Actually amazing.  I am someone who was born and raised in the tropics and I generally do not like cold weather.  But snow, I always have to experience that.  That is something different.  Not that I always liked snow.  I remember as a kid visiting Elliot Lake Canada in early March.  We lived in Caribbean at that time and my parents had this bright idea to go to Elliot Lake in Ontario, somewhere at the end of a road between Sudbury and Salt St. Marie (the U.P. of Michigan).  You can imagine what I though of that.  It was cold and the snow was at least arm pit deep.  I was suffering, and then our hosts had this bright idea to go and roast wienies on the middle of a lake.  They build a campfire and we went to roast hot dogs on a stick.  Man was I cold.

Oh well, we had only and inch or so and it was a fun walk this morning.  I did it again in the afternoon and most of the snow was gone, but the sky was gorgeous.  The clouds were pinkish and it beautiful and crisp.

The walk did me tons of good, after being stuck in a classroom, trying to teach people something about stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  The classroom had no windows and I really needed to get out and fight my nature deficit disorder.  I was surprised by an owl (or did I surprise it).  Owls are amazing creatures in the woods.  They are the most silent flyers and I am sure I would have missed it if would have been looking down to see where my next step would have to go.  But now, it scooted out of a tree in front of me and soared away from me through the trees at eye level not making a sound.  I could not identify it, but I expect it was a barred owl, knowing what we have in the woods.  A beautiful secretive sight that not many of us see.  Just what I needed.  It's been a nice productive day.

Richmond (1/21/2015)

Sometimes the simplest pictures give you the most joy.  Moreover, some pictures just beg to be taken because of its composition and simplicity.

Let's talk about the joy first.  I think a lot of people can rejoice with me about the gas prices.  I need a full tank every 4 days or so.  This is because of the large commuting distance I have to work.  Today I paid $1.86 per gallon of gas, and last week I bought it for $1.66 at Costco.  That is half the price that I paid a half year ago.  Considering I have a 16 gallon tank, I am currently not spending (some call it saving) approximately $30 per week.  That really helps the family budget.  I think a lot of Americans are experiencing this joy, in particular those that have a small income.  Most have not seen a wage hike in years, and it looks like there is absolutely no willingness to give us one in the near future.  Our law makers only seem to look out for the big guys; the people that fund their re-election campaign.

Oh well, enough politicking.  People often ask me why I don't move closer to my work.  For one, if you have been reading my blog, you know what a great "back yard" I have.  Granted it is actually Newport News Park, but my back yard runs right into it (guess you can still see the old fence), but in reality I have a 8000+ acre back yard.  And I don't have to mow it!  On top of that, the section behind our home is a nature preserve for the Mabee salamander.  Nothing better in curing my nature deficit disorder.  Regular readers also know how much I love Yorktown, the river, the Chesapeake Bay and sailing. Finally, I am a nomad, as my blog's name mentions.  I travel a lot and I am in Richmond maybe two or three days per week on average.  So yes, I burn a lot of gas and I am happy with the low prices.

Secondly, the picture it self.  I find far too often we take pictures of family or beautiful vistas.  That is all good, but what about recording mundane life.  I know sociologists, historians and archaeologist love discovering shopping lists that are more than 100 years old.  Even better are receipts that are that old or older.  Those types of documents are invaluable in developing a mental picture how people lived in those days.  I understand dairies in which people recorded the price of something they bought are invaluable.  I wonder when these types of people look back to our times what they'll see: screen captures of amazon.com pages?  So yes, I do think it is important that we have some photographic record of what life was all about, even a picture of pumping gas.  I do think it is important to document some of the mundane elements in addition to all the pictures of vistas and of people playing and having fun.

To me this picture has some classic composition elements in it.  I love the repetition in it: the vertical posts, the curved metal styles and even the pumps.  Moreover, the base of the columns, the pumps, styles and the trash can are in a diagonal.  Somewhat classic elements.  By no means is this a high quality photograph, but is has some of the elements of composition in it.

On an end note, yes gas is cheap, and I realize not all people are happy.  If you are an oil worker, a land owner who relies on any royalty payments, or you depend on business from these people, I'm sorry that your income is now even lower.  But I assure you this shall pass and prices will go up again.

Newport New Park (1/9/2015)

Yes another picture of the park.  This is one I have been itching to take after I saw it during my walk one day, but did not have my camera with me.  It shows what I would call heartwood.  Heartwood is typically formed in the center of the trunk of a hardwood tree and it the hard stuff you want to make flooring and furniture from.  Obviously this photo shows the old trunk of a tree that was cut.  The soft wood (aka sapwood) near the bark is completely gone (evidenced by the mossy ring), while the heartwood is still there.  It's great evidence of the hardness of this heartwood and its relative resistance to rot.  It really is what keeps the trees up.  Such a neat example.

The tree which was most likely an oak, was growing next to the pond I took the next picture of.  This pond seems to be used for research purpose, since it has white PVC pipes in it, which are probably used to study the water level in the pond.  I tried to hide the pipes when I took this picture.  

The water in the pond is currently about 3 feet deep, and by early spring it will hopefully be 5 to 6 feet deep; and then by summer it will be dry.  The reason for this fluctuation is not the runoff.  The level of the water in these ponds indicate how high the groundwater is.  As I mentioned in previous posts, this is so important for the amphibian in our woods.  A pond that is dry in the summer cannot have any fish, and so there are no fish in these ponds to eat the tadpoles of the frogs and salamanders that live in our area.  Our ponds are the breeding ground of the endangered Mabee salamander.  These gusy will come out on warm days in late February to breed and lay their eggs.  Probably the neatest thing is to hear their mating calls in late February.  The woods in the back really come alive around that time.

You can see the setting sun shining through the trees.  It has been cold these past few days, and the pond is currently frozen.  No problem, it looks like they'll be ready for the salamanders and frogs come late February, early March.

Newport News Park (1/4/2015)

Wow, 2015.  Happy New Year to all my readers.

Today's blog is a multipurpose posting first of course it is a wish to all to make the best of it all and enjoy 2015.  I am sure that some readers may think something like: "this guy had 11 days vacation, and all the time to take the perfect picture, and now see what he shows as his first of 2015."  I'll explain this below.  Remember, one of my favorite sayings is: "It is what it is", and there is not much we can do about certain situations, but to enjoy it (or maybe grin and bare it?).

So why this picture.  It is about unintended consequences.  Lets start: I believe in the inherent goodness in all and everything, and that we as humans are capable in screwing it up (or sometimes misinterpreting it).  I am often reminded of Aldo Leopold who made a 180 degree turn after he shot a wolf (in the early 20th century) and later on came to the conclusion that exterminating wolves was not going to save the sheep ranchers, but that it was actually going to hurt them since the deer no longer had any predators.  The loss of predators resulted in the explosion of the deer populations and overgrazing by the deer, which in turn resulted in the loss of food for the sheep and actually crashing sheep populations.  In other words exterminating wolves actually hurt the sheep farmers.

A lot of human interference in nature has unforeseen consequences, but wolves are great examples.  After their reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park, the ecology of the riverbanks and wetlands improved.  When the wolves were exterminated from the parks, elk became bolder and started grazing in these areas and greatly impacting the vegetation.  The reintroduction of wolves really helped in the restoration of these areas.  This link provides some great information on that.

So why this picture?  During our walks out behind our home, a sight such as this is very common.  The bark is stripped from the small pine tree, and I can guarantee that the tree will most likely not survive.  This is not necessarily bad in this case, you can see in the background that the the tree density is very high and killing some trees would be very good.  But there is a deeper issue here.  What is this stripping of the bark all about?  Well, bucks (male deer) shed their horns in the late fall, and they start growing out around this time of year.  You can imagine that horns that try to poke out of your skin hurt or at least are a little itchy.  That is where these small trees come in.  A buck can not ask one of the girls in his harem to give him a scratch on the head, and so he has to do this himself.  In that process they scratch so hard that the bark comes off the tree.

But briefly coming back to those deer.  We have no (or very few) predators in the woods out back.  We have sighted a few coyotes, but that's it.  Moreover, no hunting is allowed in the park.  As a result the deer have proliferated. eating everything in sight.  The woods very impoverished; seedlings are eaten as soon as they germinate.  (It is actually so bad that the deer are running out of food, and they have invaded our neighborhood.  The other night we almost witnessed a crash between a deer and a car).  So now, the woods out back have very little understory and they are not very diverse.  The only plants that grow there are the ones deer do not eat.  Although I understand we cannot reintroduce the wolf in our back yard, or allow hunting, I wish we could somehow keep the deer population under control, thus keeping the biodiversity in the woods behind us (and allowing me to grow nice plants in my yard).  As you can see, our actions have all these unforeseen consequences in nature that may show up much later and sometimes too late for us to do something about.

Newport News Park (12/25/2014)

Christmas day and time to play with our new toy camera (an Olympus TH-3 ... kind of Olympus' answer to the Gopro).  This camera is waterproof and shock proof, and this was our chance to try it out in water.  Thank goodness it rained the day before and the ponds had some water in it.  Below are two pictures, the first one was just before I submerged the camera and the second one is actually an underwater picture in the pond.  The water is somewhat murky with leaves and pine needles sticking up.

It is definitively a camera what we will be having fun with, in particular on the boat and in other more nature oriented situations.  Everything I've done with the camera is very satisfactory.  I love it.  Time will tell is we keep that opinion.

To everyone, hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.

Yorktown (12/23/2014)

It is really nice to be outside in the woods early in the morning after a day of rain or when it is foggy.  Today it was both.  All the trees were still damp, which makes the bark turn really dark and makes the lichen and moss stand out.

Lichen are very interesting organisms.  They actually are a symbiotic relationship ship (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours) of algae, bacteria and fungi.  Somehow by living together they are able to create these wonderfully colored structures that live on rock, and in our woods on the trunks of trees.  This symbiotic relationship makes them strong and able to live under very harsh conditions.  Typically they live on the northern sides of trees and rocks, where they are not baked by the sun.

Here is a picture I took today during my walk this morning.  It was great to be out in the woods again.  Life is still dry, the ponds have no or very little water in them; but regardless it is so enjoyable walking in the woods.  Foggy day walks are my favorite.

Newport News Park (11/18/2014)

Have not written much lately and not sure how long I'll be able to keep this up without making it sound like too much of a diary.  Moreover, I've been asked to write a (text) book and I assume that when you start writing for a living your armature writing languish.  We'll see.

Fall is definitively here.  Tonight we get a major frost (early for this time of the year) courtesy of another year with a polar vortex.  I expect that all or most of the leaves will start raining down tomorrow after a night time temperature in the mid 20s.  Taking the dogs for a walk this morning I was struck (as most falls) by the variety of leaves on the forest floor and all the different colors.  An absolute gorgeous sight, made even better by the fact that I don't have the rake these leaves.  Leaves that I saw included those of the sassafras, sour wood, maple, sweet gun and some of the oaks (all shown in the picture below) on top of pine needles.  Further down the trail you see black gum leaves, persimmon and the sycamore.  Naturally in the woods behind our home there are a great number of oaks: red, white, water, post, laurel, overcup, and swamp chestnut oak.  I probably miss a few.  To me a great publication is booklet by the Virginia Department of Forestry on our common Virginia trees (click here for the link).

Of all these trees I mention I have a sweet spot in my heart for the sassafras and the overcup oak.  I like the trident leaves of the sassafras, it delicate yellow flowers in spring and its yellow leaves in the fall.  On top of that, when crushed, the leaves smell like root beer.  Not my favorite drink, but the smell is indicative of the plant's assumed medicinal value.  I've read somewhere that, in the deep south, the roots were ground up and drank as a tea.  Tradition tells us that the tea makes it easier for you to tolerate the southern heat and humidity.  The leaves are also used in Creole cooking.  I like the overcup oak just because the acorn is almost completely covered by the cup, and because it grows in the wettest locations.  They have been fruiting copiously, and I am sure the deer just love it.

Newport News Park (10/26/2014)

Some fall we are having; blue skies and delightful temperatures.  Who needs more reasons for a nice walk in Newport News Park around our drinking water reservoir.  The reservoir is an interesting place.  It is a dammed off section of the Warwick River, and it actually has a lot of significance.  Picture more than 100 years ago this area was the site of a civil war battle between the Union and Confederate Forces.  They were dug in on both sides of the river and gunning for each other.  I understand there were much fewer trees around and it must have been an interesting sight; not something I would want to experience.  But now it is all water under the bridge, or should I say into the reservoir.

The reservoir is fed by a few stream, but mostly by a pipe line that brings water from 40 or so miles away.  From here it goes into the water treatment plant and comes out of our faucets.  While these pictures show the lake and it's surroundings in full glory, it is actually the areas far away from the dam that are the most fun.  We can reach these areas from our home as well as from the regular parking area, and we have spent a lot of time in those swamps looking at red-headed woodpeckers, herons, gannets, wood ducks, Canada gees, bald eagles and even at various plants like lizard's tails.  We have been standing in the swamp in February doing the great back yard bird count ankle deep in mud and chilled, but thrilled at all the birds.  That bird count is always on president's day weekend and it is so appropriate to count in a park where George Washington hung out at one time to make the life of the Britts miserable.

At one point the swamp/lake is fed by a spring that is located in the Yorktown Battle Field National Historic Park, a place I have written a lot about.  This spring is actually located need the encampment that George Washington used during the revolutionary war.  I am sure he drank from the spring.  This is another subject I wrote about in a post called George Washington's shovel.  The area is full of remnants of these two major wars that were fought on the Peninsula.  It is really a neat place to live and experience.

It is actually amazing knowing that drops of water that we drink and molecules of air that we breath have all passed through the body and lungs of people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Hitler and people alike.  We are such a closed system, that we better take care of it.

Newport News Park (10/19/2014)

Home in Newport News Park again.  The leaves have not yet turned, although they are on the verge.  It is amazing how we are two to three weeks behind the rest of the state.  This serves as evidence that we have such a long varied state, as I often mention in my classes.  We go from the coast and coastal plains to a place like Highland County which is the county with the highest average elevation on the east coast.  Yes, there are higher locations, but still that place is high and cold.  Being a bit of a nature geek, it really is fun at times to make the drive from Yorktown all the way to Abingdon, which is about a 6 hour drive (370 miles) and you are still in the same state.  You see all kinds of vegetation types, rock formations and even birds.  The first time I traveled to the hill from the coastal plains I was amazed to see all the plants I was so familiar with when we lived in Cincinnati.

Back to Newport News Park.  Sunday we took a 2 hour walk.  We went out our back yard into the park, walked all the way on to the Yorktown Battlefield and then followed a trail that take you by a swamp, a heron rookery, an area with huge trees with a pawpaw understory that almost looks like an old growth forest, and Grafton ponds.  You can see forested wetlands, ephemeral forest streams and ponds and all kinds of things that delight the soul.  This is my kind of spirituality!

On our walk we all the sudden noticed these green patches of green moss with bright orange mushrooms popping out of them: nice and contrasting (I know I recently did a mushroom post, but here is another one).  After teaching plant evolution at the college level, I am always hesitant to call this moss; a lot of these green patches may actually be the sexual phase of a fern also known as prothallus.  I experienced this first hand: I try to grow bonsai and here I thought I had a nice moss cover on my soil, until they all turned into ferns and my pot is covered by ferns.  Anyway, this is a picture of the moss.  I am also entering it in Cee's weekly photo challenge and this week’s theme is green, kind of a strange subject for fall, but so be it.  

One from last weekend, chanterelles popping out of moss

Newport News Park (10/12/2014)

 It was a damp cool weekend; and therefore great for some yard work.  We planted some perennial bushes and started noticing a lot of mushrooms popping up out of the ground.  Subsequently, we decided to go for a walk in the woods behind our house.  We soon were awestruck by the number of mushrooms everywhere.  So at the encouragement of my wife, it was time to break the phone out and start shooting some pictures of them.  About 5 years ago I did a whole series of mushroom pictures, so I am no stranger of walking through the woods braving ticks and taking close-ups of these wonderful guys.

We counted probably more than 20 different species ranging from very minute ones to huge mushrooms; and from eatable (chanterelles) to outright poisonous mushrooms.  No I do not dare to harvest anyone of them, since misidentification can prove deadly.  I just admire the heck out of them.  Having studied commercial mushroom growing when I was young, I love seeing them come up out of the ground for their day or sometimes hours of glory.  Before you get these great, what we call, fruiting bodies, mushrooms are nothing else but mold threads in the soil, that when conditions are ripe, come together as a group and all the sudden pop up out of the ground in these and interesting forms.  For example the eatable “hen of the woods” looks more like a white flower (gardenia) that has fallen on the ground.

Mushrooms help in the breakdown of organic matter in the soil, and a lot of mushrooms are micorrhizal, in other words they live on roots in a symbiotic relationship.  The roots supply the fungi (mold) with nutrients like sugar, and the molds help with the uptake of water and fertilizer by the roots.  In essence they scratch the root’s back and the roots scratch theirs.  So the soil and many plants need these fungi. 

Well, Sunday I took many photographs and here are two of the really poisonous ones.  I identified the reddish mushroom on the left as the “big laughing Gym”.  It is tall and has a circumference of about a foot.  That mushroom is hallucinogenic and according to my mushroom book causes “irrational laughing.”  The white mushrooms are as big as dinner plates, and are named “destroying angles”.  They are deadly when consumed; according to Wikipedia more than half the deaths from mushroom poisoning are caused by this mushroom; although it is a micorrhizal mushroom and really useful and important for plants.  An interesting world we live in indeed.  Although some are deadly to us, they are useful and essential for others, in particular plants. It was a fun walk through the woods and just great to see them all out.

Water or Winter Challenge (8/13/2014)

Any regular reader of my blog knows that it somewhat serves as a diary of what I do in life.  However regular readers also know that, so now and then, I participate in a challenge, in particular one from a photo blog I particularly like.  I really do not know what got in her head wanting you to post something that relates to water or the season of winter.  I have plenty of each in my arsenal, but what the heck, to celebrate this mild summer I decided to combine the two.

This picture was taken on January 22^nd of this year, less than 1500 feet behind our home.  It is one of the largest ephemeral ponds (aka Grafton ponds) in the woods behind our home.  In the fall, winter and spring the ponds are typically wet; while in the summer they are dry.  In the summer the area behind our home is teaming with mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers, and to tell you the truth we haven’t gone back there since early May, and I really miss walking there with the dogs.  I guess it is time to spray myself with some poison and venture out.  I kind of feel what’s called “nature deficit disorder” lately.

These ponds are wonderful for amphibians such as frogs and salamanders.  Since the ponds dry up in the summer, they cannot support a fish population which would eat all the tadpoles, and yes the only things we see at times are a few wood ducks and an occasional heron.  So, yes they are great for these critters.  I know I have mentioned that before; but because of this, our ponds are the home of the endangered Mabee salamander. 

A few years ago I walked over to this pond every Sunday at 3 pm for two years in a row (rain or shine), to take a photograph from the same spot.  It is amazing to see all the changes that occur from week to week.  In particular the Sunday after hurricane Isabel hit our area.  No trees down, but the week before there was no water in the pond, and the Sunday after Isabel the water was easily 4 feet deep.  My wife and I are still toying with the idea of producing a picture book about the ponds behind our home.

As you can see, I miss the ponds and I think it is time to brave all the insects and go out back!