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.

And we march on (4/24/2017)

And so the Nation marched for science, scientists, science funding and last but not least for Earth Day.  Yes, we marched as well.  No, we did not go to Washington DC this time but we marched in Norfolk.  Our very lame excuse was that the march ended up at the O’Conner’s microbrewery, which brews some of my favorite beer, like I needed an excuse to visit their tasting room again. 

Marching down Granby Street in Norfolk in the name of Science, Curiosity and Earth Day!

Get-together after the march at O'Connors microbrewery

Whatever my excuse was guys, marching and letting our voices heard was important, and maybe showing up in Norfolk was more important than doing so in DC.  Here we could show that the concern was nationwide, as it should be.  The concern is even more urgent so close to the Chesapeake Bay.  Science should not be a partisan thing; neither should be a concern for mother earth, or as I have called it in a previous post: our Blue Marble.  What concerns me is all this talk about future generations when we talk about saddling future generations up with economic debt, but very few want to address the fact that we are saddling future generations up with environmental debt. 

As I mentioned in previous posts these discussions are not new.  Malthus (1798) predicted that we would have to deal with over population and the resulting man-caused disasters (see my previous post about that <here>).  Others claimed it is our world and we can do with it what we want.  Western man’s dominion of nature is as old the bible itself.  But it was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who articulated this when he claimed that we needed to use science and technology to reclaim our “dominion over creation”; something we had lost when Adam and Eve were "kicked" out of the Garden of Eden.  As I wrote in a May 11, 2016 blog post, John Locke took this a few steps further, and asserts that nature itself has no intrinsic value, but that nature only gains value when we work it.  

This is completely contrary to some of the work I did some 20 years ago which was called "natural resources damage assessment" or NRDA.  One of the questions asked in NRDA is about what the enjoyment of nature is worth to you (the public) personally.  It was particular important in cases like oil spills.  The question became how much enjoyment did that take away from you, because you could not spend time on that beach, or fish?  This goes into the equation to calculate the amount of fines that are being assessed to companies that damage the environment like BP when the had the spill in the Gulf.  If we would follow John Locke's logic the ocean may not be worth anything, or for that matter neither would the Chesapeake Bay.  Or maybe since we are mining it we have dominion over it and we can pollute it to our heart's content.

I think this strange logic is still out there, 500 years later.  Or is it 2000 years later?  Some people still think we can do to the earth what ever we want.  They think we own it.  There is still this thought that any problem can eventually be solved by science, a somewhat Baconeque point of view.  

Instead of seeing nature as a subordinate or worthless, we should have a sense of awe and wonder over nature, and a belief that we humans are part of it.  This is why we were marching this past Saturday, not only to solve these issues by science but to understand the issues (and maybe help with a solution).  By understanding them we maybe able to avoid worsening some of them or avoid starting new ones.  

On a final note, what encouraged my wife and I the most was that during our walk, some of the walkers were actually picking up garbage and eventually deposited the garbage in a dumpster that the found on our route.  They were actually cleaning up the environment as we walked, leaving the world a better place.

Speeches before the start of the march in Norfolk, just an interesting juxtaposition showing that science is apolitical

New year's resolution in Norfolk(1/3/2016)

Happy New Year everyone!

This year I personally resolve  to be more culturally open; to get a life, to get out more, and to have fun!   I know that I often take myself too serious and get easily upset by what I perceive to be criticism.  I think I've gotten better over the years but as Mark Mason describes in a blog post, it is like trying to stop the Titanic and avoid the damn iceberg, it is so imprinted in you by your past and difficult to change.

Yes, we need to have more fun in life.  Like this little guy, he seems to have a load of fun riding his horn made by a Central American Indian tribe, a long time ago,  It survived all the centuries and he still has that mischievous grin on his face!  But then it helps when you are cast in clay.  I wonder what he has seen all that time.  It's kind of a pity that he is locked up in a museum case, his journey appears to be over, but he's still grinning.

We visited the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk on Sunday where he was locked up and that made me realize what I've missed for a while now.

The entrance to the Chrysler Museum

I can almost not remember when the last time was that I visited a museum.  The Chrysler is a great place to start if you want to see a good museum for the first time or for the first time in a long time.  It has a little bit of everything.  From ancient Greek and Egyptian artifacts to a Picasso and more modern paintings.  It also has one of the best glass art collections in the world.  On top of that it's free!

Looking at the Picasso through the doorway 

This is actually a glass sculpture.
There is so darn much symbolism here!

I really believe art enriches our lives, whether you make it, perform it, watch it, or just look at it.  Don't forget, in it's purest form art is the most perfect expression of the artist's free will.  Nobody tells the artist what to paint, what to compose or what to make (may be not some of the commercial stuff).  At least four of the five photographs show pieces of art that to me appear to be the artist's ultimate expression of free will.  Art is even an expression of our own free will as the public, we can interpret art the way we want to, regardless of what the little piece of paper next to the art work says about it.  What a novel concept!

To me art is like listening to a good concert (which is art) or sailing (sometimes an art too): you can only be in the moment when looking at art and you cannot think of anything else; all the troubles and worries are forgotten at that moment.

This year, resolve to visit more museums, to broaden your horizon and to talk to people who think differently than you.  There is plenty of superficial interactions between people but when was the last time you had a deep intelligent discussion with someone else?  You actually might learn something. Life is becoming too much like the brothers in the movie Nebraska while watching the football game.

I will do the same.  One thing I realized this weekend was that I really need more culture, arts, philosophy, or just fun intelligent interaction between intelligent human beings.  That is the way I want to grow!  Maybe less self improvement books and more philosophy books and deep thinking.  As a nomad who travels and often lives in motel rooms I will have some alone time to think as well, I will use that time wisely, I will read, write, hopefully find interesting people to talk to, but like in the past I will also still hike and enjoy nature.

 

Norfolk (6/26/2014)

I was teaching in Norfolk on Thursday and driving back home that afternoon I had a stroll through memory lane.  See, I used to work in Norfolk and Virginia Beach and had to travel back every afternoon.  It is my understanding that the traffic in the Hampton Roads is the fifth worst in the country,  Actually we locals call it the great cul-de-sac: two tunnels going to what we call the south side and you can literally drive a circle.  In one tunnel and back through the other.
Well, the tunnels start backing up around 3 pm and going home yesterday afternoon, there was a 6.5 mile backup to the tunnel  Just like the good old days when I did this every day.  Back then, I figured out which of the two lanes goes consistently faster, and darn things have not changed there as well.  It also reminded me of the other blog post I wrote on traffic issues.
The trip home also made me think of that one time when my flight was diverted from Newport News Airport to Norfolk and we had to take a shuttle back to Newport News.  We were with three passengers: a lady 5 or 10 years younger than me, a U.S. Army soldier in his early 20-s, and me.  When approaching the tunnel and going down towards the hole the soldier panicked and actually opened the van door and was ready to jump out of the vehicle (we were driving 30 or 40 mph).  I was sitting in the front seat, so I could not do much, but the lady grabbed the soldier, pulled him back into the van and held him like a baby through the tunnel.  The poor kid had just flown in from Houston and never seen a tunnel before, and going under the water terrified him.  I still often wonder whatever happened to him.  In addition, I wondered if I should feel safe knowing he was defending our country.  Oh well.
I took two pictures going into the tunnel on Thursday.  The first shows the approach and actually a boat that was about to cross the tunnel overhead.  I love the approach when a boat or a submarine goes over the tunnel.  The second was somewhat enhanced by Google, but this was about the point where our soldier panicked, opened the door, took his seat belt off and had one foot out of the door, when the lady pulled him back.

Norfolk 10/1/2013

Had dinner at my favorite sushi place that evening.  I love to stay in a motel nearby and at least spend one evening at this place when visiting the area.  I used to work nearby and this was one of my favorite lunch stops, but now it is at least worth a visit when in town.  The place is Kyushu's in Newtown Road.

Norfolk (8/17/13)

Visited Nauticus today, a great maritime museum.  This picture is of the USSS Wisconsin.