Bonsai Philosophy (11/7/2022)

During the recent meeting of the bonsai club that I am a member of, I asked one of the members for critique on one of my trees. It is a willow oak that I dug up out of my back yard and have had in a pot for about four or five years now and it is doing really great. The trunk of the tree is still fairly thin and here in lies the rub.

The member that I asked the critique or help from is advanced; I consider my skills somewhere in the middle, having gained a lot of YouTube knowledge. He is part of a bonsai club in northern Virginia and gives workshops up there. He is very good. In other words, I appreciate his feedback. His first remark was that based on the circumference of the trunk, “the tree should be approximately 4 inches tall to be in proportion.” My tree right now is two feet tall. While I agreed with him, if I want a finished tree; however, this tree is in development and hopefully by letting it grow tall, I can get some girth on the trunk. Cutting the tree that low is scarry to me. I do not see any leaf scars down there and I am not sure if it would back-bud or die when cut that low. I am not sure if I am prepared to risk it.

The next discussion point was movement in the trunk. My tree has a double trunk that are both about as straight as arrows. The discussion was about using very heavy copper wire to put some movement in the trunk. The following discussion ensued. A lot of bonsai artists including my advisor likes to put in exaggerated movement into trees to represent the age of the tree, ravaged by time and the weather. They also reflect the artist’s ability to work with the plants. I am not sure if I am a huge fan of all these trees with strange twists and turns that all these bonsai “artists” put in their trees. One of the YouTube channels I watch is the Bonsai Zone by Nigel Saunders. Nigel used to be a model builder, and his philosophy is (as I understand it) to create trees that are a copy of what they look like in nature. Well, I hardly see a contorted twisted willow oak in nature. My mentor for the day pulled up some pictures of mature willow oaks on his phone and had to agree. Trunks are mostly straight, and the canopies are brought.

Personally, I have a few trees that I am twisting and turning, but most of mine are clip and grow, like Nigel. Mine are mostly small. While I would love some larger specimen, being almost 70, my time to grow and lift large trees may be limited. Being a naturalist, a biologist, I like to recreate nature and walking in the woods, the day after the meeting I noticed that 90% of the trees had arrow straight trunks. Some of the understory trees were twisted: maples, ironwood, pawpaw, hornbeam, etc. They were looking for light, those sun flecks.

Naturally, making a forest like bonsai with multiple trees, we need to start thinking about making trees with relatively straight trunks. That is what we see in nature, the competition for light. But then, are there twin trunk oaks? I actually have a triple trunk oak in my front yard, and one of the tallest oaks on my favorite trails behind my home is a twin-trunked red oak. I did learn something. I am not yet going to cut off the leader (which I had planned to do) in the hope to develop a thicker trunk. Moreover, I am going to plant it on a rock!

All together it was a win-win meeting for me. I really encourage everyone to join a bonsai club, if you grow then and have not joined one yet. 

The willow oak of today's discussion.  As you can see the trunks are too thin and the side branches are not well developed.  My fear is letting the top grow too much might kill the side branches.  I put the rock there just now as a trial.  It is too big, but that is what we were thinking about with root over rock. 

This is the only strangely shaped oak that I know in the woods behind our home.  My wife calls it the howling dog tree.  It is in one of the ephemeral ponds and I assume a regrowth from a stump that broke off.

The twin-trunked red oak in the woods behind our home.  This tree is at least 300 feet tall, and the trunk is huge; you would need at least four persons to span around one of the trunks. 

Do we need humans? (7/12/2021)

Why do we need ticks in this world, or mosquitos? Those have been questions asked of me at times. Why do we need these vermin in our lives? They are all parts of the web of life, that is usually my answer. They serve as food for some other creature; the have a place. But then what are people for? This is a question asked in an old book by Wendell Berry that I am currently reading.

My argument has always been that the world will keep rotating on its axis around the sun, whether there are humans on it or not. Cockroaches will probably still be there whether people are there or not. I agree, some folks have created beautiful art: Bach, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Saint Saens, Mahler, just to name a few, and we would not have that or miss it.  If humans disappear from one moment to another, some animals and plants will suffer. Cows that have been bread to get milked twice a day will most likely die from mastitis; house plants will not get watered; neither will my bonsai. Our household pets and some other domesticated animals may survive, who knows. I always argued (not in my blog) that the earth might actually be better off without humans or when they vanished. I would expect that the world would eventually heal itself. I think this is partially visible in the Chernobyl area that was abandoned after the nuclear disaster. But do we as the highest animal in the food chain serve as food for some other creature?

On the other hand, Mr. Berry argues in his book that humans (or people) are needed for work (read the economy) and to protect the environment. This is a very idealistic view of humanity; still I walk through the neighborhood with my wife and watch her picking up discarded cigarette butts, plastic bottle and other trash from the street while I pick up the dog poop. To think we live in a middleclass neighborhood with well-educated folks who should know better. Daily, you can watch folks throw stuff out of their car windows, or things blowing out of their truck bed. In my estimation, maybe 15% of Mr. Berry’s folks are actively working on protecting the environment, another 15% are status quo, and the rest don’t give a damn. I hope I am wrong in this estimate.

I realize that I am very pessimistic; however, if we want to improve my glum view of society and follow Mr. Berry’s ideals of working on the environment, we need to work on people first. How would we do that apart from working on ourselves?

First, I think we need to step away from the words global and world. We need to start using the word earth! In my opinion earth would engender a closer connection with the self; global and world does not affect us directly.  As I argued before we need to find or develop a more accessible environmental language.

Secondly, the conservative movements have been very successful in pushing an economic agenda and telling us that deficit spending means that we are putting future generations at risk. Actually, nothing is riskier to future generations than environmental annihilation. This will happen with global warming (or should we call it the irreversible warming of the earth?). In a previous post <click here> I wrote about an argument about the cyclical nature of our climate that some will throw at me.

Thirdly, I am a lover of trees. Honestly, I think they are the best way to lock up atmospheric carbon, modify are local climate (both micro and macro climate), stabilize the soil, and provide essential habitat for a great many critters (a.k.a. diversity). Nothing gets me angrier than folks in my neighborhood needlessly cutting trees. I just finished Suzanne Simard’s book “Finding the Mother Tree.” It is an amazing read, something I always expected to find; however, she has articulated it very well.

Who would ever miss these tinny guys?  When walking in the woods this past weekend (after the area was drenched by the rains from tropical storm Elsa) I saw these small mushrooms less than 1 inch or 2 cm sitting under this root.  On a Virginia Mushroom group on Facebook someone identified these as being in the chanterelle group of mushrooms.  Chanterelles are mycorrhizae, and that is what Suzanne Simard's book is all about: the interconnected web underground that connects the trees with each other and the mutual support they give each other by way of this web.  In other words even this small insignificant mushroom which is the fruiting body of the mycorrhizae is sorely needed for the whole of the ecosystem to function correctly. 

Lastly, but probably most importantly, we need to lead by example. We need to do what is right, what is right for the environment, for future generations! This is what I have been trying to do with my teaching and my blog. I just wish that I could reach more folks with my activities. But I am not sure on how to turn it in to a vlog or a video blog or a podcast for right now. For one, from my end there is a lack of resources and a place to post all this, but also a way to get an audience. Right now, I have at somewhere around 150 to 300 readers (hits) per month even though I only have been publishing three lousy article per month lately. Again, if any of you readers have an ideas or suggestion, I am all ears. Furthermore, I am more than willing to write a guest column appear on your podcast or vlog. Finally, if any of you would like to publish one of your thoughts on my blog, I am open to considering that as well. But for sure let’s keep working on educating the masses.

Taking stock (12/29/2016)

On January 3, 2016 I posted a New Year’s resolution on this blog.  I decided to bring more culture in my life.  Well, I can report that although I am bookending 2016 with museum visits, I failed miserably.  But then 2016 failed me miserably, as well. 

First my latest museum visit.  I had the pleasure to go to the Richmond Fine Arts Museum and visited the “Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch: Love, Loss and the Cycle of Life” exhibition.  It was an impressive exhibit, an eye opener that show the interconnectedness that we all have; whether it is conscious or subconscious, as we later discovered.  For example my wife is a painter and as a 16 year-old she visited the Munch museum in Oslo.  Now finally, more than 45 years later looking again at Munch’s work does she and I realize his influence on her work, very much like Munch’s strong influence on Johns’ work.  But then there is no way of living in a bubble and escaping extraneous impressions we gather throughout our lives. 

I am sure I have all kinds of extraneous influences that have guided me through my adult life and are still guiding me.  It probably ranges from what I saw at home and what I saw around me as a child and teenager, to the things I experienced later on in my life, but in particular when living and working in Uganda.

I do not think that this why I failed my resolution of 2016.  But I do think these things are part of the reason why I write this blog and the philosophy I try to put down in words.  I want to bet that my love for nature was formed by my wandering in the kunuku or the bush almost every day after school when I was a kid.  I was observing and looking at things; the cacti that were blooming, the lizards, the humming birds flying from tree to tree, the troupial birds calling out, you name it.  When I was not there, I was either sailing or snorkeling at the beach.  I can still vividly remember the angry protest demonstrators (black minimum wage laborers) marching by our high school on their way downtown and later that day watching the smoke rising from above town when it was burning, set aflame by the rioters.  The island was under marshal law for a week and the whites were panic stricken.  We were among a group of white settlers who eventually left the island, remembering what happened in Congo (the country of my birth) a few years earlier.  It never happened on the island and from what I hear it is still pleasant there.  I did not understand the fear of my parents, it fascinated me and I resented them for having to leave the island.  It all made me who I am today and the one I'll be tomorrow, not only as a person, but my hobbies, my interests and my passions. 

So what was 2016 like?  I visited the two museums, but for the rest I did not do much more culturally.  I went to one opera and two classical concerts.  As I mention in a previous blog, I try to read, but that is difficult after a hard day’s work, after a commute, with tired eyes and tired mind, and a slight case of dyslexia.  I did finish one masterpiece of literature: Hemingway’s: The Old Man and the Sea, and boy that was a thick book (just kidding), but a masterpiece none-the-less!

At least that is what I can remember of my great cultural effort of 2016.  To me a walk in nature, being one with nature, soothing my nature deficit disorder, that is what I needed most in 2016.  Yes, it can be the same old trail every day, that does not matter. 

This gate symbolizes the entry to 2017 which I am going to enter with great apprehension and with the promise to myself to work more on myself and my personal projects.  To read more, be more cultured, work more on bettering the world and less on just sitting on my ass and being passionless.

This past year failed me as well.  Promises were given and broken.  They ranged from raises; to oh, we would never get this person as president, and now we going to be stuck with him for four years.  It is a year which is showcasing the great divide more than ever.  We have been made more aware that there still is a divide between rich and poor, black and white, and that black lives matter; it is almost becoming increasingly dangerous to admit to be educated or cultured.  This schism in our country and culture is unbelievable, but it feels like the middle ground is lost; it is nothing this blog can solve.  Maybe it is time for me to keep going on my cultural quest and read Huxley’s “Brave New World” again, or some other great novel on how to react or deal with what we have right now.  I am taking suggestions!

Nothing is permanent (7/25/2016)

Buddhism teaches us that nothing in this world is permanent and I was so strongly reminded of that a week or so ago during our visit to Pittsburgh, PA that I have to dedicate this blog post to it.  It had been a while since I visited that city, I spent some time there in the mid and late 1990s for work, but this visit was to say hello to our daughter and to my wife's brother and family.  It was there during our visit that I was reminded of the impermanence of our existence on this planet.

Particularly on day two of our visit when we decided to stroll through the Allegheny Cemetery the final resting place of now more than 124,000 people, visited a few museums and ended it all with a visit to Randyland.

These lovely ladies were most likely models at some plush lady's fashion store; however, even their status was not permanent and they have "fallen from grace" and become a vignette at a roadside attraction called Randyland in Pittsburgh

Call us weird, but it is such a nice, quiet place to walk through a cemetery on a sunny Sunday morning.  Maybe a strange way of expressing my spirituality, but is gives you a nice combination of nature and culture.  But as I mentioned in the beginning of this post, if there is something that reminds you of your impermanence, it is a cemetery.  Naturally, death surrounds you, but even there, people erect all these monuments as "permanent (?)" memories to themselves or to their heirs and relatives.  However, even those monuments slowly erode away, and that was what struck me the most during our visit.  Those monuments were not as permanent a hoped or expected.

This must have been beautiful when first placed.
I assume this was a child's grave with a baby resting
on a pillow.

The writing on this monument is almost completely
eroded away

I wonder who was buried here

Things were often not as they seemed.  

This statue may look intact, but was in 

poor shape when examined from the front  

(below).  But she is from 1859 and had to  

withstand a lot of air pollution and inclement 

weather.

In other places nature was slowly taking over 

as we see below.

This is the front of the statue above

Subsequently, the museums we visited included the Center for PostNatural History; what could be more appropriate after looking at decaying monuments to the death.  PosNatutal History refers to the living, the Center deals with life we humans have created or at least altered using genetic engineering or selective breeding; the way "we have messed with nature." (Normal life is not permenent any longer we can mess with it).  You step into the Center and you are welcomed by a stuffed goat that was genetically engineered to produce protein that makes strands of (very strong) spider-like silk instead of milk from its utters (the Biosteel goat).  Ordinary goats are now no longer permanent, we humans will monkey around with them.

While expensive the "Mattress Factory " fits right in with the idea of impermanence.  It is an interesting place to visit, if you are ready for a different modern art experience.  I am sure that some people will call it a waste of their money, but I truly enjoyed it.  Being an old mattress factory there is an air of impermanence, but also an air of re-purposing and breathing new life into things, and the picture below says it all.  I took this in the museums restaurant.

Outside in a corner of the parking area is an area where it looks like a bunch of old stone statues have been dumped, discarded.  We just enjoyed sitting there and looking at them.  We had no idea if it was intended, but it did give me that feeling of impermanence again.

Back to Buddhism.  It appears that Buddhism recognizes five processes that we humans have no control over (although we desperately are trying to).  These are:

1. Growing old
2. Getting sick
3. Dying
4. The decay of things that are perishable, and
5. The passing away of things that are likely to pass

Don't you love number 5?  It is all encompassing isn't it?  (I borrowed them from this website).  Early Buddhist tell us that nothing in this world is fixed or permanent; "Decay is inherent to all component things" declared the Buddha.

I was so amazed when the Taliban in Afghanistan blew up the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan and how the true Buddhist reacted.  They were so matter of fact about it, like "nothing is permanent."  Nothing at all like my father who got angry when my wife accidentally broke his favorite glass just a few months into our relationship; something my wife still remembers.  Nothing is permanent, I still have to remind myself of that so now and then.

There were other signs or occurrences of (sometimes pending) impermanence on our trip, some of which had to do with human relations some of which were in art or science.  None should be mourned, all should be celebrated and revered.

Jamestown (1/28/2016)

I drove the Colonial Parkway on the way back home today and snapped this picture of Jamestown Island and the calm James River today.  The water was like glass, the sky was grey, and it was very peaceful until a van with high school students stopped who were obviously on a school project. 

Took the day off today to go to a workshop at the Jamestown Settlement today.  It was a four hour course on"Nature Journaling."  While it was not exactly what I was hoping for, I did have a lot of fun and I did learn quit a bit.

The course was put on by the Jamestown/Yorktown Foundation and was part of a special antiques native plant botany exhibit that they have.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, that's right up my alley.  Yes, I was hoping to learn some tricks of the trade that I could use here in these blog entries, and I guess maybe I will some day.  Maybe I have entered the instant electronic gratification era with my digital photographs and the blog, and am I lost (forever) from the more elegant note taking of the past.

The 4 hour course was given by Betty Gatewood.  Betty is an absolutely delightful person with an energy that is enviable.  She is an amateur naturalist/water colorist; one of those renaissance people.  If you ever have a chance to take a class of her, don't hesitate!

What did I learn?  Journaling is not a crazy hobby or a way to pass time.  It can be beautiful and the way Betty does illustrates it, in particular with her quick drawings and small water colors, it is even very nice; a keepsake for future generations.  I asked her why she does it.  Things like this are very personal, you hope your children read it, and maybe you hope to ever get it published.  I think a lot of people I know are closet authors that hope to write their book and this is one overt way.  Some do however.  Journals from Thoreau, Leopold, McPhee, Hoagland, Ehrlich among others have had a huge influence on me, or the book that resulted from their (nature) journals.  This and some of the blogs I read are journals entries in their own way.  Somehow and for some reason I put them out there for the world to read.  My lame excuse is education and information.

Nature journals reflect your personal relationships with nature, I learned today.  It also chronicles changes over millenia and can document global warming.  So yes, I had a wonderful time, and I even learned how to tie die my journal (or paper) with shaving cream and food coloring!

I do write a lot about nature.  I think half my entries relate to it in one way or another.  It's precious and we need to protect it.  Betty taught us that by journaling, writing about it or drawing it, you observe it more closely and you become one with it:

I have learned that what I have not drawn, 

I have never really seen.

(F. Franck, arts and author of Zen of Seeing: Seeing/Drawing as Meditation)

I think the same hold true when you really describe it and write about it.  But one thing is for sure, get out there and enjoy nature!

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.

 

Richmond (10/2/2014)

Every day when I drive home from Richmond I pass by this wonderful mural/graffiti.  Richmond has a few and I see two of them on a daily basis.  Not sure if this one is offensive to some, but I love it.  To me it is a mixture of a caricature of a large superstore that uses the smiley face as their symbol and really neat avantgarde art.  Today I had just read the new challenge by Cee Neuner that I so now and then participate in.  This week's challenge was the color yellow and I thought this fits.  The photo was taken on the fly, through the roof of my car so pardon the quality; I just thought it was fun.  I just wish there was more art like this around where I live or travel, but I always smile when I drive by there on the way home.