My uncle was my daddy (6/25/2019)

As most of you know, I travel a lot for work. Except for one class, I am a solo teacher, so most of the time I travel alone. One thing I do not do is sulk in my motel room at night and microwave some food or order in pizza. I get some pocket money from the state to eat a healthy dinner out and so usually, after a brief nap to help me recuperate after my travels or a day of teaching, I go out to find a place to eat.

Eating solo in a restaurant is interesting. The person welcoming you always wants to seat you at the bar. I sometimes accept that type of seating when the restaurant is full, but honestly, that is not always what I am interested in, eating my food, sitting between drinkers. I would rather sit at a table, relax, people watch, browse my phone, maybe read my kindle, and just enjoy my food.

Sometimes there are interesting folks sitting at the bar or at a table next to you, and they are willing to strike up conversation. Below I will try to retell the one that really struck me:

“I was raised by my grandmother, she was like my mother. My real mother hated me and I never knew my daddy, or at least I thought so.” That was an interesting confession from a lady I had just met in a restaurant sitting in the table next to me. I was waiting to be served my food and just greeted and struck up a conversation with her. I was teaching in town for two days and this lady, around my age, was eating alone as well. We had exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes when she threw that curve-ball at me. Wow, I decided to become an active listener and responded with “really? I assume your mother was very young and unmarried.”

I am not sure why I made that assumption, but it seemed logical to me, that is was a teenage pregnancy, but definitely an out of wedlock pregnancy. Well the floodgates opened up. Her mother was 17 when she had her; and she was the product of an affair between her mother and her mother’s sister’s husband. Her aunt and uncle (read: father) never divorced, and she never knew that her uncle was actually her father. Her mother abandoned her; she was actually somewhat hostile towards her, but appeared to stay friendly with her sister. Actually the sister knew that her husband knocked up her younger sister. My “neighbor” grew up on her grandparents farm in rural central Virginia and was raised by her loving grandmother.

She went on, as a child she would frequently visit her aunt and uncle’s home, who lived nearby. In hindsight, her uncle would treat her like his own child, little did she realize. She would sit on his lap and have fun. She had cousins around her age (actually one that was about a year older). I wondered out loud if that might have been the cause of the affair between her father and her mother, a light seem to come on in her mind, like she had never thought about that.

Eventually, when her uncle died, she learned that he was her daddy.  That was 5 years ago and she has been living with that burden, ever since.  She would have loved to have known that earlier in life, because she always loved him and she knew he loved her. He was special and treated her like his daughter. It seemed that her aunt liked her better than her mother. Her mother had died always hating her, or at least disliking her.

Wow, what a sad story to listen to and to hear a random stranger tell you in a random restaurant in a random city in central rural Virginia. It is a story of taking advantage of a minor, loss of a mother, love of a grandmother and of a father who could never acknowledge the fact that he was the father to a young girl who needed one. It actually is also a story of an older woman who still needed a daddy and never had one.  She had tears in her eyes when she was finished telling me the story.  After dinner we parted and hopefully her burden was somewhat lightened by telling me her story.  It is one of the reasons why I enjoy traveling, but stories like this are disturbing to me and I need to process them.  It is one of those stories that stays with you for a long time.

Here we go again, but now too close for comfort (6/3/2019)

Well, it happened again, another mass shooting. I have written about a few of them in the past, <here> and <here>. However, this time, it hit much closer to home. 

The killing did not only occur in the city of Virginia Beach, a town approximately 30 to 40 miles from where I live.  I used to work in that city and interact with the folks in the department in which it happened. If that is not bad enough, after working there I moved to the state and six (6) of the persons that were killed were taught by me, or at least attended workshops that I presented. When I saw their faces in photographs in the newspaper, I recognized them instantly. Then came their names and stories. 

Do you want to know what drove me completely crazy? The killer and I were colleagues at the same company 17 to 15 years ago. He contacted me in 2013 to provide two workshops for his city department, which I gladly did. In other words, it really hit much closer to home than some of the other killings in the past. I remember so well, it rained cats and dogs on one of those days that I did one of those workshops. 

Here I feel selfish for being distraught about what happened in Virginia Beach. I should not be demanding the attention. Those poor 12 victims, the wounded and their families should be getting it! I simply cannot help it, but it is different when it hits so close to home. I am numb, angry, depressed, sad and more. I mourn the event, but I am sure I’ll get over it. It has been a crazy May 2019. This month, two friends died way before their time and another 56-year-old friend was diagnosed with stage 4 inoperable colon cancer that had spread throughout her body. That was before May 31, 2019 a date that will be etched in history. 

I think that we can be angry when things like this happen in Las Vegas, Florida, California, Vermont or elsewhere. We can yell, scream for gun control in many of those cases as I have done in my blogs. However, it seems to me that this is not a case where we automatically need to yell “gun control.” While we do not have a complete reason for the current killing, I have my speculations, which I’ll keep private (absolutely none of them justify the killing and are probably all wrong).

The only thing I will try to tell every one of you who read this short blog post: 

1. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worth killing anyone over and getting yourself killed over,
2. If you have psychological issues, GET HELP! Again, it is not worth being killed over or going to jail for, and 
3. Getting killed or suicide is not even a solution; you are hurting the people you leave behind (my father and a close friend killed themselves, so I speak from experience) 

In the end, lets just be tolerant of and nice to each other.  Live and let live folks, that should be our mantra.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adventures in bonsai (5/13/2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The threat of extinction (5/8/2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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