Breathing Botany’s Baby Batter: A Pollen-Season Memoir (04/07/2026)

Or, the Yellow Haze of Spring

It’s spring. The days are getting warmer; the birds are chirping; the daffodils in our garden have finished flowering; leaves are popping out everywhere; the redbuds and dogwoods are blooming; the May flowers have woken up—and yes, there is pollen everywhere.

Pollen is so thick right now that our gray deck is yellow, and you can watch it drift over the boards when there’s even a slight breeze. Our concrete driveway is yellow, and the vehicles are coated, too. While the major culprit in our pollen plague is the loblolly pine, it started earlier with the maples and oaks. They announced the start of pollen season about two weeks ago.

The first time I mentioned pollen on this blog was in 2014. My first post was in June 2013 (wow—13 years ago), so April 2014 was more or less the first time I could have complained about it in these pages. I think I mentioned it every year since. Spring pollen has been a perpetual issue here in Virginia (and farther south). For a few weeks, the sky looks yellow and—somehow—everything else does, too. We were walking along the York River and clouds of yellow dust drifted over the water from the shore. When you walk the dogs in our neighborhood and a gust of wind kicks up, you get a face full of the stuff and your eyes sting from all the tiny particles. Even your shoes turn yellow after a stroll through the grass or along a forest trail.

I had a perverse sense of humor when I was still teaching—actually, I still have a streak of it. I’d ask my students if they knew what pollen was: plant sperm. Tree sperm. “Now everyone, take a deep breath in through your nose and inhale all that sperm through those nostrils into your lungs.” A few weeks later, the water in my rain barrels smells horrible. Rotten eggs smell like perfume compared to this brew. Pollen has a high protein content, and all that protein has to break down—ferment, rot, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve always assumed this liquid is fine to use on my bonsai; I’m sure it must be nutrient-rich. And, over the years it hasn’t killed a plant yet.

Soon, this pollen episode will be a thing of the past. We’ll have forgotten it until the end of March next year when it begins again. Now, the seasons will get warmer, and summer will be upon us. Heat and humidity will be there, and maybe a chance of hurricanes? Let’s just hope I can keep complaining about pollen on our deck and cars for a few more years.

Our deck covered by pollen

Get on those barricades (8/18/2025)

As you may have seen in my previous posts, I have been writing about my life and of my immediate family. However, I am currently hitting somewhat of a wall. I guess that happens when you have been reading, listening and watching too much news and combining that with the responsibility as president for a board that is responsible for running a church. Don’t worry, I am not going religious on you. While Unitarian Universalism is definitively a religion, it should not be confused to proselytizing religions. Our motto is that we except folks from all religious and philosophical walks of life. This includes atheists and humanists. We don’t recruit much, but maybe we should; I think a lot of folks could find a spiritual home with us.

But let’s take a step back. These past few months we have been bombarded by news that the climate is worsening including the horrible floods in Texas where at least 135 people died; floods in Milwaukee, New England, New York City, etc.; a pretty strong earthquake and tsunami warnings; wild fires all over the world; and hurricane Erin that went from a category 1 (75 to 95 miles per hour wind) to a category 5 (more than 157 miles per hour or 252 km per hour) within 18 hours. We learn about a flip-flopping tRump who now supports Rusia again, or worse has given us whiplash from his tariff games. Finally, I cannot escape talks about sexual predators on television or in my own life, and no, I am absolutely not one of them, nor have I ever been abused. I have simply not been able to find any good news these past few months. So, why the hell write about my youth and my family; I should be on the barricades.

The Buddhists tell me to live in the moment and enjoy the shitshow. Stoics tell me that even living in the moment will not do it, since this last word I typed in already in the past. They tell me to concentrate on things that I (think) have control over. Talking about barricades, I have participated in a few demonstrations, but is that control? Maybe I have taken control of some of my frustrations by these actions. It definitively feels good to be among peers, people who think the same. However, it sure does not look like I am changing anyone’s mind.

Looking at the blogs that I wrote over the past 12 or so years, I have been warning you about climate change, political extremeness, war, gun violence, the environment, stormwater, soils, life on or near the water, and I occasionally write about life and bonsai. I am hoping that that the occasional post may affect some of you in a positive way; although I have no illusions that I can change the world this way. I confess, I am not doing a damn thing about it except write about it. Yes, I pick up the dog poop when we walk our animals; I recycle (not the poop); we have not used fertilizers or pesticides in our home in years (except my bonsai); we have little to no lawn to speak of; we drive a hybrid; and we vote. Remember, your vote matters!

What message am I trying to convey in this post, what charge am I giving you? I don’t know, maybe this is just a bitch session, a bitch post. Maybe I am trying to get myself motivated to do more; to write more; to bitch more, in the hope to change maybe one mind a year; to get you all motivated to work harder to change this world for the better, for your children and grandchildren. Our descendants deserve a livable world when we are no longer here. Fuck the fake republican fear of budget deficits, environmental deficits make the world unlivable whether we have a balanced budget or not. Let’s get on those barricades together and change the world.

Stolen from the movie Les Misérables

Exhausted and exasperated (5/22/2025)

I feel empty and exhausted. Crazy, considering I sleep well, exercise (walk and bike), have hobbies (I work on at least three or four of my bonsai trees almost daily), do a lot of reading lately, you name it. I have my fair share of friends (or should I call them acquaintances). In other words, I have a full life as a retired dude. Am I depressed? Am I getting old and this is part of slowing down? My diet? I do not know.

Maybe I need more adventures. A few weeks ago, we had a great visit to James River State Park, and that was a welcome diversion. Then we experienced the election of a new pope. He is 69 years old and three years younger than I am. Leo (his newly chosen name) is embarking on a completely new adventure. I guess that in July I will embark on a new adventure as a grandfather and as chairperson (president) of our Unitarian Universalist church board. I have already been made aware of all the potential difficulties I might be getting involved with at church. Grandfathering will hopefully be easier.

I guess it is the incessant news about tRump and his antics that exhausts me the most. There seems to be something else every day ranging from “screw the poor and help the rich" to lining his own pocket with a donated airplane.

One of the books that I am currently reading (I am reading four at the same time) deals with the old Greek and Roman stoic philosophy. Very much like Buddhism, it tells me not to worry about the past (it is over), not about the future (not much we can do about, it is coming whether you like it or not), and don't worry about what is happening right now (it will be a thing of the past in an eye-blink). Remember the idea about never crossing the same creek twice? It is different every time, different water molecules. What is left? Enjoy the moment. The Buddhist say, “live in the moment.” I wish I was able to take that attitude, but it is difficult in today’s sociopolitical climate.

This is probably why it feels so good to have new and different adventures to look forward to. While apprehensive, I am excited about what’s to come. I am thinking about flying west to visit my new (first) grandson. In addition, I have been planning a trip circumnavigating Lake Michigan. We have never visited Wisconsin, and I would love to visit Holland, Michigan. We’ll see if it comes to fruition.

I think it is very important to have new adventures in life and not to stagnate. In many of my posts I write about never stopping to learn (one example is here and here). But I get 543 posts when I enter the word learn in my blog search bar. I think it crucial to keep learning and develop your critical thinking skills.

I read somewhere that the reason why time seems to go faster when you grow older is that you do not experience anything new that needs to be processed by the brain. Young folks, on the other hand, need to process all the new experiences and therefore the time seems to go much slower. What am I trying to explain here? New experiences at an older age slow down the perceptual time. In other words, I am looking forward to all these new adventures (new experiences) and growing old slower.

So many folks in this and a lot of other countries have given up on experiencing new things, on learning. They act like sheep, being herded by a dog or even a shepherd (read authoritarian leasers like tRump). It appears that they have lost their ability to think on their own, although they still think that they are thinking on their own. They are just following what the demagogues, the gas lighters or dictators tell them.

I don’t care if you are liberal, conservative, have a different sexual orientation, black, white or purple, we all need to keep learning, experience new things, think and question what we read, see or hear on the television or get from social media. Reading, learning and bonsai is how I am trying to fight my exhaustion.

One of my trees that I have been working on (a water birch)

Bonsai update (7/8/2024)

I realize that I have been teasing a lot of you about my hobby of growing bonsai trees; at least that is what I try to do. Most of my trees are in the pre-bonsai stage, but that is the fun of it. Recently, I had to move things around a bit because of the fence we put in, I briefly mentioned it <here>. In this post I want to discuss my hobby a little more by answering some basic questions.

How long have you been doing this?

I fell in love with bonsai the first time I saw them. This was in Longwood Gardens (PA) in 1977. I was fascinated by them ever since; however, because of our travel I was unable to pursue the hobby. A few years later we visited the National Arboretum in Washington DC where I saw some more examples of the art of miniaturizing trees. Finally, in the late 1980s when studying in New Mexico could I start playing with them. Our friend and colleague Daniel owned a plant nursery and at one time he gave me at least 7 seedings for me to work on. Later I bought another tree, and when we moved to the Four Corners region, I took a class by John Naka and purchased two more trees for his course. So, you could say that I have been doing something with bonsai for 36 years or so.

That long! Do you have any of your starter trees?

All seven trees that I got from Daniel are still alive. This includes three Siberian elms, three New Mexico privets (aka NM olive) and a Japanese black pine. The hackberry that I bought died some 20 years ago. I did not do much with the trees for a period of 10 years (1994 to 2004) they were terribly pot bound and barely hanging on. The two Naka trees also survived. One of them (an azalea) died two years ago.

What are some of your strangest or more interesting trees?

It seems that a lot of people who are into bonsai concentrate on one type: junipers, pines, maples, or deciduous trees. I never had that luxury and tried the techniques on anything I could get my hands on. The craziest tree that I have is a mimosa. It is what is called a yamadori or a plant collected in the wild. I collected in my yard, so technically they call it a gardendori. I had cut the darn mimosa and it kept growing back. Eventually I had enough of it, and I stuck a shovel into the soil and yanked out a foot and a half (40 cm) of root. Thinking what the heck, I stuck it in a pot with soil and that spring it started growing. The root was too long, so I planted it sideways in a pot and it is thriving (five or six years later).

The general answer to the question would be that I like them all. As any proud parent should, I have no particular favorites. I have over 100 trees in various stages of development, and I need to slow down and reduce the numbers a little. It is a lot of work, and I am sure that this is why none of my trees are show worthy. I once heard that having 25 trees or so is a comfortable number.

Do you have any mentors of people who you learn from?

I have always felt terribly inadequate in my bonsai knowledge. I have a lot of books and I used to prescribe to the magazine. Again, I really did not know what I was doing, even after an afternoon of Naka. It really was YouTube where I eventually gained the confidence to experiment and have some fun with my trees. I became a member of our local club three years ago and I became a member of Mirai, a training school. This finally gave me some more design prowess.

I have a few favorites on YouTube. These include Mirai, the Bonsai Zone by Nigel, Dave’s Bonsai, Bonsai Heirloom, Bonsaify, and Growing Bonsai by Jelle. I watch others as well, but these are my go-to at the moment. I think I now feel much more comfortable growing bonsai, shaping them and even advising on the craft, thanks to these channels.

If you have more questions for me about bonsai feel free to contact me and I will address them somehow. Also look in the label section on the right side of my post. With this post it seems I have 64 posts with the keyword bonsai, or posts where I at least mention the art of bonsai. Good luck browsing through them.

Photos from the top to bottom.  My crazy mimosa, the back of my table, the new layout, the cherry and privet, one of the benches in a new location.

In the Zone and other Mediations (06/24/2024)

The fence is in; while I have no illusion that it will keep the deer out of our yard, it should keep the dogs in. Now, a few days later I already notice that we spend more time outside than before. Part of the reason is that the dogs can finally spend more time with us in the yard. Before fence we felt guilty being out there without them, the dogs were either whining at the door wanting to join us, or we had them out with us on the long leash and then they would wrap themselves around out seats, our legs or a plant, prompting us to get up and save them. Now they can just roam and play. They play like crazy and pass out in the evenings.

My time outside is divided between working on my bonsai (looking, watering, and shaping), weeding, odds and ends, and just sitting. First, I needed to reorganize my bonsai area or what we call our Bonsai Zone, a term that I stole from Nigel, who has a YouTube channel called the Bonsai Zone. It appeared that part of my “Zone” was actually going to be located outside the fence. I had temporarily moved my tables and now it was time for the final layout trying to maximize sun exposure on my benches.

It was never productive to put plants in our yard. Deer would go for them as soon as they were planted. We finally felt adventurous enough to do some landscaping now we have a fence. I have already shared some of the work we have done in a previous post. We have been trying to add native plants to our landscape, plant that usually get hit hard by deer. The fence may hopefully discourage them from entering and be somewhat protective. However, because of the past, non-maintenance, the garden is overrun with invasive plants. It is now my daily chore to pull out Japanese stilt grass, and ground ivy.

My favorite activity is just sitting somewhere in the yard and observing. As I mentioned earlier, the fence made it much easier since the dogs have free reign now. I already just sat on my behind with friends, with my wife and just alone. We have a screened-in gazebo, and even sitting in it has been great especially in the evenings when the mosquitoes are out. It is better now because the dogs can just roam.

But I enjoy just being on my own, observing and listening to the world around me. I look at the birds, skinks, and just the landscape around me. It seems that every time I sit out and just meditate, I discover something new or different. We just heard the call of the yellow-billed cuckoo. Going back in time we determined that we have at least seen or heard 53 different bird species in or near our yard. Our property is slightly less than half an acre (2000 square meter), and the back yard is half of that. But we try to leave it natural and do not use chemicals there. The rich birdlife is our reward. We want to keep it chemically free as much as possible.

All things considered, we are very happy with the fence and so are our dogs Japer and Radar. It is wrestling mania at least three times a day. They greatly enjoy being out, and so do we. Temperatures are going to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius for the rest of the world) this weekend and we’ll haven’t see how it goes. The yard is shady; maybe it will be bearable, but only time will tell; I hope I can still sit out there, meditate and enjoy our garden.

One of the two Buddha statues we have in our yard

Sassafras in the sun

No more ambition? (6/14/2024)

Ambition is a curious word to me. The Oxford Dictionary gives the following definition: “a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.” Now that I am retired, I have put ambition to the wayside and just want to experience and hopefully enjoy life, however much of it that I have remaining. I am still reasonably healthy, at least I have not been told something different.

I am not sure if I had a lot of ambition when I was working. Maybe not like others, but I did have a desire to achieve things. I always believed in down time, to relax and recharge. My brother, who I have not interacted with for at least 10 or so years had an amazing drive or ambition. He wanted to become a pilot, and that is what he eventually achieved. He tried to instill the same ambition in his two kids. I know that he looked down on me for what and who I am. So much so that every time we visited with him, I had the hear him tell us how successful and rich he was, compared to me. My brother told me that when I visited and they invite guest over, that they told the other guest to dress down, because I was only a jeans guy, had no class, and would feel out of place when they would come dressed the way they regularly do when socializing. While the saying tells us that the clothes make the man, comfort and my disdain of status permitted me to dress as comfortable as possible and while we may not be able to match them and their rich friends, we are pretty darn well of. Moreover, my international work taught me that we all put on our pants one leg at the time, and fuck status, I often had to communicate with the folks in the village and could not dress like a fashion model, that would hurt my credibility. While visits to my brother upset me at times, it was really upsetting to my wife. I was able to accept him who he pretended to be. But when you treat my wife like shit and every time we visited she left crying because of their treatment of us, I hope you can imagine what led the eventual split between me and my brother.

I may have had very few true ambitions during my entire life, unless enjoying life and learning from it can be called an ambition. If so, I am one of the best. When we were working and living in Yemen, our work days were from 7 am. to 2 pm. Lunch was a 2 and then I usually took a nap. We would then often work in the yard around our home for the rest of the afternoon, or I would work on my 1964 Land Rover. But, we probably had the best landscaped area of the three homes on the compound. My colleagues had drive and would go back to the now empty office or work at home on project related items after hours. They resented me for keeping to the official work hours. I needed to recharge and spend time with my wife who wasn't working.

No, I am not perfectly balanced even after all the self-care I just detailed. I have had my depressive moods, but I have come out of those. I sometimes wonder if minor depressions were seasonal or tied to other life stages (I have been unemployed a few times in the past).

I think that I have been happier these past few years than any other time of my life. It has been nature, forest bathing, biking, being outside in the yard, with my bonsai, or on the water where my spirits were lifted. I just needed to fully experience life around me. I can really just sit around and stare into infinity and not do anything but think. It is my form of meditating. Do I feel guilty doing that? Not one bit, well maybe after ten or so minutes it sometimes feels like I need to do something. But my motto now is: No more ambition but experience and love life to the fullest since I have no idea how much of it is left!

A photograph I took sitting in the backyard doing nothing.  Just enjoying nature and our almost completed fence (it is done now and a report will follow soon).  I often site in the Adirondack chairs and either just stare at the trees or work on my bonsai.  Very relaxing! 

Optimist to a fault (6/3/2024)

Soon we will be having a contractor put in a fence around our back yard. We signed the contract 6 weeks ago and they are finally coming to install it this week. We have lived here without a fence almost 24 years, so the delay is no big deal. We wanted the best fence that will be put in by the best contractor. The fence will be around 5 feet tall, and it is meant to give the dogs more room to play; allow us to train our dogs; and to serve as a deterrent to the deer in the woods behind our home. I understand that deer can easily jump over a 6-foot-high fence, in other words, I do not expect them to totally stay out of our yard, but I hope it will serve as a deterrent or discouragement for them to enter our garden. We fully expect our dog Radar to patrol the fence and bark his head off.

You can see a lot of deer behind our back yard; the other day I counted about a dozen walking behind our home around dusk. Kim, the lady next door, gave one of them a name (Daisy). She calls her and feeds her peanuts by hand. Last night I could approach a herd within 6 feet when they entered the back yard. In the past, I have complaint about the over-browsing or over-grazing in the woods and in our home landscapes. In addition, I have written about the impact this has on the ecology of the area and on the deer themselves. I realize that discouraging the deer from entering our yard makes their habitat even more limited, but that would only reduce their habitat by a quarter acre. We are stealing their habitat for our use and enjoyment, and they are not giving up, they are adapting to live among us.

Being the eternal optimist, I have started planning the hopefully deer free landscape that we could finally be able to establish back there. I am hoping for a few display stands for some of my more prized bonsai; a vegetable patch that may receive more direct sun; some fruit trees and bushes; and a pollinator garden. I have already planted tomatoes and they have started to flower. I have not seen one insect on these flowers and most plants need pollinators to maximize their yield, even tomatoes. We used to have a bee hive or two in our back yard, but colony collapse got them. The other day, Bob our neighbor asked about them. He had trouble with his cucumbers not want to fruit because of the lack of pollinators. This is why I planted a pollinator garden: to attract them.

At the moment I am trying to keep the deer away from it all untill we have that fence. I am fanatically spraying a deterrent called “Liquid Fence.” We have had some success with that and I really hope the deer will leave the plants alone for the next few weeks untill the fence is in. However, we will keep spraying the Liquid Fence realizing deer can jump. Subsequently, we need to start worrying about the dogs not tearing through the planted areas. They are wild and crazy players, so we will find out. As you can see, I am planning for it all to go right, but I am prepared to embrace failure.

Here you have it, an explanation for the title of this short post. Will my yard work be a success? Only time will tell. At least now I have more time to dedicate to landscaping since I am retired.

We constructed a "decorative" stick fence and put in a wood chip path between it and the old vegetable garden.  I have planted pollinators plants, an elderberry and strawberries.  There was already a spindly blue berry along the fence.  Hopefully it will all spill over into the path.  

On the side (in an north to south direction, I created hoops for a green tunnel.  Currently I have tomatoes, green beans, Achorn squash and snap peas (a failure) growing in them.  I planted some basil between the tomatoes and some marigolds. 

Looking back up to where the first two pictures were taken.

Save the environment (05/18/2024)

We were informed in one of the recent issues of the Washington Post that the sea level is rising faster than predicted all along the Atlantic and Mexican Gulf coasts. There are regions where the level has gone up 6 or more inches, or for my metric fans, 15 cm. Amazing to think that this occurred during the past 15 years, or less than a generation.

You probably know (from reading some of my past writings) that I have been very concerned about our global environment and argued that we are stealing from the future of our next of kin. In my posts of the past 11 years, I have 5 posts with the key word environment, 52 with environmental, 5 with environmental justice, 60 with global warming, and 39 with climate change. Some of the posts will have multiple keywords, and there will be some overlap. For example, I am sure that I will be using all these keywords for this post. I probably have missed using these keywords in some of my posts. But so be it. I have now published 545 or more posts in this blog, since 2013. This means that more than 10% of my posts somehow deal with environmental issues including global warning, or at least use one of these keywords associated with them.

Why do I harp so much on this issue? I am 70 years old, and I have no idea how much longer I will live. I will be long dead, by the time the shit hits the fan, so to speak. Our financial advisor makes me live till 94 in her calculations. May I only be so lucky or maybe unlucky. It would be fine with me if I could live till that ripe-old age and maintain some mobility and not suffer much mental decline. It would be nice to see any potential future grandchildren. Living till 94 would make the oldest grandchild a maximum of 23 when I die. Boy my daughter better hurry up. No pressure though. I am a strong believer that families should have no more than two children and admire those who stay childless by choice. One of the causes of the environmental decline is the overpopulation of this earth or exceedance of the earth’s carrying capacity as first proposed by Malthus. Malthus determined that the earth could only handle a certain number of people. If he was correct, it means that we need to reduce the overall birthrate on earth. I wrote about this <here>. However, on the other hand, I also read that we need more young folks if I want to keep enjoying my social security. We are in a pickle, aren’t we?

So, what small things am I doing to protect the environment?

1. 1. We bought a hybrid vehicle. Our car does not have the best gas mileage, but it makes us feel good. Our other car has better highway mileage, and we can now be selective about which vehicle we use for a certain trip. Yes, we have the van, which is a gas guzzler, but I wonder what was better for the environment, flying across the country for two or driving? If you read this and know the answer, leave me a comment.
2. We pick up our dog poop when we take them for a walk. This helps in keeping the nutrients out of the Chesapeake Bay, and hopefully helps the environment.
3. In addition, we tend not to fertilize our yard, except my bonsai trees. However, that should not cause a lot of runoff. Fertilizers I have includes some powdered Miracle Growth for my trees and bonemeal. We use compost, both stuff we produce ourselves and some storebought compost. Pesticides and herbicides are not available at our home. I even chase off any lawn maintenance or bug control salesperson from our property.
4. Our yard has a lot of trees, and we call people that cut the trees in their yard: tree murderers. I call it tree genocide.
5. In retirement, I am starting to grow our own food again, and I have just seeded a pollinator garden.
6. We are slowly weaning ourselves from the use of plastics. The most recent thing we did was to trash our plastic cutting boards and some of the plastic storage containers.
7. I am involved in the environmental committee of our UU church, or what is called the “Green Sanctuary” committee. We donate a lot to environmental groups as well.
8. Lastly, and I am sure I can think of more items, we try to eat organic and semi-healthy. We are not vegetarians, but we are aware of the food additives and the danger of highly processed foods. When I have time, I try to bake our own bread, which has much less unpronounceable additive in it than storebought bread.

No, we are not perfect, but at least we try to leave something for future generations to enjoy. Where can we improve what we currently do to preserve the earth for future generations? Let me know!

This cartoon shows what I am afraid of (so I stole it).  Conservatives seem to harp about deficit and money but appear not to give a damn about the environment!

Happy 2024 (1/8/2024)

The first week of 2024 is already past us and I noticed I haven’t updated my blog in a month or so. I guess writing every other day during the month of September and now trying to develop a personal photo book on our travel (self-published and heavily critiqued by my wife) has exhausted my writing skills. However, I do owe you an update. Moreover, I tend to write a review of the past year and I have not done that yet. It is crazy how fast time goes.

It has been an eventful year, ranging from the death of my father-in-law in February, to our purchase of the camping van in April, to our retirement on June 1, our trip to the west coast in September, after all the foundation work in August. This was capped off by my solo-trip and camping in the Kannapolis area. Per my previous post, I visited the area to attend a bonsai show. The rest of the year was more or less on cruise control.

Getting older is interesting. I am increasingly becoming aware of my mortality. I mentioned before that I think that getting old sucks. The other day my wife and I could not figure out why the stove wasn’t working. We bought an induction stove and the frying pan we have regularly used on that stove wasn’t working any longer. After approximately 10 minutes of trying and diagnosing, I suddenly noticed that we were trying to turn on the wrong burner, which was why the stove was giving us an error message. We are getting dense! That entire day we joked with each other about our impending senility. Still, it bugged me.

It has been a decent year for us. Retirement is good. While it is a sign of getting older, it beats the alternative. I was made to feel really good during my “Jan’s big goodbye tour,” and that will always stay with me. The cards, hugs, compliments and even a lunch date with the staff of Virginia Beach all made me feel special and good. It seems that I did make an impact during my career. I hope that I can consider that my legacy; well together with maybe this blog (this blog turned 10 years old this past June) and what we can do for my daughter and the environment. Come to think of it, I need to look at my top 10 posts list and see how life has changed over the ten years. The top 10 list is posted on each page of my blog in a column on the right.

The number one cliché of retirement is that you will be busier than when you were employed. Darn it, they are correct, although we have finally settled into a routine. We go to bed around 11 to 11:30 and wake up between 7:30 and 8. It seems that after reading the newspaper, breakfast and walking the dogs we usually start our day around 11:30. At least our Fitbit shows that I have an average of 12,000 steps each day. In other words, we are no slouches; we are very physically active. September was the month with the fewest steps. That was because we sat in the van and drove back and forth across this great country.

My bonsai (my true hobby) survived my absence. I have a major spring replanting ahead of me, but we will cross that bridge when we get there. I have been doing some pruning and wiring these past few months in anticipation of this spring task. Only one tree died this year, and that was before we left. Plants looked healthy throughout the year. Based on some of the stuff I saw on Mirai (a learning platform I follow) I treated my plants with diatomaceous dust in spring, I fertilized too little perhaps, but treated all plants with bone meal right before we left on our trip in August. Mirai is finding that silica and calcium are two under-rated or under-used elements. Diatomaceous dust contains silica and also functions as an insecticide. Bone meal provides calcium. The plants reacted beautifully to the two treatments.

To conclude, I am looking forward to 2024 and really hope to continue my writing and thinking. I hope you all have a great, productive year.

My evergreen bonsais enjoying sunny, relatively warm weather (50 degrees). 

Getting old sucks! (12/7/2023)

Getting old sucks! It really does! The past weeks have been menacing, period. Here I thought that retirement was easy street but forget it. I feel more stressed now than when I was working. Let me explain.

For one, multitasking is getting more difficult to do. Then there is making decisions, it seems that all the decisions I have made lately are rash decisions that come back to bite me in the behind; in other words, I seem to make the wrong ones or maybe costly ones. I feel more stressed out, compared to when I was working, and of late more anxious. Having read that anxiety may be an early warning sign of a pending heart attack does not help., it heightens the anxious feeling. Having joints that hurt more and more is another of my symptoms of getting old. Finally, there are the peeing issues at night when my full bladder wakes me up or first thing in the morning. It seems that I need to take the dogs for a walk (after coffee, the newspaper and breakfast) before the dam breaks. I can come up with a few more reasons why getting old sucks, we’ll find out by the end of this post (if I don’t croak from that heart attack first).

The details please! Except for the urinating issue, I have been detailed enough on that subject in the previous paragraph.

What happened in the past few weeks? It is mostly a combination of things. The news on things like the war in Israel; the state of our climate; the rating that our current president is getting even though he and his government are doing good work; we can go on. Reading the obituaries of famous people like Sandra Day O’Connor, Mel Brooks, or even Kissinger doesn’t help. These all contribute to my state-of-mind. Guess I am feeling my mortality. On top of that everything seems to go wrong in our home.

I mentioned that we had work done on our crawl space. We needed to get this done after we discovered that our toilet leaked all over our floor when we flushed. We had known that this would most likely happen since the builders of our home had made a huge structural mistake (in 1970). As part of this work, we had the entire powder room taken out and decided that we were going to put it back together by ourselves. This was going to be our first item of business when we returned from our trip in October. Deciding what materials to use and how to install everything took us some time, but I decided to work on it maybe an hour or two each day. Then we were able to borrow a wood splitter from friends to finally split the huge amount of wood that had been in our back yard since March. In other words, another week or so of no bathroom work. I think there is a saying about hell being paved over with good intentions.

In the meantime, we decided to throw a dinner party for friends and finally to make good on an item we sold at our church auction, a pizza dinner for four. We need to heat our pizza stone to 500 degrees (F) to successfully bake pizza in our stove. Lo and behold, here we notice that the glass in the interior of our stove had burst. Quick order a new glass so that this (YouTube) do-it-your-self guy can replace it. Once I got what I thought was the correct glass, we had problems. First the door did not come off the way YouTube told me it should. I found a work around, but then the glass did not fit, and we cannot find a replacement. Time to buy a new stove and postpone the party until the stove was delivered.

We decided that we wanted an induction stove to replace our gas stove. We had read that gas stoves fume off gases that are bad for the lungs, especially lungs of asthmatics. Well Donna is asthmatic and after some research we decided to check out LG. We found a nice one on sale at Lowes, or so we thought. After some good research we went for it; however, these rookie non-gas/glass top cooks bought an electric stove instead of an induction stove. We found that out after the installers had put it in and we briefly turned it on. We asked the installers to wait for us to figure it out, but they took off with our old stove, never to be seen again. Here we had a new stove we did not want. The weekend before we had bought some new steel pots and gave away some of our favorite aluminum pots and pans; aluminum does not work on induction. We spent almost the entire rest of the day wanting to return our new stove and looking for a replacement. Naturally we had already canceled the pizza dinner. We were now envisioning having to postpone the new date that we had agreed on since we expected to have to wait for the next stove.

It gets worse and worse, don’t worry. For a new stove to fit, I had to widen the opening in the countertop by maybe a half inch. I bought a diamond blade for my circular saw and went to work. I installed a guide for my saw, but halfway through it slipped and now my cut wasn’t even. Panic and disgust not only from me but also from the wife (“look what you have done to the resale value of our home” … honestly, I thought we were going to live here for at least another 10 years and by then the new owners would want a new countertop). We can and will fix that with spacers in between the top and the new stove. However, another week of powder room fix up lost. We finally received our induction stove, and we are happy for now.

For months I had planned a trip to the Winter Silhouette (bonsai) Show in Kannapolis, NC. Should I stay or should I go? I had booked a campsite in the Salisbury area. By Friday noon I got the assurance that it was OK for me to go on my solo trip even though Lowes was picking up the stove that we did not use as a return. I had a great time at the show on Saturday and around 5 pm I went to look for my spot.

Next issue. The camping was closed, gated up and what looked like, no way to get in. I had told them in my reservation that I would be late, especially since the website said that the office would close at 5. What to do, but to find a motel room. Finally, after checking in and dinner during a call with my wife she encouraged me to check my voice mail (about the stove removal). I had turned my phone off during the show. Well, there was also a message from the camping giving me the secret number to one of the padlocks on the gate (the gold one). Damn or better fuck, here I wasted another chunk of money on something I did not have to. I had my eyes on a bonsai that was for sale at the show, but it cost as much as my room and that Thai dinner I had (I was planning to make macaroni and cheese from a pack that night).

I went camping the next night and it was nice and relaxing. It brought down the anxiety level, but I just cannot look back at these days wanting to complain about old age. I know this is a long post, but as my wife tells me, I need to take time to relax and take it the way it comes (and express myself … sorry Madona).

Our busted stove

Enlarging the slide-in opening

Relaxed after a night of camping, ready to take on the world again

Best if show bonsai (American hornbeam)

Another favorite, a bald cypress

Change of seasons but no changes in the world (11/3/2023)

It has been a depressing week for a person with liberal leanings like me. We witnessed a brutal fight in the Middle East, where it seems Israel has no regard for humanity; we had a mass shooting in Maine; the monster hurricane that hit Acapulco; reports in the Post on the horrible climatic situation in Hodeida in Yemen; and a Republican speaker of the house who is probably more dangerous than Jim Jordan. But let’s start at the beginning. Yes, what Hamas did was unconscionable. However, starting a full-fledged war and killing so many more people than what Hamas did, is not sitting well with me, it is unconscionable as well. I have always considered myself a pacifist, although this stance of mine has weekend substantially after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. I am trying to follow that fighting and I am secretly rejoicing when Ukrainian forced manage to claim victory or that they managed to kill a substantial number of Russian soldiers. This softening around my pacifist edges in itself is somewhat depressing to me, where are my convictions, morals, ethics and empathy that I had in younger years? It seems that I have no dog in this fight in Gaza. I morn the deaths on both sides. However, neither in Ukraine, interesting, isn’t it?

If you are a regular reader, you all know my stance on gun control, or tighter management of weapons. I think I have written a post about every mass killing that occurred these past 10 years, and I will continue doing so. These assault type weapons need to be outlawed and shipped to Ukraine to fight the damn Russians. Maybe we need to ship the owners of these assault weapons as well; they seem to be itching for a good fight, otherwise why buy one of these weapons.

Concerning the climate, the news was not very favorable. Climate change really seems to have hit home, and I wonder if we reached a point of no-return. Something must be seriously awry, for a tropical storm to form and blow up into the strongest Category 5 hurricane ever to hit Mexico. Couple that to reports that Hodeida in Yemen will soon become unlivable for long stretches of the year, shows that we are reaching the tip of the iceberg (figuratively or climatologically speaking). In full disclosure, I used to live in Yemen and spent quite some time on the coastal plains, including Hodeida. Regular readers know that my posts on climate change go back many years and it is not about Yemen or elsewhere, but our future generations.

Lastly the new speaker of the house, the third in-line to the crown (or is it called the presidency). This dude is dangerous. He seems to be an authentic bible thumper, a Christian Nationalist, who is definitely against the rights of women to choose what happens to their own body. Moreover, he was the leader in congress trying to nullify the election and he still does not recognize Joe Biden as president. This guy invokes God in everything he does but does not care about the little guy. He is smooth and absolutely dangerous.

In my eyes, all these items are eerily connected. We can all bring them back to the conservative trend or movement in this country. The Maga Speaker does not believe in global warming; he and the republicans are against all form of gun control (while being against birth control, an interesting contradiction in itself); of course, they are anti-Muslimism; you get the idea.

So now you are updated about my state-of-mind. What do I do about it, drink myself to oblivion? The problem there lies in that this solution is dangerous to my health and personal relations at home. Well, this blog is one of my outlets; I hope to inform and educate you, my readers; I even may be able to entertain or anger one or two. This past week I split a huge amount of wood to be used in our woodburning stove this coming and next winter. Physical exercise is good for the mind, soul and body. It was warm, high 70s or 25 to 28 degrees centigrade for the rest of the world. I did not get much time for my bonsai, but that changed when the weather folks told us that we were getting very cold temperatures. I needed to bring my tropicals inside or into the greenhouse. This occupied almost an entire day. Somehow the power cord that supplies electricity to the greenhouse had a short in it and I needed to replace it so that I could run a heater. All is good, the plants are safely tucked away and ready for the cold temperatures of the next few months.

What else do I do now we are not traveling and exploring? I try to spend as much time as possible in the outdoors. Spending time in nature, forest bathing, hiking gives me the solace I need. We try to get out and walk in the woods behind our home and in the area. Believe it or not, but with every step I take out there the beauty of nature reveals itself, again and again. Beauty in a fragile and threatened world.

The seasons are changing, and it was time for a 5+mile hike in our area. 

They are all tucked in and safe.

Nomads, Long Beach 1, CA (9/22/2023)

This post I will name Long Beach, partially for obvious reasons, although it seems we have explored the entire Los Angeles basin. However, Long Beach is the home base where all our trips originated and returned to. Our daughter and her spouse live in Long Beach and that was the ultimate destination of our trip. Our girl, they always remain your girl, no matter how old they are, was going to be ordained as a Unitarian Universalist Minister and we needed to witness that.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon after a fun drive over the L.A. freeway system. It wasn’t that bad; I had a great navigator sitting next to me in the captain’s chair (“there will be a slowdown in a half mile”, get ready”; “do you see those brake lights?”). Parking in front of her apartment building was something else; it is basically a free-for-all, but we got a spot that we could squeeze the van in. We were advised to empty all the valuables, because of the homeless living down the street; my daughter already had their car window broken for what appeared to be an empty grocery bag. Some time after that we put shades and blankets in front of the windows to make sure the van appeared occupied, and no one could look in. This seemed excessive at first, but later in the evening while walking the dogs we observed a gathering of homeless folks and saw at least two vans that someone obviously lived in (a.k.a. boondocking). The doors to those vans were open and there was mosquito netting hung in the door openings, a sure sign of active living.

During our entire stay in the area, we were made very aware of the homeless crisis in this area. It is amazing. A couple of days later we visited a bonsai shop, and the owner (a 50-year-old Asian lady) started to blame the welfare state of California. We hesitated but did not tell her that Republican states are partially to blame for all this, by bussing them in.

A good friend of my daughter and fellow minister came in from Alabama the following day. She was going to sleep at my daughter’s place as well, and we needed to decide how to organize the sleeping of five persons and three dogs in a small townhouse. At night we had a small gathering at a microbrewery nearby and all was well. The first days we did not do too much, we had a ceremony to prepare for. Our daughter and spouse took good care of us, and we were acquainted with the area’s (Asian) donut shops (15 or so between home and her work), the taco stands (too numerous to count), and the ethnic food in the area, most notably Cambodian and Indonesian. The fermented fish dish at the Cambodian restaurant was interesting and delicious, but it or the uncooked vegetables gave me terrible gas. It seems that nobody cooks at home, and everyone eats out all the time.

Our daughter’s church where the ceremony took place is absolutely gorgeous and is in a beautiful location. We got there early which allowed us to scout out the place and take the nature trail, which is owned and maintained by the church, at the edge of the canyon that looks towards the Pacific Ocean. The ceremony was great, and we now have a reverend for a daughter. Afterwards there was a social gathering with a taco dinner, beer, wine and cake. We got to meet more colleagues, and congregants that we can remember. Later on talking with our daughter we heard the stories on all the folks we could remember talking to.

Sunday was a trip to downtown L.A. We visited Little Tokyo for lunch; this place is absolutely worth visiting and went for a hike up hill to the observatory. However, what goes up must come down and so did we. While the downhill was relatively easy, in hindsight I injured my knee; two days later it ballooned and was painful.

We visited the Huntington dog-beach on Monday (see the photograph below) and Tuesday was our bonsai and Japanese garden day.

I guess I’ll write more about our Long Beach visit (Wednesday, Thursday and maybe some other observations) in my next post.

We had to go wool shopping after the aquarium

One aquarium picture

The Japanese garden

Jasper did not like the waves at Huntington Beach

The view from the conservatory

Hiking to the observatory

One picture from the ceremony

Get together at the brewery 

Nomadic life will continue (8/21/2023)

It has been a few weeks since I checked in here on my blog, but so be it. I can notice that my readership has declined somewhat during these past two months, but maybe I can atribute that to the vacation that many are having, my retirement, and all the things going on in my life. For one we had some major structural work done in our home. This cost gobs of money, but we justified it by the fact that we are healthy, plan to live here for at least another 10 to 15 years, and it would increase the value of our home. It may in the long run even save us money.

But this is not what I want to write about. I am writing to forewarn you, my dear readers, that the nomad will be resuming his nomadic lifestyle during the month of September. We are planning a trip across the country to attend to family festivities in California. Yes, we will be doing this with our camper van, the Ford Transit, that we recently purchased from friends. I already wrote about some dress rehearsal camping trips here and here.

The trip is estimated to take two weeks to travel from the east to the west coast. After the festivities we will need to return home and we have no idea yet how long we will be taking to accomplish that or the route. Naturally, I will try to write about our trip (both going and returning); maybe not a daily report, but I hope to write a regular dispatch from the road. I really hope to give you all an idea of what we are experiencing and how I am feeling. It will include reviews of the places (camping areas) we stay; places we visit; walks and hikes we do; restaurants we eat at; maybe some microbreweries or wineries; or even some knitting shops.

Are we preparing? Yes, we are! On our way out west we are planning to roughly follow the Lewis and Clark trail, at least to the Montana-Idaho border, or the source of the Missouri river before turning south towards the Los Angeles area. I have been reading various books including the book by Stephen E. Ambrose entitled “Undaunted Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West,” Julie Fanselow’s “Traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail,” and Alain de Botton’s “The Art of Travel.” As you can see, I always have a number of books open, but that’s me. I have been booking camp sites and figuring out the best routes to drive. We’ll try to stay away from the interstate highways once we reach St. Louis, the “official” start of the trail.

We have given ourselves 14 days to get across; however, there are a lot of unknowns. Of course there is hurricane season. We really wondered why the festivities were planned at the height of this time of year. Twenty years ago, our area was hit by hurricane Isabel on September 18, and our party is on September 16 in LA. Our area sustained major damage as a result of Isabel’s passing; we lost electricity for 13 days. Hurricanes have been in the back of our mind ever since during the month of September and leaving home that month is somewhat scary. In addition, leaving my bonsai trees for more than a few days worries me somewhat, although I have an automated watering system and my neighbor Bob promised he would keep an eye on them.

A final item is of course not knowing what to expect in the northern states. This includes the weather and animals like bears. Will it be cold in Montana, will we be bugged by grizzlies? Yes, I already loaded a space heater, which will only work when we have shore power, and I bought bear spray. Reading accounts about van-life in Reddit, I learn that van floors are notoriously cold and poor Radar (our dog) who sleeps on the floor was already shivering when the outside temperatures dipped below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But then today it is 102 degrees in North and South Dakota.

All this thinking and anticipation reminds me a little of what I read in The Art of Travel about that subject. Botton writes about de Esseintes, a character in J.K. Huysman’s 1884 novel A Rebours who was a great armchair traveler full of anticipation but was bitterly disappointed when reaching his destination and almost immediately returned home without completing his planned visits. In other words, we will see how this will all pan out. I am sure that there will be days when we will be disappointed, and days when we will be ecstatic; tired days and days that we want to keep going. After our 6 days of camping in July we felt great and were ready for more. So hopefully this will be fine too. Stay tuned.

The rear of the van has been decorated.  If you are a reader on the trail we are following and you see these decals, come and say hello.

Bonsai lessons (8/7/2023)

I had the pleasure the other day to have a grandmother and her grandson over to look at my bonsai trees. The grandmother is a friend from the yacht club, and she had heard that I grow bonsai. Her teenage grandson had tried to grow a bonsai from seed; however, it never germinated. We had already made two appointments, but they never panned out, and this time they were 30 minutes early.

It was fun to be back somewhat in the teaching mode. We started out looking at my 35-year-old Siberian elm, this is one of my favorite trees and it is in quarantine. The quarantine is not because of disease or something like that, but somehow when it is on the tables where I keep my trees, the Japanese beetles find it and it seems that only hit my three Siberian elms. I have a stand of canna lilies nearby and they are a favorite of these ferocious insects in my yard. But somehow when I move them away from my tables and the lilies, these elms are more or less safe from these bugs.

Walking around the tables and showing them my little trees was a lot of fun. The kid was very inquisitive, and grandma could not get him away from the place. He seemed particularly impressed by the tree (cherry) which I had to go at with a saw-saw or hacksaw. The root was simply too big. Grandma was impressed with my American hollies; she hates those prickly leaves. Fun was talking about my citrus trees that I grew from seed. As I told them anything is possible, with a little knowledge.

We talked about styles; how to miniaturize the leaves; root pruning; best time of year to work on them; pots; and of course, soils and fertilizer. I have written about this before, but it seems that everybody wants to buy a bonsai tree or has bought one once in their life. I think at least 95% of them invariably die within the first few months.

Most of this is soil related, the trees at the big box stores usually come in crappy soil in pots that don’t drain very well. The result is root rot when the temperatures rise in the pots, and they do not drain. Plants die or at least get weak. What to do? Repot? If you do that, you kill the poor guy. No, we just need to make sure we do not over or under water too much and we might want to protect the container from overheating. Additional issues seen is the lack of light. Folks put their first bonsai inside on the coffee table. However, it was an outdoors tree that likes full sunlight. Death is imminent. Finally, folks may start pruning or shaping to quickly and weaken the tree.

We talked for over an hour and a half. It was fun talking about my trees and what I do with them, my plans and more. It was just plain fun interacting with someone who was interested in my hobby and sharing these things with him. It made me feel good for the rest of the day.

The lower trunk of my Siberian elm.  It is approximately 35 years old and was developed from seed.  In the soils post that I have link to above, there is another picture of it.  This tree has gone all over the country with me and has been ignored for a while.  It is finally on a decent trajectory.

This is the cherry that I got earlier this year.  It was a thick stick in a pot with a horrible root.  I used the hack saw to cut 2/3rds of it and planted in an Anderson flat.  It seems to be doing well.  I have no idea what styling decisions I will make in the near future but will probably have to cut it shorter.

One of my hollies.  Maybe not really visible.  It has been in a pot ffor at least 7 years, I dug it up in my yard.

The citrus plants grown from seed.  This is their second summer, and they are enjoying themselves.  I have a few oranges and lemons, all grown from seeds.