More detailed account of our Sept. 2025 trip - Part4 (11/3/2025)

So now it was time to turn the front of the vehicle towards the south and southeast. That morning, we headed to the so anticipated Mackinac bridge. This is a 4.9 mile (8 km) long bridge that is 200 feet (61 m) above the water. It has four lanes (two each way) with the center lanes over a metal grid; in other words, when you look down you can see the water. This bridge seems to unnerve enough people that you can rent a professional driver to shuttle you across. Not for us, it actually was a fun easy drive across in our Transit on our way to Traverse City.

Little did we expect that the drive through the northern part of Michigan would be so beautiful. We fell in love with Charlevoix (another French name) and Traverse City. The next day, we stopped over at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Park on our way further south. Sleeping Bear Dunes is another place we need to spend more time at during a subsequent visit. It is absolutely all that it is made out to be. That afternoon, after a nice hike through the dunes, we drove south to Weidman via Pontiac. But first lunch and coffee in the parking lot at the park. It is nice to be able to do that in the van. Our Anker Solix (no I am not sponsored by them) has been an invaluable during this trip; we had no problem brewing our own coffee while just sitting in a parking lot.

The KOA in Weidman was at least better than the one we visited on our way up; the owners had really made an effort, but our site selection was somewhat dismal. Our neighbor, a welding inspector from Texas, had been living there for a couple of months. When he returned from work, he sat outside a spoke very loudly over the phone with his brother who had his birthday. We learned more about that family than we wanted to know. We now learned that inexpensive sites come with their own challenges. But then the cheap off-grid $10 and $20 sites are sometimes much better.

We had missed Holland, Michigan, so this Dutchman had to go there. We first stopped in Muskegon at the Hackley and Hume Historic Site and had a nice walk along the harbor. The father of a dear friend of ours grew up in the Hackley and Hume house in the 1930s. The windmill and the New Holland Brewing were on our schedule for that late afternoon and evening. Holland reminded me a little of what I left in the Netherlands. For example the Dutch Reformed Church (de Gereformeerde kerk or Zwarte Kousen Kerk = Black Stockings Church), there were four on one block in the beautiful center of town. Shops in parts of the town were closed on Sundays, another relic from old Europe. The architecture downtown was charming.

The next day we went further south, with the Hocking Hills in Ohio on our radar. We left the interstate highway after a beautiful hike in Hudsonville and headed south to Bowling Green, Ohio. A little piece of highway near Kalamazoo and then we drove relatively narrow farm roads to our motel. While driving, we wondered how many people would enjoy the narrow rural farm roads and observe farm life, like we did. It was absolutely delightful; corn and soybeans were yellowing which cast a wonderful fall vibe to our drive. The next day down to the Hocking Hills we tried to do the same thing but eventually could not avoid the hustle and bustle of the highways around Columbus, Ohio. We did stop for a very brief walk at Stepping Stones Park in Upper Sandusky; another place where after exterminating all the native Americans we memorialize them; at least that was our feelings after visiting the place.

Hocking Hills is a must-visit place. It was crowded, but that is not surprising since it was a nice warm Sunday afternoon. We had a great hike in the canyon. The most expensive space at the KOA in the area gave us a concrete pad where we finally could get rid of some of the sand we had picked up in Michigan. We have an outdoor rug that we put out, and oh boy, did it accumulate a lot of sand during our beach camping nights

This brings us back to the post about September’s trip that I started out with; Douthat State Park. I hope that I did not bore anyone to death with these travelogs. Let me know. I have tried to add a few of my observations and thoughts in this four/five-part series and tried to stay away from a travelog that goes like: we went here to here and then here; although that is unavoidable. I promise, my next posts will probably again be more political, philosophical and educational. Moreover, one of these days I will write about my impressions of America after four extended trips through this amazing country. But I encourage all of you to travel, see your country and learn from the folks who’s lives you touch in your daily lives and during the trips you take.

Fall in Central Ohio

Hiking in the Hockin Hills, OH

The Hackley Hume Historic site

Camping in Weidman, MI

Autumns of the past, present and future (10/27/2022)

I somehow enjoy autumn, fall or whatever you call it. I prefer the British word autumn over the harsher word fall that they use is this country. I understand a lot the leaves must fall, and that juxtaposition is not lost on me; but still, the word autumn sounds so nice.

As a kid I never experienced anything like autumn, or at least I don’t remember it, growing up in the tropics. I know that as a two-year-old I must have spent a change of seasons in Antwerp, Belgium, where we lived for a year. I remember seeing pictures of me in the snow, but I do know that we were back in the tropics before fall arrived the next year because my brother was born in early December. You were not allowed to fly when heavily pregnant back then (air pressure changes would make the baby pop out in the 1950s), and from what I know, we arrived back on our tropical island around August or September. Actually, my brother was born on December 5th which is Sinter Klaas (Saint Nicolas’ birthday) for us Dutch folks and that was a bitter disappointment to me. I had asked the good old wise guy for a sister, and he had delivered a brother to the hospital, or at least that was what my father told me. That is still the first memory I have; I was three and a half years old.

Our vacations, a few months back to the Netherlands every four years, never coincided with autumn; I think. Although I do remember briefly going to first grade in Terbregge, a suburb of Rotterdam, during our first vacation. This must have been in September, so I guess, theoretically it was fall in Holland. My luck, I came down with mononucleosis or kissing disease, a six-year-old kissing? Obviously, it was a vacation to forget! Moreover, I remember running home after school, to my grandmother’s home, where we were staying that vacation, and pooping in my pants; I had to go so badly. Yup, forget that vacation.

After that though, I do not remember any autumn visits to the Netherlands until I moved there after my 16th birthday. I lived with my aunt and four cousins that first autumn and I remember that she rented a cabin on or near the Veluwe in the center of the Netherlands. De Veluwe is a natural area that has a sandier soil and consist of woods and heather. Part of it is a National Park or a nature preserve. I remember walking through the woods often alone, (my cousins were not outdoorsy) during that week looking over fields of blooming heather. It was foggy at times and for the first time I heard the call of the coocoo. It was absolutely magical and amazing for a lonely, 16-year-old introvert who had just arrived from the tropics where it was always summer and was now temporarily living with five females (women and girls).

Autumn, a time of death, recycling, eventual rebirth, Halloween, the rutting (breeding) of deer, bucks will shed their horns (a.k.a. racks) to build back larger and better, even our elections, you get the idea (hopefully not the death of democracy as we know it). Farmers are harvesting, the grapes are coming into the wineries (ah, Beaujolai), the first beers are being brewed from the fresh grains (what I knew as Bock Bier in Holland, although it was usually released after the New Year). It is a mystical time and a time of hope, rebirth around the corner.

Walking through the woods behind our home I notice that the colors are more intense, partially because of the lower sun angle, and partially because of the changing leave colors. I don’t think we have seen the sun in three or four days now. It has been a bit dreary, but that makes it even more fall-like with temperatures in the low 60s (around 15 degrees C). In my days in the Netherlands this was the time for foggy days.

The seasons, the diurnal fluxes (day and night) and even the differences in day length between summer and winter are fascinating to me. This is what triggers autumn. Some of these triggers will probably never change, while seasons may change over or maybe even within generations, partially as a result of climate change. Sitting here writing this, I come to remember my college plant physiology courses where I learned about the mechanism of day length or better night length on hormones and plant response (read leaf color and plant senescence/dormancy for the winter). For example, maples start changing color when the days and nights have the same length (September 21), while oaks generally do it around the first frost.

But enough science speak. It just made me wonder how organisms or plants would or are adapting on other planets in other solar systems where there is a different gravity, season length, day or night length, year length, light intensity, wavelength of the light being emitted by their sun or suns, composition of their atmosphere, and soil types. I expect that those organisms have evolved there over a long time and should be adapted. They should probably thrive. In our case, because of human manipulation of our environment, the changes might be going too fast for some of the organisms to adapt, which may lead to mass extinction. Punctuated evolution anyone? Who knows?

Read up on that, I might write about that one of these days a bit more. Right now, I am just enjoying autumn; however, you know me, my mind cannot help wandering and wondering a bit. It is autumn, time for death and rebirth!

Nothing better than an early morning autumn walk in the woods with the dogs.  As most of you know, this is my passion, experiencing the sights, sounds and smell of the woods behind our home.

This picture was taken mid-afternoon, during a lunch walk.  I just enjoyed how the two trunks (the young and the old) mirrored each other.  As a bonsai guy, this is what we are after when we try to create movement in our trunks, or trees in general.  As I mentioned I am always, studying and wondering.  I also let my mind wander. 

Greenhouse Construction (10/21/2022)

As promised, time to report on my greenhouse construction effort. Sorry, this is not going to be my best prose, but more a chronology of my construction effort. I ordered the 6x8 feet kit about a month and a half ago through Amazon from Veikous. I finally decided that most of the hurricane season was over and that we had a good chance that we might get spared this year. It really felt like it should be our time, after 19 years. As they say, there is still hope. Please not.

I had ordered a greenhouse kit before; it was a closeout deal from Walmart they said on an add on Facebook; sixty dollars. I paid using PayPal in June, and it never arrived. I still need to see how I can get my money back (update I just did get my $59.99 back).

A few weeks ago, I started putting the bottom frame together in order to figure out what the footprint of the contraption was, and where we wanted it. The next point was leveling it and making sure it was somewhat anchored. Previous videos and reports recommended not placing it on pressure treated beams (something about galvanic action); moreover, the aluminum beams are completely closed and there is no way of attaching them to the beams. I eventually decided on Camo blocks. While this might look strange; however, I think in hindsight it was a good decision; I was able to feed an extension cord through these footers for the heater.

Once located and leveled, I killed all the weeds growing in the footprint with my flamethrower. I lined the inside with weed blocker and filled it with approximately 2 inches of crush and run, basically waste material from the granite gravel industry. Then it rained. This is probably the reason why the humidity in the greenhouse at night is 99%.

Finally, two and a half weeks ago, my friend Mustafa (aka Kadri) and I got together to put the greenhouse together. The day before I had put all the parts out and sorted them. On the day I started at 9:30, my bud arrived around 11 and we were done around 5 that evening. The only thing that remained were the gutters and the anchoring cables. Once that was done, I could put in a table and move the plants in.

Tables or table was the question, and then what material? I decided to construct them from cinder blocks. For one it was cheaper (I found them on Facebook Marketplace for $1), and I was hoping they would absorb and retain heat. It took me two trips with my car and trailer to get the blocks and I spend the next day putting it together. I decided on only one table on one side and leave the other side open for taller plants. Once I had the table set up, I covered the ground with pea gravel to make it look more presentable. I did this after I covered the central area with tiles to make access easier. I bought a remote recording min-max thermometer, so I could see what the temperature was in the greenhouse. This was important to me because I want to house my tropical bonsai in it. The greenhouse without plants, with the bench was consistently 3 degrees warmer at night, although it got up to 90 degrees during the day. But please note that the facility gets approximately 3 hours full sun, that is it. Now with plants the temperature differential is approximately 4 to 6 degrees by sunrise (a full night of cooling down). This is good, since the temperatures have already dropped to 36 degrees Fahrenheit or 2.2 degrees C.

I spent the next two days moving plants in and taking the gutters off to be able to caulk the seams under the gutters with silicone caulk. Herein comes one complaint about the greenhouse kit. The groves to slide the panels in as very shallow and could pop out fairly easy with a strong wind. Silicone caulk does a great job; however, nowhere in the instructions do they call for it or recommend it. Except online they mention on the order form that anchors and silicone caulk are not included (hint, hint?). You get the idea; I had figured out the anchors already and read about the silicone as well. It rained after the construction was completed and rainwater got in the honeycomb structure of the panels. This could have been avoided if I had sealed it with silicone if I had known about it. I really hope this will not become an issue when we get frost. One final minor issue was that the instructions for the window installation were incorrect, but that was easily detected and solved.

Overall, I am happy with the greenhouse. It looks good and hopefully it will serve its purpose. Now I need to redesign what we are calling our “Bonsai Zone.” I know, this is not very original. One of my favorite bonsai YouTube gurus Nigel Saunders calls his garden and show “the Bonsai Zone” and since I watch his show almost daily and my wife listens to it, she coined my small area the Bonsai Zone as well, and it stuck. Oh well, the Virginia Bonsai Zone.

Below are some pictures of the construction process and the result. I will keep you updated on the progress of the greenhouse, my plants and the redesign of the “Zone.”

P.S. I want to thank Nigel and Connor for some advise prior to the construction of my greenhouse.  Thanks guys for the encouragement and advise.

Fall is in the air (10/9/2022)

Fall is in the air here in Yorktown. The weather has been unseasonably cold. The past two days we have recorded the coldest high temperatures ever (54 degrees Fahrenheit or 12 degrees Celsius). We first had the affect from hurricane Ian and then it seems Ian may have combined with a cold front and turned into a Nor’easter to give us two days of cold drizzly weather.

This has me somewhat worried about my tropical plants on the benches outside. So much so that I pulled my Fukien Tea inside for the past few days. It is my understanding at least that they do not do well in temperatures below 60 degrees. I really need to finish constructing the greenhouse. I completed that this weekend, except for benches and some finishing touches. More about that in my next post.

In the meantime, what else is there to do but somehow enjoy this cold weather and spend time outside in the woods behind our home. It is cold enough to really knock down the tick, mosquito and in particular the chigger population. If you are not from the southeastern and the lower mid-western U.S.A., you might be unfamiliar with chigger, but they are almost microscopic mites (spiders) that crawls up your legs and loves to lay eggs in your skin in areas where the skin is restricted by clothing. This includes the elastic bands of underwear, socks and alike. Bites where the eggs are deposited itch for days if not weeks. Chiggers seem to go dormant when the night-time temperatures go under 55 or even 60. This is usually by mid to late October in our area, so we go to go out in the woods and forest bathe at least two weeks earlier than other years. I expect they will be gone till next summer. Of course, we could spray ourselves with all kinds of insect repellents, but honestly, I try to stay away from that stuff if I can help it.

I find it nice to reacquaint myself with the woods I have avoided since spring. I have missed it. The ephemeral ponds are dry now; we had an extremely dry year, and they are waiting for a good rain to raise the groundwater level and fill up. At least I had a chance to walk into the middle of a dry pond to admire a resurrection fern which would be unreachable when the pond is full. Tree leaves haven’t started turning yet so everything looks green. We had a little rain, and a few mushrooms are raising their heads and so are a few Indian pipes. Indian pipes are parasitic, like mistletoes but on the roots of trees. So much fun exploring again. For the rest little has changed. It is just good to be out there to pick up the sounds and smells of the woods.

Fall is in the air, and it is nice to be able to enjoy it again.

Resurrection fern growing on an oak tree (most likely an overcup oak) in one of the ponds behind our home.  This fern is known to be an epiphyte or a plant that grows on another plant. 

Another epiphyte, Indian pipe or better a parasite.  This one has no chlorophyl and lives on the roots of trees.

Mushrooms (11/04/2021)

In our area autumn is a great time to walk in the woods and hunt for mushrooms. No, I don’t hunt for edible ones, my wife is way to skittish and we would meet an agonizing end to our lives munching on a poisonous fungal cap of some kind. However, this past week I have been laying on my stomach in the woods examining them and taking pictures.

Here I am laying on the ground in the woods examining a cluster of oyster mushrooms.  These are edible; although since these are mature (as big as my head), they are tough!

My view from below, the oyster mushroom.

I was always impressed by mushrooms; I took a short course in mushroom growing in 1976 and got a certificate in it (official “mushroom grower”). From horse poop to your plate. It was part of my Agricultural Engineering degree. It was a week’s course and at the end you brought home a mushroom kit to grow them at home, under your bed. Boy, we feasted on mushrooms for months. I finally got rid of the textbook a few months ago.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I had a post-doctoral job where I worked on mistletoe. Now mistletoe is not a mushroom, but as part of the job I assisted in teaching a class on parasitic plants, plant epiphytes and symbionts. Mistletoes being the parasites and mushrooms being symbionts. We were still starting to understand the whole mycorrhizal world of fungi, and after a stint in the mining industry I more or less left the field. I did a lot of ecosystem restoration, in particular wetland restoration but mycorrhizae were somewhat pushed back in my brain. Only when I started teaching and talking about stockpiling topsoil did it pop back up. Finally, the book “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard explained a lot of what had expired in the past 30 years in mycorrhizae research, and it only had gotten better. My appetite was awakened by the book called “Overstory” by Richard Powers, who has a character who is very loosely based on Suzanne Simard.

Mold, fungi are a powerful group of organisms in the world. They are the ultimate undertakers. It is amazing, over time they are able to break down everything that is organic. But then, at the same time it appears they form this almost neural underground network between plants that give forests almost a sense of intelligence. Trees seem to be able to communicate with each other, feed each other nutrients and water, by way of mycorrhizal fungi. These fungi have invaded the roots of the plants and thus connect one plant with another. There are two types ecto- and endo- mycorrhizae. If you are interested look up what the difference is. Maybe one of these days I’ll write more about that. However, today I want to write about mushrooms.

Because all those mushrooms we see pop up in the woods, in our lawn etc. are the fruiting bodies of the mycorrhizal fungi and some other fungi living in the soil. When the temperature, soil moisture and humidity are just rights, strands of fungi get together and decide it is time to procreate, make babies. That is what those mushrooms are all about. Just like under my bed. They bundle together, pop out of the ground, out of a log or whatever, and loo there is a mushroom. Mushrooms have gills and in those gills is where the babies are. Thousands if not millions of spores which get disseminated by the wind and when the land in the right spot, they become mold threads again and infect wood or tree and plant roots, helping the forest do its thing.

Some more photos that I took this past week in the woods.

Far too often when I walk my neighborhood and see sick or dying trees I wonder, has the homeowner been treating their lawns with fungicides and killing all the mycorrhizae in their yard, basically cutting their trees off from their peers? This of course can not be proven unless we dig the trees up. But this is why I do not use pesticides and fungicides in my yard. I want a healthy soil where I can and will allow that worldwide underground web to exist and allow those trees to communicate and help each other. Together they much more capable to fight drought, disease, insect attacks than alone and deprived of their mycorrhizal support network.

Those stupid trees (11/21/2019)

It has been blowing like crazy this past weekend. There is a coastal storm offshore, and it is whipping up the wind to occasional speeds of 50 miles per hour or for you metric folks close to 80 km per hour. We could hear it howl around the house. Since it is mid-November there are a lot of fall leaves on the ground and they are blowing all over the place. It is interesting to see how we had a ridge of leaves at the leeward side of my car. When we left to go to a social at church in the morning it was there, when we came back it was gone, blown away. However, three hours later in the afternoon the ridge had returned.

Since it is mid-November, you think it would be an opportune time for all the deciduous trees to release their leaves with such a strong wind like this and set them free. But no, or better hell no. It is like they did not realize that in two weeks from now they will be doing this anyway, so why not now? Usually, at least all the past 19 years that I lived here; the trees have lost all their leaves by the end of November, if not the first week of December. We already had a good (early) frost, which also seems to be a signal to many of these trees that it is time. But hell no! They are not letting go. If they would drop the leaves, at least then all those leaves would fly to my neighbor and I would not have to deal with them. My neighbor on the side where the wind comes from does not have any trees, so I would be safe from that side. But now it means that I will have to deal with them after Thanksgiving. 

We have a lot of trees in our neighborhood. In the past I have written and complained how the folks in my subdivision build whole fortifications of leaves along the road <here>. They bag their leaves and then stack them three bags high along the road, somewhat in a display of “I can stack them higher than you” or “I can hide my house better than you.” These folks are mining nutrients out of their soil and sending to the landfill. Instead, they should be composting the leaves or at least grinding them up with a mulching mower. Moreover, I have also mentioned in my blog that last year in December we were out in our back yard at night with our headlights admiring all the small moving lights in the fallen leaves. It appeared these lights were reflections of our headlights in the eyes of minute spiders, it was absolutely magical. There seems to be so much life in those dead fallen leaves and that explains why all those birds in my back-yard hunt through them. Then to think that my neighbors haul them off to the dump. On the other hand, one of the advantages of all the piling along the road is that my male dog has something new to mark when we go for our daily walks. 

So, what is the possible reason for the trees to hold on to the leaves through this storm? One reason I think is our dry September and October; we did not have any rain for six weeks. Based on the ephemeral ponds behind our home, the groundwater levels are still very low; I would say at least 6 feet or more deep, while sometimes by now, it should be just a foot or two below the ground surface. Would it be that the drought we experienced caused this unusually late season? Is it caused by global warning? I don’t know, but all I know or remember from what I learned is that in some species the change in colors and leaf drop is caused by the change in day length or better night length. Here I am thinking about maples which usually start changing color by the end of September when the day and night length are equal. One thing we have noticed is that one of the maples in our yard that we have a love hate relationship with is finally coloring. This is almost a month later than normal. Our love of the tree is its bright yellow color in fall. Our hate for the tree is the sheer size, the fact that is seems to push out other plants and that it appears to lean in a direction that concerns us somewhat. In other words, we are watching it like a hawk. This tree is supposed to be empty by now, but no it is not. So, what the heck? 

Our maple is finally yellow.  As I mention it is approximately one month later than normal and I can only speculate that climate change and the drought this fall has something to do with it.

All that I can think is that nature this fall is all screwed up, and if you ask me this may be a sign of things to come. In this post, I will not explain how nature is supposed to act. However, nature does seem to be somewhat out of whack. I really wonder where things are going to end up, but I expect it is not going to be pretty. One thing I know, those darn trees are telling us something: climate change is accelerating, and I am not sure if we can turn it back.