Amazing is far too Simple (09/05/2026)

“You have such an amazing experience.” That is something we hear every so now and then. However, the recent floods in Nepal brought back memories that make the word “amazing” feel far too simple. As some of you obviously have discovered in my posts, we lived in Nepal in the 1980s, from 1981 through the first half of 1983, and the news this week was deeply distressing. We have been glued to the news about the disaster. We endured two monsoons during our time in Nepal; and let me tell you they are not fun. The monsoon unleashed a torrent of rain when it reaches Nepal and since the Himalayas are among the youngest mountains, they are very unstable. The result was that in our first year there, we had to navigate through landslides that literally happened the night before. I also pulled two companions out of a raging stream before they got swept away. That scene still plays itself out in front of my eyes, now 45 years later. It was very distressing. By the second monsoon, we had learned enough to leave on vacation and take a trip that carried us around the world.

While what happened in Nepal recently occurred during a monsoon, it most likely the consequence of a global phenomenon called global warming or climate change. Glaciers are becoming unstable and then monsoonal rains on top of these unstable ice sheets can result in what happened in Nepal.

But let’s get back to our lives with those amazing experiences that these people allude to. I realize that this sounds somewhat self-indulgent, but these postings are a mix of what has been and is going on in my life, as well as some of my observations. In addition to Nepal, we have spent time in many foreign countries and in regions throughout the U.S. This includes Uganda during a civil war, Nepal, Yemen and the Netherlands. In the U.S. we lived in Delaware, Utah, New Mexico, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia. I alone briefly lived in Washington State. Here in Virginia people may ask whether we were in the military or if we were missionaries, and the answer would be “no.” We wanted to explore the world and there is no better way to do that than working in international development. You get to play tourist for at least two years in one country or region. But eventually I chose to complete my education and we returned state-side.

Recently, some folks have labeled us a “cute couple.” While I am not absolutely sure what that means, I assume it has to do with our age, the time we have been together and how we interact with each other and the people we meet. Yes, we now realize that during our 49-year marriage we definitively have lived a very full life. It has been full of experiences that many folks do not have. While many experiences were joyful, fascinating and simply good, some were absolutely awful, but all together, I cannot help feeling very blessed. I once concluded that if I were to die now, I would have lived a wonderful life. Not that I wish it would end, there are many more adventures and experiences I want to enjoy. Right now, the adventures include camping throughout the US and Canada, and visits to my grandson and of course his parents.

A while ago I realized that I will probably never see him graduate college, some 20+years from now. I sincerely hope to publish all my blog posts in book-form one of these days to leave some sort of legacy. Even the recent disaster in Nepal should be part of that.

I apologize for this somewhat strange post. No, it is not meant as a form of bragging. For me it is more like soul searching. To conclude, maybe our lives have been extraordinary to some, and we should not be arrogant about it? Was our experience intentional or accidental? I think the answer is emphatic, yes! It has been a fun ride, and I hope it will continue, but hopefully with fewer natural disasters and other mishaps. I hope that I can continue informing, educating and sometimes maybe a little bragging.

Photo from 1982, when we we were on our way to Mustang on the Tibetan plateau for work.

Resillence (3/2/2026

The other day, at our UU church we had a program on the resilience of nature or may be on how nature helped us with our resilience. This brought me back to my Ph.D. study, and particularly my research project. We moved to Las Cruces, NM in 1986 for my studies. Nine years married and yes, we had our occasional marriage spats. I think the issues were mostly my doing and most likely caused by my insecurity concerning my qualifications even to pursue a Ph.D. (imposter syndrome) and the decision we had made to finally settle in the U.S.A. (being a Dutchman who had traveled most of his life, that was an alien concept).

My research plots were in the Jornada del Muerto. It was at the southern end of the of an area in New Mexico made famous by the Trinity site, where Oppenheimer and his compadres detonated the first nuclear bomb. My site was far enough away from that area for any remaining radioactivity to ever have gotten that far south and have any effect on me. This was a good thing, since we (my wife) became pregnant in 1988, midway through my studies.

One of the things that stayed with me from that time were the weekly trips to my research plots. We had to travel about an hour into the desert away from all civilization. I was taking physiological measurements on broom snakeweed (Gutierrezia sarothrae); a common weed in this area of the country. I had to get there before daylight to take what are called pre-dawn plant measurements and compare them to changes that occurred during the day, when it got brighter and warmer. We got to the site when it was just getting light and stayed until two or three in the afternoon and took measurements on the hour. We hid in the shade under a shelter that we set up between measurement times. On some really hot days I would take a quick dip in a nearby stock tank if the water looked clean. Remember, the temperatures in southern New Mexico would easily soar over 100 degrees (38 Celsius) in summer.

At sunrise, exactly when the sun hit the site, the coyotes in the area started howling, just for a minute or so. It was absolutely amazing and, in a way, very moving. It sounded so wild and primitive. To think that there were all these eyes watching us and we hardly ever saw them. And then all the snakes (rattlesnakes) that were also observing us, the birds and other critters.

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about the more bashful coyotes in the woods behind our home. They excite our dogs, especially when they start howling at two in the morning. Hearing the howl or even seeing them brings me back to my studies in the Jornada desert and those early mornings when the coyotes graced me with their concert.

Coyotes are amazing animals. Persecuted and killed, they seem to survive, even in our urban areas. These are resilient species and fit into the discussions we had that Sunday morning. Resilience, we biologists sometimes used the word plasticity in place of resilience. At times this seems more appropriate, nature is resilient by being adaptable or what we would call plastic. An interesting concept to ponder.

The Coyotes behind our home (left and center)

We are going to the birds (2/27/2025)

We pride ourselves on having an eco-friendly or wildlife-friendly yard. We do not use fertilizers and pesticides and mostly use plants native to the area or those that have at least some wildlife, bird or pollinator benefit. We have five birdfeeders and at least two water stations. Birds are therefore plentiful in our backyard, in particular this winter. It has been a fairly severe winter for us in the Tidewater of Virginia. There have been days that the temperatures did not come above freezing and we had at least three snow events. This has not been fun for the birds in the area, and our feeders have been busy. Below is a list of the visitors that came over for some food or drinks:

Yellow Rumped Warbler	Cedar Waxwing
Red-Winged Blackbird	Song sparrow
White crowned sparrow	White- throated sparrow
Carolina Chickadee	Tufted titmouse
Carolina Wren	Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird	Northern Cardinal
Red bellied Woodpecker	Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker	Northern Flicker
Eastern Bluebird	American Robin
European Starling	Brown-headed Cowbird
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	White-breasted Nuthatch
Common Grackle	Dark-eyed Junco
American Goldfinch	House finch
Purple finch	Blue Jay
Mourning dove	Eastern Towhee
Hermit Thrush

At least 31 species, not bad for a suburban yard. This list is not in any particular order, but just as I remember them. Watching them on the feeders or bird baths is interesting. There definitely is a pecking order amount the birds. I am amazed about how dominant the yellow-rumped warblers try to be. They will stand up to the big birds on the feeders, sit in the middle, ruffle their feathers and take a defensive stand. They even peck at other birds. Tough little critters they are! They will vacate the feeder when confronted by the bigger birds such as the mockingbird, the bluejay and the various blackbirds. But they will stand up against the thrasher. Bluebirds are a different story. They are fairly dominant as well and they will confront the warbler with varying result. At times they tolerate each other. There is somewhat of a peace between the cardinals and the warbler as well. The goldfinches use a different tactic. They dominate by the numbers, and all the sudden a feeder is swamped by 5 or more goldfinches and there just is no room for other birds, until a bully bird such as the blue jay or mockingbird flies in.

The shiest birds (or maybe the lowest on the packing order) appear to be the thrush, cedar waxwing, titmouse and the junco. The cedar waxwing only uses the birdbath. Thrasher is very secretive but will stand its ground, especially when they gorge themselves on the suet. It is just a lot of fun to observe all the birds, their interactions and behavior during our breakfasts and lunches.

One of the nicest moments occurred the other day. We were sitting inside with our morning coffee and newspaper when we heard a familiar bonk against our sliding door, a bird strike. Looking for the poor victim, I noticed a tiny bird, face down in a snow drift on our deck. Actually, the only thing I saw was a tail sticking out of the snow. I ran outside and softly scooped the poor bird up. It was a “butter but” or a yellow-rumped warbler as they are officially known as. I gently put it under a chair in our yard, in the sun but out of the snow. When I went to check it an hour later, the bird was gone; it had survived the crash. Approximately 15 minutes later I was in the yard and right above me in a tree was a “butter but’ flitting around in the branches, looking at me and chirping like crazy. I had never experienced that, and we have a large number of these warblers in our yard and around the feeders. I figured it was the warbler I pulled out of the snow and brought to its rehabilitation spot in the sun, and it was now thanking me for saving it. I realize that I am anthropomorphizing here but it just made me feel good. It made my day!

A dark-eyed junco on our feeder.

Don't feed the wild animals (12/23/20224)

Again, we were traveling across the country and back.  As our way back we opted to take a more southern route in the hope to avoid cold nights.  These colder nights just do not work well in our small camper van.  While the van was converted from a passenger van into a camper, I do not think it was properly insulated as a regular camper conversion.  Moreover, it does not have a heater or air conditioner.  We invested in a backup battery bank from Anker.  This battery is 1800 watts and powers our coffee maker, microwave, lights and a heating pad for Radar who sleeps on the floor.  We can asl briefly run a space heart on the battery.  We used the battery three times during our trip across and it is a game changer.

After visiting Death Valley, we headed for the Big Bend National Park, via Sedona.  Camping in both spots was good.  However, I may write a little more about this in future posts.  We also enjoyed our very brief visit to Guadelupe National Park.

We were amazed and disturbed by what transpired in the Big Bend NP.  Going towards our camp spot at the Rio Grande Village we finally saw some of the park wildlife.  A coyote crossed between our van and a vehicle in front of us.  We slowed down to take a look at the animal, which we assumed would run off into the desert.  But no, it turned around and just looked at us from the side of the road.  Our first thought was rabis.  In our area that is what you suspect when you see a coyote or racoon in broad daylight.  Something wrong!  We went on our way after taking a few pictures of the animal. 

After a wonderful night of camping in the village (more about that in a subsequent post, hopefully), we set out to explore the park a bit and then go on our way to our next stop (Del Rio, TX).  Again, at the same location a coyote crossed the road to slow us down and here again stood by the road staring at us.  Then it dawned on us, the animal was begging!  We drove on to the visitor’s center and I asked one of the park officials about our encounter.  They acknowledged that the coyote was actually begging and was considered a nuisance.  They tried to move it to another part of the park, but it had returned to the same spot within a few days.

I guess we all know why this is happening.  Folks feed the wildlife and have conditioned this poor animal to live on handouts instead of hunting.   Why can’t people get it in their dense heads not to do that.  You read about folks getting killed by bison in Yellowstone; bears ransacking cars looking for food.  It is unnatural, probably a poor, but tasty diet.  We are doing a disservice to these animals and nature.  We know (or should know) how bad processed food is for us humans and that this is one of the reasons for our obesity epidemic.  Folks that feed the wild animals are doing the same to them.

This issue is not only occurring in National and State parks.  Our neighbor feeds stale bread to the dear in the woods behind our home.  Every evening a herd of 6 to 8 deer move into the yard next door and they wait for their handout.  In addition to the health issues for the deer, these animals carry ticks (Lyme disease), flees (tape worm), and you do not know what else to impact humans. 

People don’t feed wildlife.

The beggar in Big Bend National Park

 

Thankful that nature is part of us (11/23/2022)

Of late, I have become increasingly introspective. Whether that a sign of the changing seasons and the approaching solstice, Christmas, and New Year, or just a sign of aging and the approaching consideration of retiring, I really don’t know and couldn’t care less. As my regular readers know, when I become more introspective, I start asking the perpetual question: Why the hell, am I writing this blog? I have seen so many blogs or bloggers who quit after so many years. Is it worth those measly 200+ readers every month? Last month I had 224 hits and this month I am already up to 374 hits; the average this year is 205). As you can see, I am no influencer, nor did I ever intent to be one. I have nothing to sell or to give away right now. If you want me to sponsor or promote you or your product, we can talk I would not mind. I have bought and used products from various bonsai suppliers and maybe one day I’ll write a review about what I like and what I did not.

Early on this blog was meant to document my travels through Virginia as an instructor. I had learned to love this state and discovered all it’s beauty. Having studied photography in the past and giving it up as a serious hobby or even as a possible profession, I felt this was a way of rekindling it. Soon the captions with the photographs started taking over and I felt I had so much more to say that could accompany those photographs; the story behind the photographs, the items that I could not capture, things on my mind. If you are a regular reader, you have seen me mention that before. This blog became a diary of sorts, a reflection of my thinking at times, a travel log, my political rant, and as I mentioned in my last post my way of trying to educate, maybe one or two readers so now and then, or at least help them think critically.

But I do not write every waking moment of my life. So, what do I do in my spare time, when it is either dark outside, when I don’t work, don’t write these damn posts, walk my dogs, work on my bonsai trees, cook, or bake bread? Notice I left out any water-based activities like kayaking and sailing as well as biking! Somehow, I need to get back into them, but I have not sailed or kayaked for a long time. Ever since I broke my wrist, I have shied away from biking, although my wrist is completely healed. Then to hear folks near us were killed while riding bikes and broke all kinds of bones. That does not help us getting back on the bikes. But I increased my time dedicated to the environment, nature, and my bonsai.

The real answer is, I watch a lot of YouTube videos, read blogs, and listen to podcasts. My wife and I keep telling each other that we need a life, and we should go see a movie or watch a TV show, so we can talk “intelligently” with friends and colleagues about current cultural things.

What I am trying to convey here is my love for the world. The YouTubes and podcasts mostly deal with nature, science, and human interaction. Few of the latest ones I took in was the YouTube video by Mirai on Ryan’s creation of the different U.S. forests. I also listened to his interview with folks who climb the big trees in California for research as part of the forest creation; this was on his Asymmetry podcast. Both were great. While I already know this, I appreciate more and more the fact that I am part of nature and that I can not function without it. I need it to recharge; when I walk in the woods, I need to touch a tree trunk with my bare hands, feel it, be one with it, be one with nature.

Truthfully, we are part of nature, and that is very important to remember. The natural world does not care who we are, what we look like, what we wear or even what are political leaning is. I keep reminding myself of that and the need to honor all species (although maybe not the roaches and mosquitoes that invade our home at times). But what I am trying to say is that with my forest bathing, with my walks in nature, with my bonsai and trying to recreate those old trees, and just being in the moment, I am aware that I am part of a whole, a minute part of this earth. That is what I have been realizing more and more these past few months.

I was reading an on-line article which discusses the fact that without life in general, this earth would not exist. There would not be limestone, or even soil, both of which are formed by life. Organic matter would not exist, carbon without life? You get the message? The earth would look like Mars. Damn, an interesting concept, isn’t it? The earth and the evolution on it formed life (read us), and life is part of the formation or evolution of the earth. We all affect each other. Now in the Anthropocene the impact of humans seems to be accelerated and not in a positive way (I know, here I go again, and I’ll stop).

But all you, my 200+ readers of my posts sit back, take a deep breath, and think about it. You are part of nature and nature is part of you! With everything you are doing you are impacting the Earth and you can choose whether that is mostly positive or negative. The Earth will give you the same treatment in return since it is part of you. The problem is that it is also part of your children, grand-children, and generations to come. They bare the consequences of our actions or inaction. Introspective anyone?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I had to steal this picture from the Rodin museum in Paris.  I visited it in 1976 and need to do it again soon.  But this is probably how I currently feel the most, contemplative.

Disagreement (4/18/2022)

All right, somewhat of a disagreement ensued at home when I told a neighbor that I was not interested in using another neighbor’s services because he and his wife were rabid tRump supporter in the past. In fact, at one point they had more than ten tRump for president signs in their yard. Donna thought I should be more neighborly, tolerant, less rabid myself and just tell him I was not interested instead of trying to explain myself.

I had an additional reason for it, he was the person who actually tried to pick a fight with me on Facebook when I posted an article on our community’s site about the importance of trees. He was so proud of cutting the 15 trees in his front yard. It is always nice to see that tRumpers have plenty of funds to finance the cutting of their trees and then pay for the air conditioning bills for the added heat in their homes. I am just appalled by their blatant disregard of the environment. On top of that, landscaping, hell no! Their property still looks like crap, and I was able to identify their son as one of the vandals of one of my posts before.

Armageddon cannot come soon enough for these folks. Anything they seems to be after is to hurry up the destruction of the earth. Who gives a shit? As long as you go down to hell with as much money, who knows, you might need it down there, either to keep up with the Jones or to bribe the devil or his cronies. Oh, maybe it is heaven they think they will be going to, or is there really such a thing? Wishful thinking folks, when you are dead, you are dead, and you cannot take anything with you!

The problem is what you leave behind, an environmental Armageddon where your kids can’t breath clean air; have to live underground because of the depleted atmosphere that cannot filter out the cancer causing UV radiation; and have not enough food because of the drought and heat brought on by the global warming that was cause by your greed for money and environmental off-handedness? Look at the bright side, you will not be able to see that you great grand children will have mutated into ducklike creatures with webbed feet and have scaly skins like lizards. This is why I have become somewhat bigoted against people who wear that stupid ex-president, wannabe dictator on their sleeves.

I am not against Republicans per-see, some are reasonable; but I am done with that bunch that is trying to take away women’s right to choose; change the country’s history by denying slavery because it makes white people feel bad, who cares that blacks feel bad about it; change voting rights; and pull all kinds of other crap to keep the power in the hands of a few powerful with men. However, I am particular against folks that are climate change deniers, those that are cavalier about the environment, about nature and trees. So yes, I will be somewhat vocal at times; I am (not) sorry!

Mommy, can I go play at the surface. No dear, you just had a growth spurt and shed your skin and it is more sensitive to the radiation. But why mommy, I want to play outside. One hundred years ago sweetheart conservative rich people only cared about money, status, and power. They did not want to acknowledge that they could not take that with them when they died. As a result, the environment is poisoned, and humans have mutated. As a result, we can no longer live on the surface or spend there for a long time. The radiation is bad, and the air is bad. That is why we are only allowed to spend less than an hour on the surface. Thank goodness some inventive folks were able to harvest energy that allowed us to live and survive underground, but we have no idea how many other human communities remain on earth and how they live.

Remember nature? (10/8/2019)

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus is believed to have said “It is not possible to step twice into the same river.” The reason being that even seconds later conditions in that river have changed. Different water molecules would be running by and touching your legs, aquatic organisms have moved and even particles of sand and sediment have been washed away, down stream. You yourself have aged and you are not the same as a split second ago. This may be scary when you think about it, but on the other hand it could also be comforting.

I was thinking about this when I finally dared to venture out into the woods behind our home again. The night-time temperatures finally dropped below 60° F (15.5° C), which means the chiggers go into hibernation and it gets less uncomfortable to venture into the woods. 

The woods have definitely changed over the past half year. For one when we last walked outback (as we call it) is was very wet and we had to dodge puddles. However, we have been in a drought, lately. I do not think it has rained for at least a month and instead of coloring, the leaves are shriveling. I am just hoping we don’t get a forest fire back there. While it would be good to have a good ground fire in the woods behind our home as I discuss in some of my posts, it is so dry that I fear for a crown fire and our homes.  It has really become a climate of extremes.

It has been so dry that the ponds have dried up, and even the puddles in the road which usually stay wet throughout the year are dried up. The largest pond behind our home has just a little pool left in the middle.  I am not sure if it has fish in it, but it usually has a healthy turtle population and I wonder how they are faring.  All ponds behind our home are ephemeral (with the possible exception of the large one) and they are fed or reflection of the groundwater levels.  This means that the levels usually fluctuate 5 to 6 feet every year; however, this year they seem to have dropped more than that.  Surprisingly, some of the grass along the trail was still green, while the grasses in the lawns in the yards of our subdivision are browning up. The entire south-eastern U.S. appears to be drought stricken this year, and the temperatures are way above average for the year. 

This is a picture that I took two weeks ago of the large pond and the water has dropped even more.

During our car ride back from our Century bike ride on the Eastern Shore of Maryland (which was fun, by the way), we were listening to NPR’s Weekend Morning Edition Sunday. They interviewed Larch Hanson, a seaweed harvester in Maine. Larch quoted Wendell Berry from one of his essays in “What are People for?” Berry wrote: “People are for preserving memory of place!” I guess that is what I have been doing with my blog posts over the years; trying to document the subtle changes in the woods behind my home. However, at times, while blogging, I can’t help myself and I also try to document the changes in my thinking and the society and of course in the politics around me.

A photo of my wife and I taken by fellow cyclists during the century ride this past weekend on the eastern shore of Maryland.  We had a lot of fun.  It was cold and very windy (first cold day, hence the packed in look).

Hanson said in his interview: “The water remembers us!” I would like to make an argument that nature remembers us, as well. Whatever we do to her will come back to haunt us, as we are currently experiencing with global warming. Yes, what we are seeing will likely accelerate, and Heraclitus’ philosophical outlook on life will become more and more apparent. Nature around us will start changing faster and faster and not for the better, and soon we can talk about the good old days. This is why, as Wendell Berry mentioned, we better preserve the memories of how nice it was back then (read now) by documenting it in our writing and photography while there is still time.  This is what I try to do in my writing and I hope you do that too in your form of communication with your friends and loved ones.

The cheapo multi-disciplinarian naturalist (3/18/2019)

I often explain in my workshops that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are actually very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think I am crazy, but that will be one of the arguments I will try to make in today’s post. Today’s post is also about the beauty of being multidisciplinary. I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. For example, in my sermon last year, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology, I argued also has parsimony, she really has so much more to offer or to teach us than just biology.

Nature offers us:

• Food
• Shelter
• Fiber
• Peace of mind (or sanity)
• Health
• Art
• Wonder
• Spirituality
• And many more benefits

We are part of nature. We come from it and have evolved from it, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Some may think we have outgrown it, but we all still have that animalistic (or natural) instinct in us, from birth, until we we die. We are created true the animalistic (instinctive or some call it loving) behavior of our parents and when we die, we again become part of nature; we even refer to it in our ceremonies: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

But there is so much more. The natural world has offered us some magnificent art; it started in the old cave paintings, and then just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. Nature offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return, their admiration, love and desire to preserve and protect it.

About once a month or so I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, or even longer, a half year?

This photograph captures the beauty of nature.  We went for a walk in the woods behind our home and after some bushwhacking we found this little creek meandering through the woods.  Who could not just live here for 3 months (were it not for the bugs, but I think I would even be able to survive them with the proper protection).

Back to what I want to write about today! In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible you have less reserves as your neighbor, something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it as efficient as possible you are literally toast or at least the stuff they put on toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

The German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer, developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, each of which have million of cells, some of which have hundreds of processes going on inside those minute cells, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary to think that if one of those processes does not work that cell could potentially become a cancer cell. But then I learned we have little organs in the cell that can repair these mishaps and that we even have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if it really goes wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could eventually develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the whole picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using old experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become an multidisciplinarian, we need more of them.

2019 Here I come (1/9/2019)

It has been somewhat of a New Year's tradition of me to look back at the previous year, and even prognosticate a bit of what the new year may bring. I was not sure if I wanted to do that this year, but I got so many hits on last year's review in the recent days, that I almost felt I needed to do it again.  It seems that my readers are wondering what my thoughts are.

Breaking a little with the tradition, I want to tell you about the famous resolutions that people make at the beginning of the year. Well, I don't believe in them. Having been member of the YMCA in Cincinnati and now an active yoga practitioner at our community center, you see them come right after New Years, and after a month you are there again with the same crew for the remaining eleven months of the year. There may be a slight uptick in May or June, just before beach or pool season, but that's it.

My New Year's resolutions?

1. Not to die this year!
2. To be more active in preserving the environment.

These are my two major goals. That simple!

Goal number one needs little explanation. I hope it is something we all want. I have blogged about death and suicide before and I am not going there this time. I need to live to be able to work on and achieve goal number two! Naturally, I may stray so now and then, so be it!

Like this triple-trunked red maple in the woods behind my home I want to reach for the sky this year and work on fighting for the environment.  Teach folks more about it, talk more about it, before it is too late, and that time is rapidly coming.  This past year there has been an all-out assault on the environment by our political administration, supported by the far right, and industry.  In wetland science, we use this triple trunk is an indicator that the area it is growing in, is most likely a wetland.  Here, I am using it as an indicator that there is something very wrong with our environment.

So how about goal number two? In my eyes, the environment is under siege! As I also mentioned before, I absolutely do not understand those folks who used to scream about the federal budget and our children’s future but then are completely silent or sometimes blatant hostility when it comes to discussions about the environment and those same children. Although in today’s political climate those same folks are awkwardly silent when it comes to the budget and their offspring.

As a provider of environmental workshops I do my best to provide as much basic theoretical information as possible to my students; however, my reach is limited. In addition, with this blog I get between 200 and 400 hits per month. Not bad, but I wonder how many actually read them versus just browse it. I purposely do not advertise. Maybe I should; I wonder if the Googles of this world would send more folks my way, if I did? In addition, I would make a few cents. But for right now I’ll keep writing and trying to educate as many as possible (you all) about the beauty of nature and the importance of preserving and protecting nature. To me telling my readers a little bit about the science behind some of these things I see in nature is so important. I really think that this understanding helps people see the beauty, cultivates the love the love of nature and helps with the motivation to preserve nature.

So what am I going to do about preserving the environment? I hope to intensify my blogging effort about the environment. I will try not to be too political, but I will let the chips fall where they may. Regretfully, it seems that one political party seems to be more cavalier about protecting the environment than the other; I will keep calling them out. So be it! My wife encouraged me to volunteer a newspaper column on the environment. I am not sure if that would conflict with my job, and I am sure I could not make a living writing for the newspaper and from this blog, although that would be the ideal world. An occasional letter to the editor may work.

However, one thing is for sure we all need to roll up our sleeves and do something about our deteriorating environment before it's too late. Reports abound that tell us that our kids and grand-kids will suffer the consequences if we do not it serious and start taking drastic steps to protect the environment within the next few years. I want to be part of protecting this earth for them. It's the only one we they have!

I took this photograph this morning while walking in the woods.  I am lucky, my job allows me to telecommute.  This saves gasoline and saves the environment.  It is also good for my mental health.  The sun had just come up in the woods and I was ready to get to work.  Walks in the woods do a number of things for me: they help me focus on the day's task ahead; they help me think through things I am currently working on (like the course I am developing); the calm me inside and lower my blood pressure; and it is great exercise.  The rising sun against the trunks of the trees symbolize to me the intentions expressed in this post, my New Year's Resolutions.  Bring them on!

The Green Wall (6/7/2018)

Sitting in our gazebo and looking at the late May/early June woods behind our home, I am awestruck by what we euphemistically call our “green wall.” It is a pallet of different levels of green and different textures being contributed by different species of trees and shrubs. Sitting here I see a pyracantha that we are training up the gazebo. Behind it there is our red maple tree that survived hurricane Isabel in 2003 as a mere sapling, but now is a big tree. Next to it is a strange blue spruce that we got as a life Christmas tree one year and is completely out of place here in southeast Virginia. I also see azaleas, dogwoods, a redbud, a red tip, sassafras, a yellow popular (also known as a tulip poplar), white oaks, red oaks. more red maples, sweet gums, loblolly pines, American hollies, a winged sumac, beauty berries, paw paws, viburnums, one butterfly bush, a fringe tree, two magnolias, a Carolina jessamine, and a hawthorn bush. That is only in our small backyard; no wonder we had a shade garden. I am really hunting around to find sunny spots to put my bonsai trees. They really need sun to thrive. You can see that in the understory of our yard where we have a lot of ferns. However, in one sunny spot we have native sunflowers, goldenrod and milkweed. I hate to admit it, but we have a horrible invasion of Japanese stiltgrass.

Two photos from our back yard.  The bottom one gives the view from the gazebo.  As you can see it is pretty darn green out there,  with the sun peeking through the holes in the canopy, also known as sun flecks.   It is woods as far as they eyes can see.  The bottom photo may be a little fuzzy because the gazebo is screened in and I am taking the photo through the screen.

I am probably forgetting some plants in our yard, so be it. Our yard surely is not master piece of landscaping, that will come once we retire and can spend more time out there, and work on the design. But one thing will be for sure, I do not expect that we will change the aspect that our yard runs right into the woods behind our home. Having such a yard that runs into a forest, we hardly can see the edge between the two, and so does the wildlife and nature that lives in the woods behind our home. Although often frustrating, deer make our yard one of the first stopovers in their daily migration into our neighborhood. Tasty plants don’t stand a chance. Over the winter, they even pulled one of my azalea bonsais of the 5-foot-high table to nibble on. Oh well, they did to that tree what was long overdue and what I did not dare to do. In addition to all the plants and the deer, we have so many different bird species visiting our little plot; we have skinks everywhere, frogs, toads, a couple of snakes, bunnies, turtles, squirrels, mice, moles, voles, just to name a few. And let’s not talk about all those daddy longlegs that are out there in our yard right now.

This is the azalea bonsai that was pulled of the table this winter.  It is currently blooming, but as you can see the left side was completely defoliated by the deer that got to it before I got to the deer.  Anyway, the defoliation is probably long overdue.

But one thing is for sure, the green wall in our back yard is in contact and communication with the woods behind our home. Others in our neighborhood have cut all the trees in their yards, turned their yards into managed lawns, hit them with fertilizers and pesticides. They created a biological and ecological desert.

In his wonderful novel “The Overstory” Richard Powers writes a short story about a Ph.D. student who discovers how plants communicate with each other by releasing volatile chemicals in the air, warning each other of pending insect attacks. She gets vilified by the establishment to be proven correct years later after she has dropped out of science. While this is just a story or fiction, it probably comes very close to how communication between plants was discovered. It seems that the Soviet scientist Boris Tokin was the first to describe in the 1920s and 30s that trees gave off volatile chemicals. Boris had an inkling that this was for self-defense, but I do not think for communication between plants or as he called them “phytoncides.” On a side note, it seemed he was an interesting character and being a politically correct communist, he published about his effort of integrating the philosophies and thoughts about Darwin, Marx and Engels. As I mentioned in previous posts, researchers in Japan, among them Tomohide Akiyama and Dr. Qing Li discovered in the 1980s that some of these phytoncides were actually beneficial to humans and introduced the world to the concept of “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku.”

But it is not only through the air that plants communicate. We are finding that even through the roots and by way of mycorrhizal fungi plants can communicate with each other over large distances and even exchange messages and even food like carbohydrates with each other in times of need (watch this great YouTube video). I would therefore not be surprised if the trees or the plants in our yard are communicating with the others in the woods. I also wonder if people who put all those pesticides on their lawns, in particular fungicides are severing those connections and isolating the few remaining trees on their properties; making them weaker and more susceptible to insects and diseases, let alone weakening them by pumping chemicals into them.

I guess for right now I will not be able to prove any of this, but all I know, our backyard teams with biodiversity: the trees, shrubs, animal life, and as I described in one of my posts even the little spiders with their iridescent eyes that reflect light from our headlamps at night. I know that our backyard looks pretty darn healthy (with the exception of the stiltgrass); it has not seen many chemicals in a very long time and it seems that nature is thanking us.