2017, so be it! (12/29/2017)

Trying to keep up with my annual tradition of looking back at the past year and forward to the new, I like to reflect it was an interesting one behind me.  Whether it was just from a personal side, my political outlook on things or social.

Kind of my up-your's world photograph.  This branch obviously died but hung on and is slowly being encapsulated by the tree.  We can all criticize our life, the world, etc, but we are here and this is our only life.  We might as well enjoy it and make the best of it.  

Readers of my blog know I am a liberal, I attend a liberal church and most of my friends on my social networking sites are liberal.  A lot of those friends (or acquaintances) are very vocal and my wife and I joke sometimes that at times the stuff they post on their walls must be fake news.  I tend the shy away from expressing myself too strongly on my walls, or even here on my blog.  For a lot of my friends the sky is falling.  For me the glass is still half full, but as I mentioned in my blog, we need to be vigilant.  I am an environmentalist, a forest bather, and a lover of water.  As someone who has lived in Africa, Asia and the Middle East in countries ruled by dictators, I have seen what could happen if the press gets censored by demagogues.  My father fought the Nazis and had PTSD for life.  We need to protect what we have! So be it!

So how was 2017.  Hey, I grew older.  At work I taught more than 55 odd workshops during the past year.  That is more than one a week on average.  I usually do two per week, which means I was on the road, teaching somewhere almost every other week.  I really enjoy teaching, so it is OK.  A male colleague once told me that a successful day of teaching is like having good sex: "you are exhausted after it, but you feel oh-so satisfied."  The growing older comes in with the recovery time after a day of solo teaching and traveling, it takes a lot longer.  A perk is all the hotel points that I am accumulating, that is a nice fringe benefit.  So be it!

2018 does not look much different.  More teaching, but first getting used to cubicle life.  My office moved and I am going from an office with a door into a cubicle.  Which is why I got headphones, Amazon Prime music and Google Music to drown them all out.  But I get a desk that can be turned into a standing desk with a switch, and we learned last year that sitting is the new smoking.   The new location will also impact my lunch walks, but I'll adapt, so be it!

Environmentally we have taking a few steps back this past year.  But that is only as a country.  I learned that other countries are trying to step up to compensate for our regression.  I also know that a lot of individuals are stepping up to the plate.  I for one learned about forest bathing, and if you want to experience that then you'll have to be spiritual but also environmental.  In 2016 I championed the term "Nature Deficit Disorder."  This term encompasses forest bathing, or one way to address the disorder is by getting out there in nature.  We just need to take care of our little piece of nature since our elected government does want to do it right now.  All I can do is try to learn and grow.  So be it!

On the subject of learning.  I discovered a great website.  Aeon.co is a great site with essays about a variety of subjects and even some short video presentations.   I find in refreshing and fun.  I am also listening to a fair number of podcasts.  I know I am scratching the surface here, but it is a great learning experience.  So much better than television or radio.  I particularly enjoy: The Hidden Brain and Reply All.  For the rest my Kindle App is a godsend, I read and write.  I will never stop learning and that will hold true for 2018.  So be it!

I have also really gotten back into my bonsai trees.  Some of them are almost 30 years old and have been ignored for some time.  Getting back into it has been really relaxing for me and it does wonders for my brain.  However, I hate to report that I have not sailed or biked enough.  There is just not enough time in the weekend to get all my hobbies in and mow the lawn.  I live a full life, I hardly have time to watch TV.  So be it!

In my study of trees, I was struck to see how this vine strangled this tree.  In bonsai we use wire to bend branches and we are always concerned about leaving wire marks.  Well this is the ultimate wire mark.  To me it also shows that too much training or restriction is not always the best, we need to go with the flow.  Don't let you preconceived ideas restrict you!

Even politically things are looking up.  I think people are seeing and understanding that civility is important in public discourse.  After a year of twitter barrages many of the voters are saying enough is enough.   I don't care if it is left or right, what I would like to see is compromise and dialogue.  If we need to do that through the ballot box in 2018, so be it!

Finally, at home.  We celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary this year with a trip to Newfoundland.  I wrote a few posts about it in late June and July.  Celebrating those achievements and our friends will be an important item in the future. That is what will keep us young and alive.  So be it!

I do not often show pictures of me and my family on my blog, but this is the happy 40-year married couple at the terracotta warrior exhibit in Richmond this week.

As you can see, my glass is half full.  Yes, it can be better, but I appreciate what I have, and look forward to what is ahead.  So be it!

These are the 9 pictures on my Instagram site that got the most likes in 2017.  As I mentioned in my post 7 had to do with nature,  two with water and boating, two with Newfoundland,  and 6 were taken in the woods behind our home.

Forest bathing II (12/22/2017)

The other night we went out into our back yard after dark to show my wife what had excited our dogs today.  We put on our trusty head lamps and went to take a look.  Right on the other side of the fence, in our neighbor’s yard were the dismembered guts of an animal and some fir laying in the leaves.  We surmised it was most likely a rabbit or a squirrel that had become prey of a hawk or an owl.  We do have coyotes in the woods behind our home, but they would have had to jump over the fence and there was very little disturbance of the leaves; much more likely that the guts were dropped from the tree above.  I am not sure if either a hawk or an owl does not eat the guts or if they simply had their fill.  Anyway, the smell of the (rotting) guts had excited the dogs earlier in the day.

Turning around, my wife spotted two very bright emerald sparks in the leaf matter at her feet: “Wow, crystals?”  On further investigation, there was a small black spider scurrying around the leaves and the light beam from our headlamp reflected from its eyes and those were the sparkles that she saw.  It was 38˚F (3˚C) and the spider was still active in the leaf litter.  I don’t know what the little guy was hunting for, as I write in my spider blog, most spiders are hunters, but he or she was pretty safe.  Come day time the spider may become the hunted by all the birds in our back yard that scurry through the leaf litter.  As you know that makes me so frustrated watching all these people bagging leaves.  They are so important in our ecological cycle.

One of our bagging neighbors.  In addition to mining nutrients, getting rid of nutrients for birds etc, they also are exposing their topsoil to erosive forces.  Yes, they may have less mice, ticks and chiggers, but at what cost?

 I have learned a lot of things in 2018.  I have learned a new term: “Forest Bathing.”  I used to use the term “Nature Deficit Disorder” and while they are closely related, I think forest bathing describes a more intimate nature experience.  You linger in nature, absorb it all, take it in.  I guess you can forest bath to take care of that nature deficit disorder; although I read that even nature wall paper on your computer screen may take care of the disorder to some extent and that is not forest bathing.

That little spider with its reflective emerald eyes was part of such a forest bathing experience.  So were the guts of a dead animal.  It can really only be 5 minutes of observations, but longer would be better.  When walking through the woods behind our home, I always discover something unique, something different; at least when I am not in a hurry (see the photos below).  Even our dog Jake finds new things.  He often happens to roll in something very stinky in these woodsWe regularly flush a barred owl in the area and now I wonder if an owl discards the guts of its prey and that is what Jake rolls in.  He also feasts on deer pellets or as we call it deer pro-biotics for dogs.  Oh well.  

Regular readers know my writings about the discoveries in woods behind our home.  I have written about Washington’s shovel.  Well, it is still there, I saw it this morning.  I wrote about the over population of deer and signs they leave behind, but just look at my keyword on deer and there is much more.

The photos below were taken on this morning’s walk in the woods.  Just a quiet slow walk, observing what is around me.  It is just great to be out there, to take it all in.  We were not in a hurry.  Jake (the dog) was apprehensive this morning, "what was daddy doing, just standing around looking at things, taking pictures and taking his time?"   We were observing.  Just read the caption with the pictures.  Go do your own forest bathing, it does not have to be spiritual or mystical to enjoy it or to learn from nature. Remember any nature is good. 

Lastly, if you enjoy this and some of my more naturalist posts, I am reading a great book by David George Haskell called “The Forest Unseen, A Year’s Watch in Nature.”  It is a great read and even this biologist is learning a lot.

Most of the trees in the woods behind our home are sticks, indicating it is a fairly young forest, but this oak was able to take advantage of an opening in the canopy to spread out wide.

This pine appears to have been hit by lightning but as the next two pictures show it is holding on to life, unlike many trees that are hit do.  However there is a dead streak going up all the way.  The bark is pealed off and woodpeckers have been busy.

The dead streak going up.

And up.

I am not sure what happened to this maple but it is holding on too.  The hardwood is dead but it seems to be doing fine.  You can see the live vain thickening on both sides of the cavity.

Leaves, leaves everywhere (12/8/2017)

Fall is almost over, and winter is about to start. Our neighborhood has all the icons of late fall mixed in with the signs of early winter.  The inflatable turkeys are being replaced by inflatable Santa’s, but worse, all over the side of the roads we see stacks and stacks of plastics bags filled with leaves.  People that live along the wood line in our neighborhood blow or dump the leaves in in the woods.  I guess they don’t realize that they create a fire trap for themselves.  They have piled up this huge layer of incendiary biomass that if it ever catches fire would create a spectacle with embers that would definitively fly everywhere (read their roofs).  Interestingly, I was teaching the people who maintain the trails back in the woods and I told them where I live. The first question they asked me was: “Are you one of those leaf dumpers?”  My emphatic answer was: “NO!”

It's all in a day's work!  Kids could really have fun with this, building forts, except they are a favorite target of many of the male dogs in our neighborhood.

During one of my workshops I teach a course on soil amendments where I talk about plant nutrition and compost.  I always get a few laughs and definitely a few smiles when I tell my students that plants are different than us bipeds or animals in general.  We humans need hamburgers and French-fries to sustain our selves (unless you are a vegetarian or a health nut, of course); but, I tell my students, plants make their own hamburger and French-fries.  All they need is sunshine, water and some boring minerals.  I pop up a list of all these boring minerals and discuss the three most important ones: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.  I tell my eager students what the function of these three elements is in the plants.  Nitrogen for leaf growth and protein production; Phosphorus for (root) growth, DNA and energy; and Potassium for flowering, and energy.  If you are a biologist, I know, this is very a very simplistic and rudimentary explanation, but so be it.

If plants needed to hamburgers and French-fries to survive they would need to look like this carnivorous mushroom.  Naturally this is completely fictitious!  Happy they don't exist, although meat eating plants or carnivorous plants do exist.

Maybe difficult to see, but these are pitcher plants hidden under the grass.  These plants are carnivorous and capture bugs.  I took this picture in June in Newfoundland, Canada.  

I tell the folks under my tutelage that in the fall trees shed a lot of Phosphorus in their leaves.  Leaves are full of DNA, RNA, Chlorophyll, Mitochondria, and ATP which all have their fair share of Phosphorus, and a lot of this Phosphorus rains down in the fall with the leaves.  Subsequently, a lot of people rake the leaves up and dispose them in a landfill (as I tell my students, their dumb neighbors do that, and I am sure they don’t).  The only way the trees get that phosphorus back in the leaves next spring, is by pulling it out of the soil (if there is still some left after all those years of carting leaves off to the landfill or dumping it in the woods somewhere).  In fact, people that bag their leaves, mine phosphorus out of their soil and the only way they could get it back is by paying the fertilizer companies or start a seagull colony in their backyard, but who wants to do that.  Alternatively, they could use a mulching mower and grind the leaves into small pieces so that the leaves can decompose and the Phosphorus can leach back into the soil.  Folks could also compost their own leaves and turn them in to black gold; use them as mulch; or send them to a composting facility.  However, they still would be mining Phosphorus when they send them to a composting facility, unless they buy compost and put it back in their yard.

In addition to returning the nutrients back to the soil (organically), the leaves in the flower beds provide habitat to the animals in the yard, especially the birds.  In my yard, the towhees, fox sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, juncos (in the winter) and the brown thrashers are running around the leaves and are scratching for bugs like chicken.  Whatever goes for a lawn in my yard has a lot of mole, vole or maybe even shrew tunnels.  I don't know if it is true but they say that chipping your leaves gives you a lot of soil insects, such as grubs, which attracts these critters.  Oh well, I rather have this than poisoning my environment.  We are harming our planet enough already that I think that all small things help, and we try to keep all poisons and chemical fertilizers out of our yard if we can.  I use chemical fertilizers on my bonsais but I use soapy water to fight off any bug infestation in my miniature trees.

We really should try to do our part for the environment even if it is a little bit.  A small steps help.  Thinking that your use of fertilizers or pesticides do not contribute much to the whole picture is erroneous; damage is cumulative, it all adds up.  All those small positive things add up too, and while we may not notice it in our life time, our kids or grand kids surely will.  We only have one blue marble to live on.

So let's not bury our leaves in landfills and mine nutrients from property to replenish them with artificial nutrients.  However, let's recycle, compost and reuse them.

Too many hobbies?: Bonsai lessons in the woods (11/28/2017)

When it comes to hobbies, I am multifarious.  My mother always complained that I knew a little about too many things: “A Jack of all trades, master of none.”  My mother was probably correct.  This is why our home is such a mess, there is always so much going on in our lives; but I guess that keeps life interesting.  We hardly have any time for TV watching.  I wrote about this a little bit in 2015, but after this weekend it is time to revisit this subject. 

My hobbies include nature and forest bathing, sailing, photography, bonsai, hiking and biking, to name a few.  This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend and our daughter was visiting, which meant some intensive walking in the woods, or as we know it “#optoutside.”  Optoutside was started by an outdoor outfitter company as their answer to the shopping craze of Black Friday, where (I think) half of the U.S.A. goes absolutely crazy and goes shopping for deals and for Christmas gifts.  So, on Friday and Saturday morning we did a 3-mile walk in the woods, before lunch.

Taking the dogs for a walk, early in the morning before all the heavy walking later in the day.  However, it gave me the urge to look at the trail from the height of a dog's head.  Naturally they do not see red or green and have a greater sense of smell.

The two walks were a great excuse for me to combine a few of my hobbies:  hiking, bonsai growing, photography, nature and forest bathing.  The forest bathing part sometimes had to play second fiddle, my company became impatient at times with me lingering in the woods and taking it all up.  But I did have some time to assimilate it all, especially when they took our older dog on a shorter path home and I was allowed to take the longer trail with the younger dog.

During our walk I encountered this dead tree that was infested by termites and obviously, the woodpeckers had discovered them as well.

Jut a bit off the trail I noticed this tree with this large gall or growth.  At first I wondered if it was a swarm of bees or even a nest, but no it seemed to be solid wood.  I walk this trail a lot and it was the first time I noticed it.

I am trying to grow bonsai.  I wrote about that before, as well.  Some of my trees are as old as my daughter; they were started from seed by a friend of mine who was a native plant grower 30 years ago.  They are not perfect at all; I have ignored them for a long time and am finally getting back into them in the past 3 years or so.  They were root bound and in horrible shape; I am surprised that they survived my abuse (read neglect) for that long.  Some of my best specimens did die the 30 years of moving from New Mexico to Ohio and now the last 17 years in Virginia.  Since getting back into it, I have been following a few YouTube channels and blogs about growing them and learned a lot (I will post a list of the ones I follow below). 

In bonsai root over rock is a style.  During our walk we found a root over root.  Pretty cool how the dogwood roots are growing over the mature oak root.  I assume that the soil has eroded away, or maybe the oak root has pushed up as part of the growth process.

One of my favorite channels is the one of Nigel Saunders.  Nigel is very strong on developing a good evenly spreading root system and he encourages people to study the plants they grow in nature and try to copy them.  So, this weekend I spent a lot of time taking pictures of the bases of trees and studying how the roots come out of them (I also wrote about them before in that previous bonsai blog and in one specifically about roots).

One of my favorite examples of a well spread root system on an American beech.  There were lots of nice examples to look at during our walk.

Having little to no leaves on the trees, I was also able to study the branch structure in the canopy; although in our woods there is a lot of competition for light and the first 30 to 60 feet of most of the tree trunks are bare without many branches.  Still it was fun to look at.  Even in these situations did I see what Nigel alludes to about branching: the second set of branches coming out at about 2/3 the distance of the first set of branches; and that a trunk divides into two and then again divide into two, and so on.  All things to keep in mind when creating realistic miniature trees.  During our walk there was one slope where the trees had a particularly wild branching structure and I lingered in that area for a bit, and took a few pictures.

Last, a study photo of the branch structure in one of the trees during my walk.  Maybe something I can try to copy in the design of one of my trees.

After a long weekend like this I felt motivated and inspired to work on my trees.  I addition I feel rested but exercised, mentally recharged from being out in the woods, and I just feel good from bathing in the woods (figuratively that is, although I still would like to build an outdoor shower).  Naturally it helped that I got so many likes on some of the photographs that I posted on my Instagram site as well, for as the research shows even that give you an endorphin rush; you do not even need to go out into the woods and exercise to get a runners high!  However, nothing beats forest bathing.

Now for some of the YouTube channels that I follow:
Nigel Saunders
MikBonsai (he also has a great Facebook page)
Appalachian Bonsai 
Bonsai Talk
Bonsai & Killifish

Blogs that I follow:
Adam Levine (he has a great Instagram page)
Flemish Bonsai Blog
Robin Bonsai
Maros Bonsai Blog

I also love the work that Harry Harrington does.

I am a trainer: The classes that I teach (11/13/2017)

If you are a regular visitor, by now you should know that I give day long workshops throughout the state of Virginia.  I do it for a living and in general I do on to two day-long workshops each week.  I will detail the workshops below, but first a brief explanation.

An updated photograph from 2019 during teleworking times.  I somehow lost the original pic.

We have a mandatory certification program for people working in Erosion and Sediment Control and in Stormwater Management.  In the distant past I used to be in charge of that program, and taught the certification classes.  However, the program was moved from one government department to another, and guess what?  I lost my job as manager of the program.  This is what usually happens with mergers, so it did not come as a surprise.  What surprised me was that they kept me, I was actually afraid of being laid-off or moved to a different job.  However, my current supervisor understood my love of course development, teaching, public speaking, and my life experience.  So, I am still allowed to do what I love to do these things: but especially teach.

Actually, one of the things I was asked to do was to step away from teaching the regular classes and to develop a number of classes that go deeper into the various subjects discussed in our certification classes.  We call these classes our Continuing Education classes; although the other day I called them the Special Ed. classes.  In my classes I stay away from my political opinion (although my regular readers now I have one), I am somewhat of a lecturer, but try to be Socratic at times.  So what classes did I develop and teach?

Integration of Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Program – This was the first course I developed.  It dealt with the transition from one department to another and the adoption of the then new stormwater management regulations.  I talked about how the two laws and regulations interacted and complemented each other.  Many of the Erosion and Sediment Control professionals were all the sudden faced with having to deal with enforcing the new Stormwater regulations and having to deal with a new State agency.  This was a very intense 6-hour class; it also introduced a lot of controversial new regulatory issues.

Plan Review Using the Older Standards – Since the adoption of the new Stormwater Management Regulations there were a group of older (grandfathered) stormwater structures that needed to be reviewed by folks who had never reviewed them before.  We teach the review of the new Low Impact Development (LID) Best Management Structures (BMPs) in our regular classes, so this class was for the review of some of the older more traditional ones.  This was another intense 6-hour class.

Erosion and Sediment Control Inspector Refresher Class – Everyone needs a refresher class so now and then; to go back and to hear it all again.  I end this class with a Bingo game.  This is a fun filled, very interactive 5.5-hour class.

Native Plants for Stormwater and Erosion and Sediment Control – Being a Plant Ecologist by training, this class was my first real hobby class.  I love doing this class and people seem to enjoy it as well.  I will be redesigning it this winter a bit, and will de-emphasize the law and regulations a bit and add more discussion about the various plants (that is what I also one of the comments in the evaluations of the class I received).  One or two people have an issue with me bringing up evolution and natural selection in this class.  So be it.  This is a very intense 6-hour class.

Applied Soils for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is another one of my favorite courses.  I developed this with a dear friend of mine.  We taught it together until he left the department; and now I am on my own.  In this class I deal with soils in three ways.  I look at it from the agriculture (USDA) side, the hydrology side and the engineering (Unified Soil Classification) side.  Then I try to tie it in to our job in construction as it relates to erosion and stormwater management.  This is a great 5-hour class.

Wetlands for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is not a class intended to turn people into wetland delineators.  While I worked as a delineator for over 15 years, that is not the intent of this class.  What I do in this class is teach inspectors and plan reviewers to recognize “red flags” and know what to do when they see them.  I also want them to know how to react to sediment releases in wetlands.  This past week I taught the last of this class in its current format.  I will be redesigning it and taking a lot of the discussion on law and regulations out of it and putting it on-line.  For the rest, I again want to make it more hands-on and show pictures of plant species (invasive and typical wetland species) to get people more in to it.  This is a 6 to 6.5-hour class.

 SWPPP Inspections – This is the most interactive class of the bunch, with a class exercise.  We discuss the development of a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, the different elements and the inspection of a site for compliance with the SWPPP and the Pollution Prevention Plan (P2).  This is a great 5-hour class.

Where the water goes – A class subtitled “Hydrology for Inspectors.”  A class that deals with the flow of water on a construction site.  How water behaves itself on slopes, why it matters and what we do to mitigate for its effect.  We discuss how we manage the flow of water on a site and examine a lot of “how-not-to” photographs.  I love this 6-hour course.

Soil Amendments for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Management Professionals – This is a 3-hour course divided into two parts.  The first part deals with the use of compost and fertilizers in the restoration after construction has been completed.  In the second part we discuss the use of special soil mixes for bio-retention areas.

Photography for Inspectors – This is also a 3-hour course that I usually do in combination with the previous course.  As readers of my blog may know, I am somewhat of a photographer and I have been trained in it.  I teach the do’s and don’ts for inspectors as well as some of the photographic theory. 

Finally, I am in the process of developing some more classes (no rest for the weary).  But it keeps my brain going, it keeps me young.  I often joke, that I roll out of my motel bed in the morning and look on my sign-in sheet what class I am teaching that day; for sure, never a boring day.

In addition to all these classes, I also do some workshops on request here and there that are hybrids between these classes.  As I tell my students, if you have ideas for classes let me know.

   

I will also entertain special requests to teach any of these classes or any workshop where ever you are.