Winter, love it or hate it (1/20/2023)

Having been born and grown up in the tropic I never particularly like cold, cloudy, dreary weather. As a novelty it is fine: a “snowstorm”, a few inches of snow, a day below freezing and a night around 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 degrees C). But to me it gets old very quickly, I like it above 80. Strangely enough, winters in Gallup, NM were tolerable. There nights might dip to 15 below zero Fahrenheit or negative 26 C, while during the day it would still go up to 40 degrees (4.4 C). The advantage of living in the high desert of New Mexico (7000 feet or about 2100 meters above sea level) is that it was sunny almost every day and that compensated for a lot of the temperature swings we experienced.

So, was this feeling of dread in the winter caused by seasonal affected disorder (SAD) and the lack of sunshine, or my hatred of the cold winter season? I really don’t know, maybe both. I know one thing, ever since COVID I have been working at home and my home office has a lot of my tropical bonsais and plants around. Yes, my greenhouse is too small to house them all. I run several grow lights on timers to allow these plants to survive, and I am constantly radiated by these lights when working here in my home office. I know that my mood has been much better in winter since COVID and maybe it is all these grow lights, who knows? Maybe it is all the oxygen I am bathing in released by those plants in my home office, or the walks with the dogs in the woods behind our home I have every morning. Or all the above?

Believe it or not, this was not what I wanted to write about when I started this morning. But if you know me, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and my fingers tend to go where no fingers have gone before, on this keyboard at least; this is what came out up to now.

Back to the subject “du jour,” or subject of intention. What I do like of winter is my ability to see the branch profile of trees. As a dilettante in bonsai, I have this perverse interest in the profile of trees, and the best time to examine this is in winter. You can clearly see the branch patterns, the ramification of the branches, basically how the canopies of the trees are constructed. I can learn how to duplicate that in my trees. Study how oaks do it versus maples, even versus pines. You can see oddities that you might want to try to copy on your benches. More and more growers aim to mimic the natural growth habit of their miniature trees to what the mature counterparts look like in nature. In the past they wanted to make something strange, now it is more “does it represent what you see in the natural environment?” I love it.

I find that there is always something different and new to see in winter. In the summer many of the trees and canopies are obscured by leaves (you must be my age to notice all my hidden rock music and other non-original references/plagiarisms today). It is important to be able to see things in real life and on the trees on my benches. This winter I have been studying both and slowly pruning the trees on the benches. I might actually start thinking about repotting some of my trees, if it was not going to rain this Sunday. I need to get a jump on the season, this year I have a lot that need work done. There is of course a risk of some heavy frost until the end of February; however, if I keep track of the ones I repotted, I could move them into the greenhouse or the garage for a night or two if it gets too cold.

Concluding, while I miss the tropics and used to loath the winters for it’s cold, damp, dismal, dark and dreary days or even stretch of days, I am starting to appreciate them for what the bring when I am out and about. I also like it because it allows me to see the profile and structure of my trees unencumbered by leaves and it forces me to prepare for repotting season.

I just enjoy looking up to see how the branch structure is in trees because that is what we try to mimic in our bonsai.  This simply profile is just nice to look at.

This is a closeup of the picture above.  Somehow two trees grew together and formed this bizarre looking tree that almost looks like a man with two legs.  During the summer there is a hedge here and this was the first time I discovered it. 

New Year's Resolutions (1/13/2023)

It is already halfway into the first month of the New Year, and I am wondering how many of you have failed your resolutions already. I have decided that I don’t like to participate in this fad. Why the hell do I have to clean the (my) slate only once a year and resolve to do better? Maybe I should do this every morning when I wake up or Monday morning at the beginning of the work week? How about the first of the month?

Sorry, here I am pontificating that I am perfect and don’t need to better myself. Far from it. This chubby, or at least slightly overweight guy (actually, my BMI chart tells me that I am borderline obese), who, I gladly admit has numerous flaws? However, this is not a confession booth, sorry! Moreover, I am not Catholic.

I just hate all these people with good intentions that obviously will fall by the wayside. Sorry folks! I was a member of the YMCA, when I lived in Cincinnati in the 90s. I used to go to the gym at least once a week on Saturdays. When I was not traveling for work, I would go at least one additional evening during the week. After we moved to the Tidewater, I worked out briefly at the Jewish Community Center in Virginia Beach, which was next door to my office at the time. Later, in Williamsburg we went to Ironbound Gym in Newtown (Williamsburg). I never was fanatic, but I did enjoy the rowing machines and the weight machines. The past seven or so years before COVID we did yoga every Monday evening at our community center. Did I lose any weight? I don’t think so, but I do think my body looked a bit better proportioned. It just definitely made me feel good and science tells me it might allow me to live a better longer life.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, regardless of what activity I participated in, every January there was an influx of folks with good intentions. There were lines at the weight machines, at the rowing machines, and you had to come early to get a good spot in yoga so this guy, who is hard of hearing, could hear the instructor. Thank goodness after about four weeks the crowds were gone, and things returned to normal for the rest of the year; the resolutions were forgotten. People were disillusioned. I really think that if you try to change a habit once a year it will be difficult to make it stick!

Science tells us that in order to make something a habit you need to do it at least 4 to 6 weeks or so in a row. I googled “Making Habits Stick” and got recipes to do it in 3, 5 or 18 steps. For example, Nike gave me the following three steps: habit stacking (or connect it to an already existing habit you have); make incremental changes (start slow); and turn inwards (figure out why you want to do it, or what is your motivation). Nike also tells me not to be disappointed if you miss a day, or two, or three. Get back on that proverbial horse. I looked at others from CNN, Forbes, and a guy from lifehacks. I agree with some of their prescriptions and hate others. They just get too complicated or just plain dumb. Lifehack is stupid in my eyes 18 point, now keep track of that, it would need to become a brand-new habit.

I particularly like Nike’s step two. I think all these New Year’s resolutions make you take the “big leap” and I think that is what sets a lot of people up for failure. Let’s go all in on the New Year! Nope. That is not the right way to approach it and that is one reason why I hate them; even the dry (no alcohol) January (or whatever they call it). I admit it, I love a good microbrew or a glass of good wine.

OK friends, while I am not discouraging resolutions, now you know why I don’t make any. Yes, I have already made an appointment with and gone to my dermatologist for my first annual skin test after COVID. I missed two years, and I am glad to report that all is well. As you see, I keep working on myself and hope you all do as well.

Happy 2023.

One thing I'll keep doing in the new year is walking and enjoying nature.

It’s cold outside, bonsais in the frost (12/27/2022)

I am sure that almost everyone knows by now that we have been in for some amazing weather here in the eastern two thirds of north America. We were hit by the polar vortex and what is called a bombogenesis. It was something that was predicted some time ago, I even wrote about it in a post a week ago and predicted that I might need to write my final year’s post about it. Well, here I go.

My main concern was how the greenhouse would hold up to winds approaching hurricane force and temperatures around 10 degrees Fahrenheit or around -12 degrees Celsius. I have most of my tropical trees in the greenhouse and as you can see in the photograph included with this post, I have two small heaters installed in the place. One heater of 700 watts comes on based on where I set it; while the other is 1200 and is connected to my thermostat which switches it on at 42.5 degrees (or 5.8 C). I think this is still pretty darn cold for some of my trees, and I hoped it works. Before the weather blew in, we had some freezing nights, and the greenhouse could handle it well, eventually putting the nighttime temperatures around 45 to 50 degrees.

With the cold coming in, I was nervous, and I also needed to connect our birth bath heater coil to the same outlet. I had planned to wake up every few hours that first night to make sure all went well. We went to bed at around 11 and the temperatures outside had already dropped to 15. The temperature in the greenhouse was a comfortable 55. I felt good. I woke up at 12:30 checked the temperature in the greenhouse with my remote temperature gauge and it read 29 degrees, 3 degrees below freezing. Holy shit! My trees!

I went on the deck naked (we old hippies still sleep in the nude, but boy it was cold 15 degrees being nude on our deck) to push in the ground fault interrupt that did not do it and then I figured out that it must be the breaker. Back inside I found the tripped breaker, reset it and I noticed that a light in the greenhouse came on. This is an indicator light on the extension cord showing it has power.

Now what triggered this? The only explanation I had is the coil that keeps the bird bath water from freezing. It pulls 200 watts and must have been working overtime. I went back to bed without further thinking about it, but after a brief discussion with my wife we decided that I should unplug the thing and dump the water out of the bath to prevent it from cracking.

So, out of bed and downstairs I went. I pulled on my ski parka over my nude body, slipped on some shoes and stumbled outside in the dark and cold to get the job done. Boy, that was cold on the bare legs, buttocks and elsewhere. I described it to a friend, and he wondered about any shrinkage, honestly, I had no time to think about that issue; in addition, it was way too cold for that, so let’s not go there in this post.

Once reset, within minutes the greenhouse was back above 32. I woke up two additional times that night and the temperatures hovered around 45. In the morning the outside temperature was 7.5 degrees or about -13.6 Celsius.

I am not sure if I lost any plants, time will tell. Now a few days later things still look ok, but you never know. One of the YouTube shows I watch mentioned that ficus trees in particular might not like colder temperatures, and I have at least six different ones in the greenhouse. It looks like one of my hibiscus trees is suffering as well, but I think that was from before the polar vortex.

It is now after Christmas and temperatures are supposed to warm up the next week. The day-time temperatures in the greenhouse topped 70 degrees in the sunshine today. I am pretty happy.

I expect that this will be the last post of 2022. So, folks, I hope you all have a great New Year. I am looking forward to the new year as well.

The interior of the greenhouse on December 18.  You can see the two heaters on the tile, pointing in two different directions.  The small cube is the 700 watts heater and the cream one in front is the stronger one.  I had put the tile and cinderblocks in as heat sinks in the hope to moderate the temperature swings.

Rural development mis-steps (12/19/2022)

I suspected already that my end of year post would not be the last. The reason was that Christmas weekend the nighttime temperatures were going to dip to 18 or so degrees Fahrenheit or almost -8 degrees centigrade. I figured that was probably worth a post on my greenhouse performance and bonsais.

Little did I realize that our Governor would get me riled up in the meantime. I have started to call him tRumpkin; however, his real name of course is Younkin. So, what has Younkin (a.k.a. tRumpkin) been up to this past week to get me back to writing a political post again?

For one, tRumpkin is proposing stricter abortion rules in his new budget. All my readers know that even as a full-blooded male, I am fearlessly in favor of women’s right, and very pro-choice, or better in favor of allowing women to choose what to do to their own body. As you can see in this paragraph, I have written many posts on it and if you like to read more opinions of mine check these out. I will not go into it any further here.

There was another thing that our governor who seems to be completely out of touch with reality wants to do. According to tRumpkin and his Homebuilders’ Association cronies, there seems to be a shortage of affordable housing. Actually, I can somewhat agree with them this far. But now comes where we diverge. In his ultimate stupidity (he thinks it is wisdom) tRumpkin wants to ask/mandate the counties, cities, towns to open their rural areas to smaller lot sizes and thus allow denser development in these areas.

Rural areas around us typically allow lot sized of 3 acres (about 1.2 hectare) or larger. This would allow for the location of a septic system since these rural areas are typically not serviced by public sewer. Moreover, these large lots usually support larger homes that are built by more affluent folks, we often tend to call them MacMansions since they all tend to look somewhat alike or cookie cutter. I am sure that all these richer folks in their four- and five-bedroom homes will welcome a neighborhood with half or quarter acre lots and low to middle income folks nearby. Oh, and maybe some townhouses anyone and a dollar general which is the only place some of these folks can only afford to shop? I am not being disparaging, condescending, or facetious, but I can predict their reaction: “not in my back yard (NIMBY).” Younkin lives on a private 30 acre horse farm in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Virginia. I am sure he will subdivide his land and make it available for the construction of low-income housing.

In addition to this tRumpkin proposed to make all this development a bit easier by relaxing the wetland and other environmental regulations. He saw this one correctly, I teach in my classes that all the easy-to-develop land has already been taken, and the remaining land has issues. It either has horrible soils and cannot infiltrate water and is unsuitable for septic and stormwater management, or is a wetland, you name it, it has issues. So, let’s build these lower income neighborhoods in or near wetland areas or other marginal areas. Wetland areas flood more frequently, who cares a little mold won’t kill them, and if they get sick, that is what we have the emergency rooms for or the 24 hour clinics down in the strip malls. The folks in the MacMansions live high and dry and if something happens to them, God forbid, they have insurance, and the government will bail them out.

Furthermore, let’s not talk about paving over nature in the age of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental disasters (boy, I already wrote about this in 2015). Let’s all migrate to the countryside and pave it over. tRumpkin’s proposal is going to make this all worse. Abandon the inner-city, instead of redeveloping it and making it more livable. More livable inner cities like in Europe would attract younger folks from all walks of life as well as lower income folks. This would work, as long as we make them livable and erase the food deserts that exist in many of our inner cities.

No, Governor Glenn Younkin you are out of touch with reality while living your sheltered life on your 30-acre horse farm. I am sorry, but you are not a man of the people, you are a conservative elite who has never worked a decent job in his life. I want to bet that you do not even know the price of a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread or a bale of hay for your horses.

This red oak grows in the Colonial Battlefield National Park.  It is one of the stately trees grows in a grove.  It is actually one of the smaller ones, but what impressed me on the morning I took this picture was the shadows on the trunk that shows the live veins which are a sign of advanced age or development.  Thank goodness, Glenn Younkin's proposals cannot harm this grove; however, if it depends on him, these trees would go to the lumber mill or worse the paper plant and the area would become another subdivision.

December 2022 (12/15/2022)

December: it is that time of the year again. Many of the “How to blog” websites tell you it is time to write a year in review post. Should I, or shouldn’t I? I am writing this as I am sitting in my hotel room in Lynchburg, under much better circumstances than my last visit to the area around the end of March. It was the same day we put our dog Jake to sleep, and I had a rough time driving and staying here. I drank and ate too much that evening, and it wasn’t even satisfying. Oh well, isn’t that the case that many drunks or overeaters feel afterwards? Did I learn anything from that? Tonight, I did, I just had one and a half beer and some nice Japanese food. Back in my room before 7 and now behind the keyboard.

While I am not sure if I will publish this post tonight or even during my stay here in Lynchburg tonight or tomorrow evening, I do feel compelled to write a little bit about the year and about life in general. Life this year has been good. We are back from COVID (although I read it is back in an upswing); we are wondering at times if we had it in June when we suffered from a summer cold but tested negative, once. I decided to take part in a medical experiment and took an experimental RSV vaccine. Our daughter got married and we are still paying for it. Oh well, it was worth it and fun. A week before the wedding we moved my 95-year-old father-in-law from independent living to assisted living. In other words, July was an absolute blur. It was an insane three weeks for us, but it was Nietzsche (I think) who said, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” We definitely gained a lot of strength in July, and we are still drinking wedding beer, or better I am using it as the liquid in some of the bread I am baking, in particular my rye bread.

From this year’s posts you can see that I still travel for work and teach. Again, today my supervisor wanted to know how long he can still rely on my or in other words, when I will retire. Loyal readers know that I struggle with this. I enjoy teaching, but then I feel I also need to spend more time with my bonsai trees. I have a greenhouse now, and it looks like that I am getting more serious about those darn little trees. Yes, I have been dabbling around with them for the past 34 years, and in a way, so little to show for. For all those years, I should have had some magnificent trees; but I have ignored them for extended periods during those years. They were pot bound and that does not help their development.

So yes, I am still kicking and screaming, working, complaining that I am getting old and decrepit, politically active, baking bread, hiking, forest bathing, and bonsai growing. I love my beers, although it seems that my taste is changing from IPAs to black lagers. I am getting bored with American restaurant food (I assume that this is because I am eating out so much during my travels) and I am starting to like Japanese food best.

While not a true a look back on the past year, I hope this is somewhat of a review of my life to-dated. As I alluded to in a similar post last year, maybe it isn’t very Buddhist to look back (and live or dwell in the past). It may be better to live in the present and prepare for the road ahead. As I recently mentioned, I am in a good place mentally, I have been feeling happy lately. Hopefully 2023 will be as good or even better. But who knows, I might get inspired to write another post this year. Cheers!

Having breakfast at the hotel (The Virginian by Hilton in Lynchburg).  This is absolutely a nice hotel.  I visited two microbreweries: 3 Roads which was OK and Star Hill, a satalite brewery from the main one in the Charlottesville area which was great.  Lunch was in Rustburg and dinner at El Jefes Tacos (good) and Mizumi Japanese Bistro (absolutely great).