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 10/1/2006 Dory, Bryce and I took a little trip to Michigan for Yom Kippur this past weekend. Apart from the fact that I hate spending five hours on an airplane it was a quite enjoyable trip. I grew up in California, so I am accustomed to seeing golden brown hills all summer, but it was a refreshing reminder of my six years of living in upstate New York to go to a place where everything is green in the summer. The lawns were lush and trees were beginning to show fall foliage. Dory's Grandmother, aunt and parents were there; we all spent a few days visiting and chasing Bryce around the house.I picked up a book titled “Trees of Michigan” while I was in a bookstore and thumbed though it to find out what I was looking at as we drove around. Many of the species seen in and around the towns are cultivated, not native, but the native trees persist in good numbers as well. The state tree of Michigan is the Eastern White Pine, a five-needled pine, much like Japanses five-needle pine, with soft needles, showing a white stripe down the side. The trees look yellowy from a distance and whispy, but still have an upright pine habit. There are far more deciduous species than conifers in Michigan according to this book, and this was basically confirmed by looking around. Most of the conifers are pine or spruce, but in town areas there are many introduced species which muddle the overall picture. Since it was the holidays (Jewish new year for those not in the know) Dory's mom had taken the time to cook up a couple of dinners for us. I for one am partial to home cooked food, it seems to have a quality that even the fanciest restaurant can't duplicate. I can taste the hand of a real person rather than a freezer or something worse in it. She did a great job with chicken parmesian, which I hate cooking because of the frying, and BBQ brisket, which I have never even tried to make, but I can definitely appreciate. After the fast all day on monday, I had never tasted a better combination of Lox, bagels, egg salad and vegetables than we ate for dinner. The bonsai scene in Michigan is much smaller than in California because there is a problem: overwintering. I think that we are quite lucky here in the Bay Area to not really have to worry about protecting trees from the bitter cold of a real winter climate. With typical lows around 20 degrees, and lows for the winter sometimes as low as -15 degrees it is important to take trees off of benches and place them on the ground, covering the pot and soil surface with 3-6 inches of mulch…or to use a cold frame or garage for storage. Unfortunately, this type of chore is somewhat onerous, which perpetuates the mindset that bonsai is difficult. A visit to a local bonsai store showed that most people grow tropicals, which can be overwintered in a bright window of a house, and grown outside in the summer; a sad state of affairs in my opinion since the trees of Michigan have a beauty all their own. If bonsai is the appreciation of Nature through capturing a small piece of it, then growing tropicals in Michigan is not even bonsai. When I returned to my own yard I looked around and counted myself lucky in some ways and unlucky in others. I have a bonsai collection largely made up of conifers, this is in part because they seem to grow better here, and in part because that is my preference. I only have one tree which has shown good fall color, it is a Norway Birch. We bonsai growers here in San Francisco are cursed in a way, because of our warm winter weather, to not really get fall foliage. I look at my Japanese maples, of which I have a half dozen or so, and all I see is brown leaves, some covered in Powdery Mildew, some just burned by the salty air and dry sunny summer. I think I have made the decision that Japanese Maples are not the best trees to grow in San Francisco. Although I have a couple that I don’t think I can part with, I wont be getting any more and I’ll probably sell most of mine to make room for trees that are better suited to this coastal climate. Afterall, you can’t grow tropicals outside in a place like Michigan, so why should we fight nature so hard to grow a tree that likes cold long winters and humid summers in a place like San Francisco. I had the pleasure of escaping for a weekend of hiking a couple weeks ago. I started up at Ebbett's pass on highway 4 and hiked along the Pacific Crest Trail for a while. I had intended to camp, but after consulting the forcast and finding that the low temperature would be around 20 degrees I decided to drive to South Lake Tahoe to stay with my friend CT. After a nice dinner and a warm bed I headed out the next day for another hike along the PCT, this time north from Carson pass. Neither hike was particularly memorable, although I did take photos of some really nice trees. I had been told that there were many great Sierra Junipers up on Carson pass, but I don't think I was in the same area as the person who told me to go there. In any case, I didn't get enough hiking in this summer mostly because I still can't find a suitable partner. My friend Aaron has been too busy to go and I haven't been able to find anyone who is really interested in trees and has the drive to go backpacking. 7/20/2006 5/30/2006 5/20/2006 4/25/2006 3/22/2006 2/22/2006 1/25/2006 12/20/2005 11/17/2005 10/27/2005 10/8/2005 9/11/2005 8/26/2005 8/9/2005 8/1/2005 7/20/2005 7/5/2005 6/17/2005 5/27/2005 5/1/2005 4/15/2005 4/5/2005 3/24/2005 3/13/2005 2/5/2005 12/28/2004 11/29/2004 11/3/2004 10/2/2004 9/10/2004 8/23/2004 8/8/2004 7/21/2004 7/2/2004 6/8/2004 5/4/2004 4/20/2004 3/28/2004 3/10/2004 2/10/2004 1/15/2004 To reach entries prior to January 2004 click on one of the older entries on this list and scroll down to the bottom of that entry. e-mail Eric |