Phutu...kamikaze...

11/17/2005Bryce and I have been hiking regularly again, but shorter hikes these days, many times just around our neighborhood. But yesterday we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and headed up into the Marin headlands for a less familiar although still short hike. It was quite sunny and warm for the middle of November, but as many people say, winter is the nicest season here in the city. I have been less snowed under with photo research work in the past month than I was previously so I have been taking the opportunity to go out and explore the city. Bryce and I went to the zoo on the first Tuesday of this month, when it has free admission, but I wasn't impressed. It's really sad actually; the place is quite old and plainly is not getting as much money as it needs to maintain itself. About half the areas within the zoo were closed, and many of the habitats were quite old and beat-up looking. I was imagining that most of the buildings had been built by the military durning World War 2 and had just been converted.

I decided that a visit to some gardens would be far more interesting than the zoo had been; so the following weekend Dory, Bryce and I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers, which is a tropical plant showcase. We happened to be there for the first day of the new orchid exhibit; I was fascinated by the plethora of shapes and sizes, but mostly I was interested in the very smallest ones because they make good companions to bonsai. There is a large atrium in the center with palms and ferns which is a "lowland tropical forest," but I found that the section containing the "highland tropical forest" was much more interesting, there were a couple cases on the wall containing tiny orchid plants as well as fake tree structures that were covered in plants including orchids and other epiphytes.

I've also been catching up on much of my bonsai maintenence while Bryce is napping during the day. Winter is a time in bonsai to evaluate what has been accomplished over the past growing season. I was quite pleased to see some dramatic improvement in many of my trees. In particular, I cut many of the longer little branches off my maple to make the tree more compact, and wired up a couple pines so that they look well groomed. Just last night I took a little juniper that I had almost given up on and worked on it for a few hours. I was so thrilled with the change that I could hardly stop thinking about the tree today. With all the hiking that I have been doing I am sometimes frustrated by the simplicity and commonality of many of the bonsai that I see. This tree, once I had worked on it, reminded me of many of the trees that I see while hiking.

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
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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

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