Phutu...or is it?

11/18/2003 Hmm, I just realized that I never attached that link to the article that I wrote about collecting redwoods...here it is. I have been plugging away at the house but not at any greater rate than usual. I managed to procure some baboo for the backyard at no cost, mostly thanks to my friend Tim from the bonsai club. I made a planter for it and put it between the end of the deck and the neighbors house. It makes a big difference actualy. I also put a little out at the far end of the yard.

I went hiking yesterday instead of working on the kitchen. There is a space underneath the kitchen cabinets that I left accesible so that I could put in drawers eventually. Monday I started by constucting the drawers; then I figured out what to put on the front of them so that they wouldn't look unfinished. I decided that it should be painted white so that it matches the baseboard moulding around the rest of the room. I got all the pieces made, and put a coat of finish on them...but then decided that I didn't want to actually put them all together and complete the project. Instead I took off and drove to Mount Diablo, which is about and hour east of the city. It was a nice afternoon...I hiked around in the open hills, looking at the oak trees and thinking how they would make some great bonsai if I had a shrinking ray. I may have gotten some more poison oak on my leg...but it hasn't shown up yet.

There are some great trees up there. It's nice to see a little of the native landscape so near to city still intact. Taking a page from a book I read by John Muir, I stopped at one point and climbed up a multi-trunked live oak:

"We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day; while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings- many of them not so much."

Even on a calm day I found it a little scary as I swung from trunk to trunk making my way ever higher. I remember that when I was young, living in the country, I climbed trees all the time. I even climbed almost all the way to the top of the huge walnut tree in our back yard...but when you are pushing thirty and a little overweight things are different. I tried to squeeze between two of the trunks at one point and found that I couldn't. I shimmied around instead. Muir climbed trees in the middle of storms for the thrill, but I found that smelling the dampness of the lichen-covered bark, feeling the rough scales under my grip, and leaning against one trunk while standing on another to be quite enough of a thrill.

Of course, in the end I had to climb back down. And then drive home. Back to my kitchen cabinets, unfinished because I was climbing trees. Even worse, now I have to go to work. So I can't climb more trees, and I don't have time to finish the cabinets. Everything in time I suppose. As you can see, I did manage to patch the floor in the livingroom and to get up most of the railing on the deck...I still have to do the railing for the stairs.

10/26/2003
10/13/2003
9/20/2003
9/14/2003
8/13/2003
7/29/2003
7/19/2003
7/8/2003
7/1/2003
6/3/2003
5/29/2003
4/22/2003
3/18/2003
2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

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