Phutu...ok now it's winter...

3/13/2005 Oh how life will pass you by when you aren't paying attention. I've been doing a little of this and a little of that for the past month and a half. I feel a little swamped with the imminent birth of our son and a bonsai show and work. Baby Schrader is due on the 15th, but there is no sign as of this moment that he will be arriving on time.

I've been doing a lot of hiking in the past few weeks. I went out to Morgan Territory in the east bay and I went down to Castle Rock state park and Big Basin state park in the last couple weeks. The Santa Cruz mountains are fast becoming my new favorite hiking area. I hiked from the visitors center in Big Basin to the top of Pine mountain where I found true to its name a ton of really cool pine trees. These were knobcone pines. Don't tell the ranger, I collected a cone and brought it back. After putting it in the toaster oven to pop it open I took all the seeds and sowed them in a flat to see if I can make some good bonsai. Knobcone pines only shed their seeds after fires, so the toaster is needed to melt the pitch that seals them closed. The pines on top of pine mountain are growing in really poor Serpentine rock based soil. It makes them grow slowly, which makes them interesting to me. My hiking endeavors have been in part a reaction to my recent gaining of some weight. I tend to gain a little weight over the winter months but this was a little more than I wanted so I decided that I should make my days off a little more active. I had been helping Shane with his house but it is coming along nicely and I needed a change. Morgan Territory was a cow infested place, but on the whole it was interesting. I ran across a bunch of Native American grinding rocks. These are hollows in large rocks where the natives ground acorns into acorn meal. They are found under trees that were typically good acorn pruducers. Romi had a great time at Morgan, no leash needed, he ran around like a dog out of hell for three hours...then was sacked out for two days in recovery.

Dory has been feeling up and down...up when it is nice and her back isn't hurting and down when her back hurts and her legs are so tired that she can't walk for more than a minute. As I understand it baby is currently cutting off much of the blood flow to her legs.

I spent much of the month of February repotting my bonsai. It is important to do so on a regular basis to keep them healthy, but it also gives you a chance to improve your container selection. I've been thinking that I might build another bench or two in the yard to accomodate more trees...I also worked last week on finishing the fence, which I half tore apart over the summer and then neglected to put back together. Anyway, next time I write I'm sure to be a sleepless father :-)

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

I've removed the 2003 entries from this page but you can click on some of the earlier 2004 entries to reach them.

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