Phutu...or is it?

3/18/2003 I spent most of my weekend working on the house. I got up at 5 am this morning and worked straight through until eleven on insulating and drywalling the bathroom. At that point I stopped to go help my friend Tim Kong move his Bonsai. This wednesday through Sunday is our annual big show. You would think that bonsai would be easy to carry...being that they are small...but when a bonsai is three feet tall and the pot two feet across they can end up weighing almost a hundred pounds. I spent the better part of two hours loading show trees and sales trees into his van and my truck. I stopped by my house on the way to the cow palace to pick up my little maple. The leaves have gotten quite large but I trimmed off a couple so that the shape was right and brought it down to the show. Tim is the one that arranges everything; he tells people in the club that every person is allowed at least one tree. I am happy to say that he put mine in among all the others...it looks a little less magnificent but I'm learning, so my trees should look as if they are learning too.

I had a lot of fun. My shoulders are kinda' sore. I bought a cascade style Black Pine. I'm sure I'll put photos of it up on the site sometime soon. Until then check out the photos of my maple two weeks ago, three weeks ago and eight months ago.

3/16/2003 Well, I have been doing a lot lately but I haven't managed to get it up here on the site. I keep taking photos and then leaving them on my computer at work...which doesn't help when it comes time to put up a new page. This past Monday and Tuesday Dory and I went up to Boonville to visit my mom. I had been meaning to make a trip up there because Boonville is really beautiful in the spring while all the hills are still green.

I went hiking while I was up there, mostly to search for potential bonsai material. I've had an urge to get out into nature lately, which probably has something to do with the fact that out my front door is a freeway instead of a forest. So, I spent the better part of two days stumbling up and down steep hills peering into bushes and looking for small redwoods. I managed to find a scrub oak that I dug up and brought back to my house. The damn thing was quite well entrenched in the ground, with a tap root that went down at least four feet; it took nearly a fifteen minutes to dig enough dirt away that I could finally yank it out. In the process I managed to brush up against some poison oak somewhere so I am now sporting a stinging itchy rash on my face and left hand. Fun stuff. To top that off, I found a tick on my back later that night...which I made my mom yank out...she does it all the time for her dogs.

The following day I went back, this time looking for a redwood specifically. I hiked down into a canyon and looked around in the gloomy understory that is ground level in a redwood forest. One thing you can say about redwoods is that not too many seedlings make it. In fact, where there is a full canopy, it is nearly impossible to find one. I wasn't really looking for seedlings anyway, but in the entire three hour hike I found only two trees that were of appropriate size for my interests. I had always been told that Redwood trees don't form strong tap roots so I was a little surprised when I tried to dig one up and found it rooted firmly to the hillside. Standing on a hillside that seemed to be steeper than most stairways, I battled for about thirty minutes before the taproot finally gave in and I stood victorious with a big stick in my hand. It really wasn't much more than a stick; it had two dead tops that I broke off and a live one that had almost no foliage on it. I tried to dig the other one that I found also, but I never did manage to get it out. I tried for almost an hour before giving up with a sore set of shoulders and really muddy feet. This time I checked constantly for ticks and picked two off of my clothes before they managed to bite me.

It was a nice weekend despite the difficulties. Dory and I stayed monday night at the guesthouse of a friend of my mom's. She has a beautiful piece of property with huge oak trees and rolling hills. The view from the living room of her house surveys an entire valley; it was particularly beautiful as the fog rolled out under the rising morning sun. I am ashamed to say that I didn't even think of taking photos through the weekend. Kinda' a shame actually since I really would have liked a photo of some of the trees on her property. I dug about a dozen seedlings out from beneath some of the largest trees and planted them in pots. In about fifty years one of them might be a really nice Bonsai.

3/5/2003 My life has been somwhat unproductive for the last week or so...I am recovering from a combination cold/allergy attack which left me feeling less than wonderful. On top of that some crazy guy almost killed one of my neighbors. Damn crazy crazy people. Yesterday the street was crawling with news vans all day. I had to duck and cover to evade the reporters. I did manage to get my acorns planted, each one in its own 4" pot sitting on the front porch.

I also managed to at least start building a bench in the back yard on which I will be putting some bonsai trees. I am finding that there are two ways of doing things when it comes to construction. There is the half-assed, you-stupid-idiot don't even plan at all ahead of time, think it up as you go along way and there is the right way. I chose the former. So yesterday I went and got some cheap wood that was already cut into the annoying length of 34 inches. Then I got some galvinized screws and went at it. The biggest problem was that the back yard is sloped. So I started on the uphill side and made the bench a little too high, planning to tier it down. Everything was going along fine until I put the finished surface on top...when I realized that I had made the whole thing too high and too big. So I quit since it was getting dark and decided to re-attack in the morning. I went out there this morning with my handsaw and cut the long section in half so that I could lower half of it. Anyways, this is a boring story and I'm not done with the project anyway.

My mind is feeling less that keen at the moment so I guess that I'll just shut up.

2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

e-Mail Eric