by Rob Loughran
Good!
Cut it off: that’s what old trees look like.
Now for some trimming. Remove all growth from the underside of any branches that grow parallel to the ground. If you cut off a branch that you should’ve kept, don’t worry about it. This is simply a potted plant. With the proper water, ventilation, sunlight, fertilizer and drainage, it will grow back. Open your eyes on your next drive in the countryside. The trees with the most personality are those specimens struck by lightning, munched by deer, misshapen by the wind. Time for Rule #2: “You can’t make a bad bonsai!”
1:28
Time to expose some roots. Use your fingers to rub away some dirt. Poke, scrape, dig. Get your fingernails dirty. Am I being too rough on the tree? Does a a boar or a deer ask that question as they root or nibble
for food at the base of the tree? No.
Expose the roots. What if you scrape away and find nothing interesting? Put the dirt back. Just like a mudslide in nature does to trees in the real world.
1:33
Time to cut back the roots. How much should you cut back? Start with removing half of the root ball. Grab a sharp fishing knife (you want to cut, not tear) and slice right through it. If you come across a thick tap- root prune it as if it were a branch. Does the tree fit in your pot? Probably not. Cut some more. Does it fit now? Probably not. Cut some more.
Don’t worry about drastically reducing the root ball. Remember you eliminated perhaps sixty percent of the tree’s branches. The root ball can be reduced proportionately and the tree’s health won’t be affected.
1:38
Potting the tree. Cover the pot’s drainage holes with rocks and sprinkle some dirt in the bottom of the pot. Place the tree in the pot behind the midline, never dead center. A little to the left or right creates a much more interesting bonsai.
Why?
I don’t really know. I’m certain someone, somewhere, has a convoluted aesthetic theory to explain just why this works. The trees are simply more visually appealing if they aren’t situated dead center.
Time to plant the tree. Have you ever repotted an African violet or a cyclamen? Same thing here. Pack the soil firmly around the roots. Do not use bagged potting soil. Gather dirt from the original pot and mix that with good soil from your garden. Being prodded and pruned and sliced is very traumatic for the plant, don’t add to that trauma by adding a completely different potting soil. Then make sure the surface of the soil isn’t level. The act (not the art, the act) of bonsai isn’t trying to replicate the pampered, landscaped tree growing in front of a bank, but attempting to imitate nature in a small but effective way.
1:45 “Potscaping.”
Where do junipers grow? Swamps? Grasslands? No, they grow in rocky, arid, windswept places. To make your juniper bonsai authentic don’t plant baby tears, Irish Moss, or isotoma as ground cover. Toss on some rocks. Wedge some gravel under an exposed root. Sprinkle on a handful of stones. If you want to place ceramic figures of Buddhist monks or frogs on the bonsai, don’t. This is nature in miniature. Leave the tree alone. Save that ceramic junk for your kids’ model railroad.
1:53
Final trim. Now that the tree is placed in its landscape check to see if there any branches out of place. Do you see anything incongruous? Visually jarring or disruptive? If so, cut it off. Simple. Time for Rule #3: “You can’t make a bad bonsai!”
1:57
Water the heck out of the tree. Soak it. Write Mom a note to place the tree outside in the shade (a little early morning or late afternoon sun won’t hurt it) and feed daily with a very light mixture of fish emulsion and water.
1:59
Congratulate yourself. You’ve just created a bonsai.
2:01
“Rob, have you forgotten about your mother? I know you’ll need a shower. And if you don’t hurry we’ll be late again...”
Mom loved it.
* * *
There is much more to Sonoma County than grapes. This appeared in California Wild: The Magazine of the California Academy of Sciences, 2004:
A “GROUNDBREAKING” HARVEST FOR THE DRY CREEK VALLEY
Tektites are being harvested in one of California’s best wine-growing regions, Sonoma County’s Dry Creek Valley.
Tektites?
Are those red, white, or rosé?
Actually these are dull, black, glassy stones.
Tektites are found in what are known as Strewnfields. There are only five recognized strewnfields worldwide. They are located in Indochina, the Southeastern United States, the Czech Republic, the Gold Coast of Africa, and Australia. However, Professor Rolfe Erickson from Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park has located a sixth strewnfield of tektites. The first ever in the western United States.
In Healdsburg’s Dry Creek Valley.
These strange pebbles, ranging in size from an unshelled almond to a robin’s egg, are being found in vineyards and roadcuts, throughout the valley. The size and shape of these tektites vary throughout the world (button, teardrop, dumbbell, and disc shaped) but the Dry Creek varieties are uniformly ovoid. The latest hypothesis is that these Sonoma County tektites were formed 2.7 million years ago when an asteroid hit the earth. The impact vaporized the surrounding area, pushing up clouds of gas. As the gas froze in space the tektites fell back to earth and were shaped and scarred (called ablation, resulting in their irregular rutted appearance) by the friction of the earth’s atmosphere. This accounts for the worldwide variation in size and shape—no two impacts are the same and the material is ejected at different angles and speeds. “An analogy for this,” said Professor Rolfe Erickson of Sonoma State University “is throwing a big rock into the Russian River. Plop! The water breaks up into little drops. In space, then, this incandescent liquid chills down to solid pieces of glass and these glass pieces re-enter the atmosphere in all directions around the impact site and they reheat as they come in through the atmosphere. For thousands of square miles the surface of the earth is covered with these little bodies and that’s what we call a strewnfield. What we’re looking at here is, potentially, a Pliocene strewnfield.”
These glassy tektites superficially resemble obsidian and were previously believed to be—like obsidian—the result of volcanic activity. But Professor Carleton Moore, an expert meteorist from Arizona State University succinctly stated: “Tektites are the splash from meteorite craters. The exciting part is that if Professor Erickson is right it’ll be the first strewnfield found in a long, long time. Also, somewhere there’s got to be an impact crater.” Moore, who recently examined some specimens from the Dry Creek Valley, clarified the origin of tektites, “I don’t think there is any controversy. Simply, if they came from volcanoes they wouldn’t be tektites. The difference is when they are splashed from an impact crater the energy is so great that all the water is driven from the melt. The way we check glassy pebbles to see if it’s a tektite is heat it to red hot, so it begins to melt. A piece of obsidian would froth, because it contains water vapor. Tektites don’t froth. Simply, these tektites are of terrestrial origin, formed by interstellar forces.”
A SHORT HISTORY OF TEKTITES
These stones have attracted mankind’s attention since prehistoric times. Tektite tools from China’s Bose Basin date back to at least 5,000 B.C. and they’ve always been prized as ornaments, charms, and amulets. Erickson himself admits to being bitten by the tektite bug, he carries with him a tektite named Fred.
The first written mention of tektites was in Chinese in 950 A.D. when Liu Sun called them Lei-gong-mo or Inkstones of the Thundergod. The first scientific mention of them was in 1788, when they were referred to as “a terrestrial volcanic glass”. They weren’t even called tektites (from the Greek tektos meaning molten) until 1900. The name was coined by F.E. Suess who asserted that they were extraterrestrial glass meteorites that weren’t formed by impact with the earth, but had somehow survived impact with our planet. This misled scientists, for years, to group tektites wit
h meteorites. This hypothesis was discarded after tektites were found to have no exposure to cosmic rays—showing that they could not have been formed outside of an Earth-Moon structure. Another theory was proposed that they are of lunar volcanic origin and streamed to earth from our sister satellite; but this hypothesis was discredited after moon rocks from the Apollo missions were analyzed and seen to be quite different.
The latest hypothesis—asteroid/meteorite impact—seems to make the most sense. “There is a general idea that they are impact related,” said Erickson, “but after the impact what goes on in space and how hot are they?” Erickson, who has taught at Sonoma State since 1966, concluded, “Basically we have a hypothesis that these are tektites. A hypothesis is never final. Rather they get stronger or they get weaker. The main thing that will strengthen the tektite hypothesis is simply finding more and more of the strewnfield.”
SO WHERE’S THE IMPACT CRATER?
“One of the exciting things about this,” said Erickson, “is if these are tektites they point to the existence of an asteroid impact in the western United States that’s relatively young at two-point-seven million years. My own personal hypothesis is that it’s probably on the continental shelf; that’s why no one has seen it. The continental shelf extends, in southern California, as much as one-hundred-fifty miles offshore. The best way,” Erickson joked, “to find an impact crater would be to hire ten-thousand high school kids to tramp around the countryside and look for big circular holes in the ground.”
Luckily, mankind hasn’t recently experienced a gigantic cratering episode (like the Chicxulub event 65 million years ago which ended the career of the dinosaur) so scientists like Rolfe Erickson will continue to explore and speculate
* * *
Another piece for the Press Democrat that started out as a walk:
THE BENCH
In my visits to Windsor’s Riverfront Regional Park, sitting quietly for extended periods on a bench, I’ve seen waddling skunks, impossibly bright colored king snakes, and on several occasions, a skittering fox. Great blue herons (who nest in the trees) flap and squawk during winter. On the Russian River, which skirts the park’s Lake Wilson and Lake Benoist, depending upon the season you can spot ducks or drunken canoers.
A few years ago while walking with my eight-year-old granddaughter
Savana she stopped and said: “I just saw a fairy.”
“That’s nice Savana,” said me, the logical and clear thinking grandfather. “But fairies aren’t real.”
With the solemnity that only an eight-year-old-girl who truly believes in something can muster Savana said, “They’re real. I just saw one.”
“I believe you,” I said, not believing her.
We continued our walk down Lake Trail, waving at other hikers, studying the clouds, silently condemning a walker who defiled our cozy and accessible wilderness by talking on a cell phone.
We walked past several benches overlooking Lake Benoist, but we stopped at The Bench.
The benches along Lake Trail all have plaques. But The Bench’s plaque reads:
Tom Weissbluth
1949 – 2009
Sit down. Rest your legs.
Enjoy life. Take a nice big
Gulp of Sonoma County air.
The view from The Bench is a sudden, tree framed, unobstructed panorama of Mount St. Helena. The first time I saw this vista I was delighted and moved by the, no other word works, grandeur. I was also, perhaps, a bit disappointed. Views like this usually require a sacrifice that involves time off work, a passport, air travel, expense, inconvenience, and mild groping from a government agent. Moments like this should not exist ten minutes away from Tomi Thai Restaurant on the Windsor Green.
But this view from The Bench does.
I’ve sat on Tom Weissbluth’s bench through the years and seasons. I’ve seen Mount St. Helena cloaked in smoke from Lake County fires, green and washed by rain, and covered in bright white snow. I’ve sat there—usually alone, always quiet—and baked in hundred degree heat and shivered in fog that makes you feel as if you are the only person on earth. I’ve had thoughts that have turned into published books and notions that would get me incarcerated if repeated aloud. There is something about being silent and alone and outside. Something primal and soothing. It’s a challenging, refreshing, and underutilized activity.
I’ve visited The Bench in moods ranging from merely antisocial to actively anarchistic and the wind and water; the trees and sky always– magically–calm me down. Not the lobotomy-calm of martinis or wine; but a more natural and healthy state of simple appreciation and acceptance.
But the result of The Bench’s infusion of perspective and tranquility isn’t one of acquiescence or denial or defeat, it’s more reclassifying and realizing that the stresses and irritating activities of daily life are unavoidable but ultimately worthwhile.
Life, with its inevitable ups and downs; triumphs and defeats, is simply and always the best game in town.
“I just saw another one,” said Savana. “Fairies,” I said firmly, “don’t exist.” That’s when I saw one.
And then another.
And then, a robed warlock.
Gathering beneath the redwoods at the terminus of Lake Trail around long, rough wooden picnic benches that, fittingly, resembled the furnishings of a medieval mead hall were fairies, warlocks, and sorcerers. An assembled group of role players had descended upon the park to enact their elaborately costumed drama.
“You’re right Savana,” I said. “You saw a fairy.”
She nodded with the certitude of an eight-year-old-woman who
knew she was right all along. But she never said, “I told you so.”
* * *
Writers love to write about writing. This appeared in Byline:
“THE JUNG AND THE RESTLESS”:
WRITING NECESSARY THINGS
It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that Nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals.
—Esther Warner Dendel
It began when I couldn’t find my diploma.
I had never needed my diploma (BA in English, Sonoma State, 1977) because we’d always had enough place mats when entertaining friends. But I needed proof of having graduated in order to apply for a new job.
And I couldn’t find the sucker.
I searched in all the obvious places: in the big desk with the kids’ birth certificates and our passports. In the file folder with insurance policies, pink slips, and our living trust. And finally in the Receptacle of Receptacles: my sock drawer.
Nothing (except socks).
Then it was on to my office closet where I keep my jogging clothes, my work clothes and just about everything I’ve ever written and had published. I didn’t find the diploma, but I found a manuscript there that amazed me. It was 287 pages. It was a typewritten (Smith Corona) novel.
And I had forgotten that I had written it. Forgotten?
How can you forget that you’ve written a book?
I don’t know, but I had.
I pulled the manuscript out of its dusty manila envelope, curious yet feeling dread, and read a few pages. It was a mystery novel called The Jung and the Restless.
It sucked.
It was so stilted and clunky and self-indulgent. But I started a pot of coffee and kept reading and I must admit that toward the end of the book I had greatly improved my typing.
The writing was worse than drunken-late-night-blog-entry-drivel.
Horrendous would have been an improvement: mixed metaphors, unidentified antecedents, dialog that made Hee Haw read like Shakespeare. All the characters talked the same; the plot was linear, convoluted and confusing; character descriptions dragged on-and-on- and-on. The love scenes read like assembly instructions for a porch swing; the murder scene like a recipe for steak-and-kidney pie.
I couldn’t have been prouder.
I wrote a book in 1978!
&nb
sp; It sucked like a shop vac and I’d forgotten I’d written it (thank God, wherever She is) but I wrote a book in 1978! Back then I worked two jobs (teaching 3rd grade and waiting tables) was applying to grad schools and interviewing for three-piece-suit-jobs, had three kids, and I knew that all I ever wanted to be was a writer.
And now, in retrospect, I was a writer.
I have the ill-written, graceless manuscript to prove it. Never submitted, but finished. Never read by anyone. (Never will be.) The novel is terribly-embarrassingly-bad, but it was the best that I could do at the time. I made time in my life to write it because it was somehow necessary that I write a book. To prove to myself, despite all appearances to the contrary, that I was a writer.
I learned from the mistakes I made in The Jung and the Restless and ultimately improved my craft by continuing to write badly, earnestly, and often.
I don’t think there is any other way.
Like rust and roses, it takes a few decades to realize that life, growth, and creativity are present not only in good writing, but in any necessary writing.
* * *