Making a chinese banyan rock bonsai

I enjoy plants so my new found hobby of bonsai-ing is a natural progression from planting decorative plants to "sort of" sculpting plants. Anyway, I am just a few months old into bonsai and for an art that takes months and years even for "instant bonsai " to produce results, a few months is nothing. 


Here's a Chinese banyan  (ficus microcarpa) that I am training into a rock bonsai. 


The banyan is a very mystical kind of tree in the way that it grows and develops. It looks both reassuring and forbidding at the same time. Many Asian countries have a deep belief that spirits and ghosts reside in banyan trees. When you can apply it's majestic beauty and turn it into a bonsai, you will truly get an exquisite work of art. (Ezine)

 

This particular banyan was given to me by Mr. Bernardo, our school's agriculture teacher, a bonsai enthusiast and the eldest male teacher of the school. I planted it first in loam soil for a few moths so that it would develop roots. Loam soil is a must so that it would be easy to uproot; planting it in sticky soil would damage the root network when uprooting.

I am using a porous rock locally known as adobe. For a more interesting look, the rock can be chiseled to a desired shape but in this particular project, I am using the rock as is.

I chiseled a groove into the rock.

The groove should fit the trunk to anchor the banyan.

I arranged the roots in a way that when it develop,  the roots will envelope the rock. 

To keep the roots hydrated, wrap it with a rug and then stabilize by wrapping  it with wires..

Train the banyan by wiring. Ideally, aluminum or copper wire is used but here I am using an ordinary GI wire which is not good because it would injure the stems so I doubled the wire to thicken it so as not to cut or injure the plant. The good thing about this kind of banyan is that it's a very flexible plant unlike our local banyan, the balite. Here I am training it for a cascading rock bonsai.

Keep in a damp place so that the roots will be hydrated and so that the rock will grow algae and moss and give the bonsai a more natural and aged look. 

Chinese banyans can survive with very little sunshine, its an ideal indoor bonsai.

I don't know how this project would turn out, but here's the beauty of bonsai making: the pruning and the training and the waiting. A good hobby that develops patience and teaches the art of waiting.

Note: plant your cuttings for future bonsai material.

Broken chord

Dirty finger not intended. This is how they play E chord with the two lower strings open and they do this with the A and the B chords. Drives me crazy especially since the guitar is the main rhythm instrument in the church , so instead of adding flavor to the music, the droning two lower string confuses the singers. This is good if there are other guitars playing conventional chords, but if there's none, its quite irritating.

I am having problems with the 9th chord. I am talking about guitar chord that does not contain the third note, and instead of the the third, guitar players replaced it with the second or the 9th. Guitar players in the church especially the youth like to use this chord because of what they see on Hillsong videos. I mean they think it was a cool way of playing the guitar.

I have tried explaining to these guitarist that removing the third note and replacing it with the second makes it difficult to sing and there's that droning sound of an open string playing with the bar or something. So, I kept telling them, don't play that kind of chording because its not cool, you are giving me head aches and you are abusing the minor 9th. But instead of listening, they kept using the chord even on songs that do not need them. I mean, popular and simple songs do not require broken chords.

Be careful with my heart blah, blah, blah...

Absent from work for four days, still reeling from bronchial asthma (or asthmatic bronchitis, whatever the difference maybe, it's beyond me) that gave me chills for many nights, I am not quite that excited about going back to work. Well, I guess nobody would be what with the lesson plans and lessons to catch up with, the deadline for the submission of test papers, the charts, the quizzes...whew really glad that I have no advisory class.

Anyway...the good thing about the absence is that I was able to follow the new ABS-CBN series "Be careful with my heart" starring Jodi Sta. Maria and Papa Chen. I have been seeing the series on-off because I go home for lunch and am able to see portions, but it was only last week that I was able to see several full episodes. 

The series was about an aspiring flight stewardess, who, through circumstances, ended up becoming an airline executive's babysitter. She was attracted to the much older father of her ward, but he was too busy to even take notice of her and so on...of course the story is as predictable as a fart, but the development of the character is something that made this series quite likeable. Richard Yap, is good, whose bearing, by the way, reminded of the Capt. Von Trapp from the Sound of Music movie. 

Anyway, I am not a critic, just watch the series and be entertained by Jodie's and antiques and Papa Chen's  hmmm....minimalist acting because it gives the series a relaxed and relaxing ambiance, which is a sort of a relief compared from the tensions from the so-called-heavy-drama-actors whose facial expressions even when expressionless radiates pain, suffering and struggling  .

another dolphy blah,blah...

Okey, this is another blah, blah, about Dolphy but I couldn't help it.

I really felt sad when I heard that the King of Philippine comedy died last Tuesday, July 10. I was watching some of his movie and TV shows clips and I couldn't help but feel nostalgic about my childhood and my late father, about my classmates, about eating aratiles and catching fish using tin cans...I mean all my childhood memories came flashing back to me and suddenly I felt my age.  

The black and white movie has this  magic like a time machine of some sort. I was never was and never is a Dolphy fan and I couldn't remember ever watching his movie in theaters because I never took his movies seriously. I mean, its not that I never liked his movies; I did and still do, its just that I never liked his slapstick comedy but I did like his singing and dancing. But even though I did not like his slapstick, I did laugh at his antics.

Dolphy was like one of those things hmmm...a fixture on TV and movie that just was there, always there. one does not have to take him consciously and seriously because he was always there, a part of, to borrow the word from a scholar, collective consciousness and memory of  the Filipinos especially those who were able to see and follow his movies and TV shows.

Anyway, just attempting to express how I felt about his death and I felt the lost... hmm... I thought he was ...hmm...immortal. 

_____________

My childhood friends and I used to go hiking and trekking at Antipolo and we used to pass by Valley Golf Country Club where a house allegedly built by Dolphy for Alma Moreno was being constructed. We would look at it and tried to peek and peep looking for Dolphy but we didn't even catch a glimpse of the man.  Anyway, the house is now rotting.

CS Lewis:Time and sin

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble. As for the fact of a sin, is it probable that anything cancels it? All times are eternally present to God: Is it not at least possible that along some one line of His multidimensional eternity He sees you forever in the nursery pulling the wings off a fly, forever toadying, lying, and lusting as a schoolboy, forever in that moment of cowardice or insolence as a subaltern? 

It may be that salvation consists not in the cancelling of these eternal moments but in the perfected humility that bears the shame forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God's compassion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe. Perhaps in that eternal moment St. Peter - he will forgive me if am wrong - forever denies his Master. If so, it would indeed be true that the joys of Heaven are for most of us, in our present condition, "an acquired taste" - and certain ways of life may render the taste impossible of acquisition. Perhaps the lost are those who dare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.

Repetitions...

I was watching TV while my wife was pulling out my white hairs, scratching off patches of dandruff here and there, when I asked or rather shouted what day it was. My wife replied that it was Tuesday. Aaahhh...it was Tuesday and tomorrow will be Wednesday. Then after Wednesday, it will be Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday, then Monday again, then Tuesday again, then Wednesday again...drives me crazy !

doesn't anybody notice...

I sometimes wonder why the whole human race does not commit suicide en masse and be over with the never-ending cycles, repetitions, ennui, etc. 

Repetition is bad. 

I mean... when people go to zoos and they see the animals doing this strange repetitive movements like walking back and forth, raising their heads and then bobbing them left to right they (I mean the insensitive people who love  zoos) think the animals are dancing or performing or doing these thing for their benefits as if the animals, like portrayed in inane movies and cartoons, are happy that they have audience, but actually these animals are developing nervous disorder because they are confined in cages are not only small but also do not emulate and simulate their natural habitat. Their will to live or their essence and life force is slowly dying and what the zoo gawkers are seeing are nothing but zombies that moves without or with very little consciousness.

Zoos are evil places and are not educational places because the animals do not show their natural behavior and  nothing is learned except seeing these animals suffer from the torture of captivity. Animals that are put in there are virtually dead animals. 

People also suffer from this disorder called stereotypy. Of course, the pathology of the disorder points to conditions like autism...well look it up at Wikipedia. 

Anyway,  all of us, generally speaking are already suffering from it. I mean,  from observing people, I found that though the symptoms are not as classic text book case but its analogous and it's there: the habitual looking, texting and checking of cellphones though there are no messages and notifications. There's the repetitive motion of opening FB accounts first before doing anything productive, drinking the same brand of soft drinks, scratching something, etc..

Then when I look into the larger picture, at the macroscopic level of our existence:  going to work in the morning, taking lunch at noon, eating dinner in the evening, sleeping at night, going to the comfort room, taking a bath, marriage, childhood, infancy, death....come to think of it its like we are all animals trapped in a cage doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over ... I suddenly realized that our life, the whole gamut is nothing but a divine pantheistic-reality-mind-psychological-disorder (I mean, if the whole of reality is one emanation from a cosmic sentience) we are all just exhibiting the symptoms of the disease of the whole: cosmic stereotypy.

 Hmmm...not making any sense and not supposed to, anyway.

What the Fact! We are no better than the animals in a zoo!

Lorenzo's piracy, Earthquake drill

I saw the teaser of channel 2's newest tv drama called Lorenzo's Time and again I was dumbfounded at the blatant intellectual piracy. I mean, the least ABS-CBN and its people should have done is to acknowledge that the show is an adaption, or loosely based, or inspired by the 1992Mel Gibson movie Forever Young.

Lorenzo's Time is a touching journey of a young boy named Lorenzo (Zaijan Jaranilla) who was diagnosed with progeria, an extremely rare genetic condition wherein symptoms resembling aspects of aging are manifested at an early age. In order to preserve his young body, he was subjected to cryonics until his parents find a cure for it. After 30 years, Enzo will wake up to face the world with missed precious moments of his life—including his family and the only girl he loves.

A 1939 test pilot asks his best friend to use him as a guinea pig for a cryogenics experiment. Daniel McCormick wants to be frozen for a year so that he doesn't have to watch his love lying in a coma. The next thing Daniel knows is that he's been awoken in 1992. 

I mean..the cryogenics, the waking up a la Rip Van Winkle  thing was there. The only original thing that, I think, could be added to the idea of the series as based on the Gibson movie is that the show  would have the usual recipe: terrible writing, very very predictable twists, mediocre acting and cliche dialog.

But anyway, it entertainment and maybe that's what's important in the end--to escape.

________________________

The school conducted the national earth quake drill. The drill was conducted at 9 in the morning with the police and the Taytay MDRRMC. The school was teeming with unformed people: the police, the orange rescue guys and the--I don't know why some wear black--and the para-police , para-rescue guys.

The pupils were pissed off. A grade four pupil even complained that this was recess time. Don't we adults understand this, recess time is inviolable even by earth quakes, fire and nuclear war! (Photo: Ms. Redgie)

Anyway, there were lectures and all that stuff that goes along with the drill.