Bonsai - Japanese Maple

Japanese Maples make lovely bonsai. You can find many pictures of them by doing a Google image search. I purchased this tree from a local nursery back in March. It's about 3 feet tall and I paid $11.95 for it. I chose this particular tree because it has some curvature in the trunk (which I hoped to accentuate) and because it has a split trunk.

You can click on the pictures to see a bigger image.





Here it is removed from its nursery pot laying along side the bonsai pot I'm going to put it in. You can see that I've lined the bottom of the pot with some nylon screen. This to prevent the dirt in the pot from running out the drain holes.

You can also see that the roots are never going to fit in this pot without some serious trimming.





Well, here it is after trimming. You can see an indispensable bonsai tool along side the leaves - a chopstick. It really comes in handy in trying to get the old dirt from around the roots. It is also helpful when putting in the new soil, to help get the soil down between the roots. Just like planting a tree or shrub in your garden, you don't want to have too many voids in the root system.






I've transplanted it to the bonsai pot. For a bonsai this would be way too tall, So some trimming is necessary. Some of the bonsai books suggest leaving the trimming until the plant is used to its new surroundings. I don't usually do that and have been successful in every transplant I've done.

Along side the pot is a bag of bonsai soil. I purchased this on-line, through eBay. There are all different kinds of potting soil for bonsai. You shouldn't use regulat potting soil as this will retain too much moisture. I have a couple plants in regular soil and they seem to be ok, but I plan to get them all transplanted eventually. Not really knowing much about the differences between one type of soil and another, I picked one which seemed to be for general service.

After trimming. It's about 15 inches tall. This will be a tall bonsai unless, of course, I trim it further. The next picture is the look I'm going for. I left the split trunk to give me some flexibility later depending on how it grows. Prior to working on this I had it sitting outside. I had nipped off the growing ends on the top. Within 6 weeks it has sprouted branches which were about 18 inches long. These I cut off (prior to the first photo) and I'm hoping to root them.






Here's what I'm hoping for. I looked at about a hundred Japanese bonsai photos and only found two which would work with what I had to start with. This tree doesn't have a split trunk but I think the look will still work.

Thursday Night at the Movies - Across The Universe

Well, we didn't actually go to the movies this Thursday but we did rent Across the Universe last weekend so I thought I'd share my thoughts. This movie came out last year, and for some reason I'd been avoiding it. Perhaps it's because the time frame in the movie corresponds to my own early adulthood (or at least late teen years) and the characters in the movie are roughly the age I was then. As Jude in the movie would say "I donno". But the movie is wonderful. In case you don't know anything about the movie at all, its a musical based entirely on Beatles music. For the most part it works without too much contrivance (there is a girl in the movie named Prudence, who I think is in the movie just so they can sing "Dear Prudence").

If you don't like the Beatles, then you might as well click away to another site.

The movie does not feature any actual Beatles recordings, all the songs are sung by the cast. The cast is composed largely of unknowns but the singing and acting is first rate. There are some wonderful cameos (Joe Cocker, Bono and a hilarious Eddie Izzard as Mr. Kite).

It's not a particularly original story: boy meets girl in a New York City co-op apartment after girl's boyfriend is killed in Vietnam; boy looses girl when she gets radicalized against the war and he gets deported back to England; boy gets girl when he sings in an impromptu roof-top concert. You know, same old stuff.

There are a lot of cultural (like the roof-top concert) and historical references built into the movie which you may not get if you're much younger than 50, but there are many layers of enjoyment in the movie. My wife is too young to recognize many of the references but she loved the movie anyway. Rent it, you'll like it.

I give it 4.5 capes. Here's the trailer.

2008 MLB A Piece of History

On the box it says "2008 Artifacts A Piece of History". Upper Deck's web site calls the set "MLB A Piece of History". The cards are nice looking although I think I like last year's Artifacts set better. According to Upper Deck's web site there are 100 player cards.

There are several different colored parallel sets. I got 1 silver parallel in each pack (I bought two blaster boxes with 7 packs each). The silver cards and the regular cards are different only in a slight color difference in the background color. I also got the Manny silver card and they are hard to tell apart. They both have the same the exact same game code on the back which seems a bit fishy to me.

Not mentioned on the web site is that there are Historical Moments cards which appear to be cards 101-200 of the set. These are, as you might expect, illustrations of historical moments. These sort of history cards have been showing up in sets for a few years now. Did someone's marketing research indicate that baseball card collectors like to have a bunch of non-baseball cards in their packs? The cards I got range from Juan Ponce De Leon, to the Alamo, to the Human Genome Project.

The two boxes I bought have 49 player cards, 16 Historical Moments cards, three Yankee Stadium Legacy cards, and two memorabilia cards. The box promised ONE MEMORABILIA CARD IN EVERY BOX ON AVERAGE.

I got a Manny Ramirez "Stadium Scenes" jersey card in one box, and this below in the other.


A Piece of Hollywood Memorabilia card. It's a shirt from the 1991 movie JFK. More non-baseball. The card is a bit vague on the back. It promises it was worn by "Kevin" in the movie. The problem is, according to IMBD, there were three people named Kevin in the movie, Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon and Kevin Beard. Beard was a stunt man so it's probably not his shirt. On the back of the card is a photo of the shirt showing the collar tag. On the tag is KC, so I'll assume it's Costner's shirt (for all the difference it makes to me).

Fairfield Repack - 1

I was in Target Sunday morning and there was nothing new on the baseball card shelves. But they had some new repackaged cards by The Fairfield Company. The box has 4 packs (which you can see through the box windows), another 100 cards, and, be still my heart, a BONUS INSIDE! The 4 packs I can see are 2007 Bowman, 2007 Artifacts, 2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber, and 2005 Skybox Autographics. These were all nice cards so I say, what the heck? I'll probably do this in three posts.

Ths 100 cards inside were the usual collection of late 1980's Topps, early Upper Deck with a mix of random Fleer and Donruss cards. 20 of the cards were these 1988 Topps UK Minis which seem to be in every repack I buy these days. I've already written about these here. I have 42 of these already and the 20 in this box contain 10 dups. The "Bonus" turned out to be a pack of 1990 Donrus cards. Not really what I'd call a bonus. The pack does have a Bart Giamatti card which I didn't know existed. I have the 1990 topps Giamatti card.

2007 Bowman

Here's what I got:

#197 - Derrek Lee
#1 Hanley Ramirez
#119 Hideki Matsui

What's the deal with Matsui? I don't know too much about him. He seems to have decent stats, but Beckett doesn't rate him above a common.

#44 Mark Buehrle
#122 Greg Maddux
#128 Carlos Lee (Gold)
#74 Randy Wells (ChromeProspects X-Fractor) 227/250

#92 Neil Sellers (Chrome Prospects)
#63 Brandon Mann (Prospects)
#37 Brandon Roberts (Prospects)

Twp prospects named Brandon in a row. I'm pretty happy with this pack. The only dup I got was the Sellers card, but he's an Astro, so that's alright. And I didn't have a single X-Fractor card.

2007 Artifacts

I like these cards and don't have too many of them. Right out of the pack is:

#77 Daisuke Matsuzaka

#32 Vernon Wells
#35 Stephen Drew
#69 David Eckstein
#40 Ken Griffey, Jr.

If it wasn't for the Matsuzaka card, I'd have been unhappy with this pack as I had Drew, Eckstein, and Griffey in the 50 cards I already had. But Matsuzaka makes up for that. I had Andrew Miller (the 2nd best card in the set) so now I also have the best card in the set.

Song of the Week - Who by Fire by Leonard Cohen

I have 5,352 songs in my iTunes library, This is one of them.

Leonard Cohen is a complex singer-songwrite who has been recording since 1967. Prior to that he was a poet. He has released 11 albums between 1967 and 2004, and has a new album due out this year. His best known song is probably "Suzanne" from his 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen. It has been covered many times, most notably by Judy Collins. Cohen writes about difficult themes: love, hate, suicide, war, and the aloneness of people. He has a very deep voice, which has gotten deeper and raspier over the years. He has been one of my favorite performers since his first album. I got to see him live in a small theater outside Philadelphia in 1993.

There were a good number of songs on You Tube to choose from. I decided not to use "Suzanne" as it is well known. This song, "Who By Fire" is from his 4th album, released in August 1974 called New Skin for the Old Ceremony. I hope you like this song, and it you don't know Leonard Cohen, I hope this song inspires you to search out his work.



And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of may,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

Thursday Night at the Movies - Wall E

Happy 4th of July. Here in southeast Texas it is raining like mad at the moment. Not that we actually had any outdoor plans except that the lawn service was supposed to come. It's been 10 days since they last mowed and the grass is now about 8 inches tall. But that's now why you called.

Last night my wife and daughter and I went to see the new Disney-Pixar movie, WALL E. A WALL E is a little trash-compactor on wheels, left behind on Earth to clean up the trash while Earth's population takes a 5-year vacation aboard luxury space liners. It's 700 years later and only one WALL E is still operating, and the job is far from done. He spends his days compacting trash into cubes and then piling them up into skyscraper sized piles. At night, he plays with the collection of items he's rescued and watches the movie Music Man on a little television. Oh, and he has an indestructible cockroach as a companion.

This is a great kid's movie but you'll like it too. It's cute, has a good story (it made my 23-year-old daughter cry and little kids in the audience yelling "Oh, no!" at certain parts), and, as usual for a Pixar movie, the animation is just a wonder. And be sure to stay to the end of the credits. There are the usual Pixar inside jokes (see if you can spot the dinosaur from Toy Story).

Trailer of the week. Most of the trailers were for the same lousy movies we saw last week. But one was new. Later this summer a baseball movie calle The Perfect Game will be released. It is about a Mexican Little League team in 1957 which becomes the first non-US team to win the Little League World Series. If you're going to see one baseball movie this summer this is probably going to be it.

I give WALL E four capes (out of 5).

Me and Willie Mays

1997 Topps Mays


There have been a few nostalgic posts on several of the baseball card blogs lately so I thought I'd offer my own.

As a kid I wasn't much of a baseball fan, but one of my strongest memories from childhood was my first baseball game. My Uncle Joe took me to see the Phillies play the Giants in old Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. I don't remember exactly when this was but I think I was about 8 years old, which would put this game in 1959. I have two great memories of this game.

One concerns Willie Mays. Most probably the only time I saw him play in person. I remember nothing about the actual game, not the score, not a single play, nothing. What I remember is that several times during the game, fans ran out onto the field to shake Willie's hand in center field. Was this a common occurrence when he was a player? I have no idea. Anyway, as a child, I thought this was terrible. Willie Mays was on the other team. He was the enemy. Later in the game someone ran out to shake Johnny Callison's hand. Johnny was the Phillies' center fielder. That made me feel better.

The other memory, even stronger, is of walking into the stadium. Up until this time, I had only seen baseball on a black and white television set. Those of you out there who are less than 40, probably don't have too many memories of b/w TV. I had certainly seen enough things on TV and later saw them in real life, in full color, without much comment. But walking through the shadowy Connie Mack Stadium tunnel to the field, the greenness of the grass was stunning to me. I don't think I have ever seen anything so green as the grass of that baseball field. In my memory it's like the rest of the scene is in black and white so over powering is the green of the grass.

Going to that game didn't make me any more of a baseball fan than I was before the game. That would come later. My next baseball game was probably when I was about 16, and Connie Mack was a shabby old place soon to be replaced by the sterile Veteran's Stadium. But I've been a big fan for most of my adult life and I cherish that childhood memory.