Redwood shoots from sapling
Redwood cuttings
Round tip
Flat tipPropagation seems to have gone by the wayside. You know; go to college, meet a girl, get a job, and get married and raise a family? See Dick and Jane run. Dinner is every night at six. PTA is once a month. The kid’s college fund is in US savings bonds. Only Dick Junior pissed that away on coke and his kids were taken away by CPS after that thing with the coven of vampires that was living in the same house. Jesus, they were better off when daddy was a Klingon. By the time their mom was thirty she was too bunged up to work out of the strip club. She had been telling all the johns that she was going to school to be a kindergarten teacher, but her kids never saw any of that. Mom actually tried to get them out of foster care but there was that thing with the hepatitis C, which she claims was from when she got her clitoral hood pierced but the state maintained it was from her using again. Sometime next year she is supposed to be getting out of county lockup but they think she will deliver this next kid in jail.
Yeah, romance is dead, what are you going to do? Every once in a while somebody steps up at a rock show and breaks it down, how much time per piece, how many pieces, and so on. There might be some intricate thing in quartz or ruby, or a string of a thousand pieces of something hard to get. It’s nice when someone shows up with the acumen and experience to know what they are actually looking at. This is my life. The carvings I do are my wife, my two kids, and my job at the post office or whatever cubicle they thought they had my name on. It was a conscious choice. I looked at the way the world was and about the way I thought it was going to be and how I imagined that would affect a child, how it would infect a child. You would think they would fix things; that somehow the world would be made whole and to live up to it’s promise. Instead they want to dumb you down and roll you up and name brand you and eventually turn you out into the herd of the most profitable livestock the world has ever seen, the American consumer. People are breaking down the fences to get in. Whoopee! Ain’t it great? There’s nothing like being a cog in a well oiled machine. You are welcome to your dream so long as you buy it from us.
And every time somebody thinks their dream isn’t what they thought it would be then you know what to do. Pitch a scare into them. Some shortage or threat or wrinkle in the routine that will remind them that a broken dream is better than whatever nightmare is behind door number two. Yeah, let’s make a deal! You take messed up environment and cancer and endless pharmaceutical concoctions and kids from Mars and broken homes and a life of gadget, trinket, and sensation and we will take the money, the bottom line. Just don’t look at your wife’s bottom line or any of your daughter’s IM threads or your son’s fake myspace profile. It isn’t personal, it’s business.
Only this is my life. It’s not a business. It is personal. I don’t lie down to sleep without first going over in my head what I did that day that shows how I lived, how I spent my time, and what I was about. I try not to think about how the rest of the world went about laying waste to the planet. That isn’t some Green Moonie Vegan Save Tibet and Wear A Che Guavera T-Shirt gob of yuppie pseudo liberal hyperbole. It’s simple. Look at your day and ask one question. Did you produce more than you consumed. Either way, do you think you can afford to keep doing that? What about the underclass that already can’t? Is it getting a little weird out in your neck of the woods?
In my neck of the woods I’m planting redwood trees. I’m propagating something that isn’t bulimic, pierced, dyslexic, angry, suicidal, and looking up to whatever pop culture whacko of the moment for guidance and inspiration. I’m okay with that. How could I be so obtuse and obscure to think that it makes any difference in the world, a hundred trees? A thousand? Why would you even give a shit? Talk about a drop in the bucket, a waste of time, a pointless exercise in what? Romance? Responsibility? A return to the past or some pipe dream for the future? Where is the profit in any of it? But I tell you what, you take your serotonin reuptake inhibitors and I’ll propagate and plant trees.
If you have never been out in a redwood forest then I can’t help you with that. Get in the car and go. Get some scale in your subconscious, in your soul. Get some first hand experience with the concept of vibration, with matter and time, and with just plain nature. I can’t really tell you why to plant a redwood. That is something that if it doesn’t resonate with you on some inner level, then the best I can offer is to ask, “Why?”
Maybe you can work back from there.
How you propagate a redwood is a little easier. The tree pretty much does that itself. You have to see one fallen in the woods to believe it. From there you have to get some stock. Google it, pilfer it, drive out to the coast and get it. It’s like meth, you have to have the desire. Once you have some stock; cuttings from someone’s tree, seedlings from a dealer, stuff you dug in the woods; once you have some plants growing in pots, then you can think of where you are going. First off is diversity. The tree is pretty much cloning itself. I wonder how much diversity is in a given watershed. I’m always looking for stock from different locations up and down the coast. Once you have some stock you can start propagating. The fastest way to start is from cuttings. The easiest cuttings for me have been from vibrant soft tips. There are two kinds of tips, the ends of a branch. There are what I call round tips and flat tips. The flat tips will root but won’t really send up a terminal lead. They tend to just stay bushy and sprawl. I’ve tried to let them get established to see if they wouldn’t send up a shoot, I’ve then cut them back to the ground, hoping for the same. I’m still waiting. Round tips are the way to go. I use a rooting hormone and put them in whatever media. I’ve used straight potting soil, sandy potting soil, and vermiculite. It seems to me that if they are going to go they are going to go. I like to root them in the spring so by fall they are ready to go through a Washington state winter. If a lot of cuttings take, I just plant the extras out. I keep the ones that seem the most vibrant and are putting out the best growth. By the third year or so they are about an inch and a half at the base and they will start to send up shoots from there. These are easy to root. I want to experiment with just planting them straight out. The base will start to develop a boll and if you get a piece of that at the base of your cutting then rooting goes way fast. I’ve seen places offering pieces of boll that you put in water and they send up shoots but I’ve never been able to make one from the woods work. Cuttings and shoots have been much easier. Around here the deer have ignored the redwoods but that could change at any time. They are just huge tree eating rats and I have seen them ignore stuff for long periods and then just mow it down. I’ve talked to a couple of people who say that if you lose your terminal lead that you can cut the sapling back to the ground and then take cuttings of all but your new lead…..
I don’t think there is a quick fix for the environment. You may have a Green New Deal and some people may buy that, both here and abroad. A lot more are going to go on using until there is nothing left, if only because they can and they must. They are addicted to it. I’ll continue to do what I do and to pay whatever price I have to pay in order to live the way I want to live. Thoreau was two and a half years out on Emerson’s property on the pond. I’ve been out here for thirty or so years on dozens of ponds and countless forests, streams, and shores. I’ll propagate as much of that as I can and pass it on. The rest of the world can go its own way, business as usual.
Yeah, romance is dead, what are you going to do? Every once in a while somebody steps up at a rock show and breaks it down, how much time per piece, how many pieces, and so on. There might be some intricate thing in quartz or ruby, or a string of a thousand pieces of something hard to get. It’s nice when someone shows up with the acumen and experience to know what they are actually looking at. This is my life. The carvings I do are my wife, my two kids, and my job at the post office or whatever cubicle they thought they had my name on. It was a conscious choice. I looked at the way the world was and about the way I thought it was going to be and how I imagined that would affect a child, how it would infect a child. You would think they would fix things; that somehow the world would be made whole and to live up to it’s promise. Instead they want to dumb you down and roll you up and name brand you and eventually turn you out into the herd of the most profitable livestock the world has ever seen, the American consumer. People are breaking down the fences to get in. Whoopee! Ain’t it great? There’s nothing like being a cog in a well oiled machine. You are welcome to your dream so long as you buy it from us.
And every time somebody thinks their dream isn’t what they thought it would be then you know what to do. Pitch a scare into them. Some shortage or threat or wrinkle in the routine that will remind them that a broken dream is better than whatever nightmare is behind door number two. Yeah, let’s make a deal! You take messed up environment and cancer and endless pharmaceutical concoctions and kids from Mars and broken homes and a life of gadget, trinket, and sensation and we will take the money, the bottom line. Just don’t look at your wife’s bottom line or any of your daughter’s IM threads or your son’s fake myspace profile. It isn’t personal, it’s business.
Only this is my life. It’s not a business. It is personal. I don’t lie down to sleep without first going over in my head what I did that day that shows how I lived, how I spent my time, and what I was about. I try not to think about how the rest of the world went about laying waste to the planet. That isn’t some Green Moonie Vegan Save Tibet and Wear A Che Guavera T-Shirt gob of yuppie pseudo liberal hyperbole. It’s simple. Look at your day and ask one question. Did you produce more than you consumed. Either way, do you think you can afford to keep doing that? What about the underclass that already can’t? Is it getting a little weird out in your neck of the woods?
In my neck of the woods I’m planting redwood trees. I’m propagating something that isn’t bulimic, pierced, dyslexic, angry, suicidal, and looking up to whatever pop culture whacko of the moment for guidance and inspiration. I’m okay with that. How could I be so obtuse and obscure to think that it makes any difference in the world, a hundred trees? A thousand? Why would you even give a shit? Talk about a drop in the bucket, a waste of time, a pointless exercise in what? Romance? Responsibility? A return to the past or some pipe dream for the future? Where is the profit in any of it? But I tell you what, you take your serotonin reuptake inhibitors and I’ll propagate and plant trees.
If you have never been out in a redwood forest then I can’t help you with that. Get in the car and go. Get some scale in your subconscious, in your soul. Get some first hand experience with the concept of vibration, with matter and time, and with just plain nature. I can’t really tell you why to plant a redwood. That is something that if it doesn’t resonate with you on some inner level, then the best I can offer is to ask, “Why?”
Maybe you can work back from there.
How you propagate a redwood is a little easier. The tree pretty much does that itself. You have to see one fallen in the woods to believe it. From there you have to get some stock. Google it, pilfer it, drive out to the coast and get it. It’s like meth, you have to have the desire. Once you have some stock; cuttings from someone’s tree, seedlings from a dealer, stuff you dug in the woods; once you have some plants growing in pots, then you can think of where you are going. First off is diversity. The tree is pretty much cloning itself. I wonder how much diversity is in a given watershed. I’m always looking for stock from different locations up and down the coast. Once you have some stock you can start propagating. The fastest way to start is from cuttings. The easiest cuttings for me have been from vibrant soft tips. There are two kinds of tips, the ends of a branch. There are what I call round tips and flat tips. The flat tips will root but won’t really send up a terminal lead. They tend to just stay bushy and sprawl. I’ve tried to let them get established to see if they wouldn’t send up a shoot, I’ve then cut them back to the ground, hoping for the same. I’m still waiting. Round tips are the way to go. I use a rooting hormone and put them in whatever media. I’ve used straight potting soil, sandy potting soil, and vermiculite. It seems to me that if they are going to go they are going to go. I like to root them in the spring so by fall they are ready to go through a Washington state winter. If a lot of cuttings take, I just plant the extras out. I keep the ones that seem the most vibrant and are putting out the best growth. By the third year or so they are about an inch and a half at the base and they will start to send up shoots from there. These are easy to root. I want to experiment with just planting them straight out. The base will start to develop a boll and if you get a piece of that at the base of your cutting then rooting goes way fast. I’ve seen places offering pieces of boll that you put in water and they send up shoots but I’ve never been able to make one from the woods work. Cuttings and shoots have been much easier. Around here the deer have ignored the redwoods but that could change at any time. They are just huge tree eating rats and I have seen them ignore stuff for long periods and then just mow it down. I’ve talked to a couple of people who say that if you lose your terminal lead that you can cut the sapling back to the ground and then take cuttings of all but your new lead…..
I don’t think there is a quick fix for the environment. You may have a Green New Deal and some people may buy that, both here and abroad. A lot more are going to go on using until there is nothing left, if only because they can and they must. They are addicted to it. I’ll continue to do what I do and to pay whatever price I have to pay in order to live the way I want to live. Thoreau was two and a half years out on Emerson’s property on the pond. I’ve been out here for thirty or so years on dozens of ponds and countless forests, streams, and shores. I’ll propagate as much of that as I can and pass it on. The rest of the world can go its own way, business as usual.
