About a year ago, I dug up a skinny maple sapling, stuck it in a flower pot, and decided to learn the art of bonsai. Since then I’ve dug up a lot of other small trees and shrubs, killed a fair number of them, bought some others from places like home depot, and spent a lot of time taking flak from my family (especially Faith) about what a lame hobby I have.
Since we moved to West Hartford a few months ago, I’ve gone to several events with the Greater Hartford Bonsai Society, and it’s been really great. They had their annual bonsai show recently, and I showed one of my plants, a sagebrush I dug up in Reno over Christmas. I also traded away the other two surviving sagebrush for plants from other people.
You can see some pictures from the show, and other excerpts from by adventures in bonsai, in my flickr set, Miscellaneous Lifeforms.
We got a new kitten, Halley, last week:
And Melinda’s wedding was a great success; all the assorted parts of the family behaved and got along well, and it was beautiful. My dad let me use his camera for some shots; it has a great telephoto lens and made me want to get serious about photography. You can see some of the results on flickr. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to get a nice camera for a while, but it’s something to look forward to.
Reading: The System of the World
Watching: The Colbert Report
Listening: NPR, Blindside – Silence
UPDATE: This picture of Halley has been making the rounds on the internets; it even found its way, randomly, onto a video podcast called “Ask Mind Candy“.