Turkey Creek Ride

Biking Brady blogs more about me than I do. Turkey Creek Ride

Pro Cycling Manager Game - Tour de France 2008

Pro Cycling Manager - Tour de France 2008

The Naming of Cactus Eyed Joe - Part Two

So picture me attempting me to shape a spindly under watered mulberry tree a year before BRAN 24. I had harvested the mulberry from somewhere it had been happily growing after a bird deposited its seed in the soil. I transferred it to a cute little square ceramic bonsai pot. The tree had survived a winter indoors with me which is no small feat. I had just moved all my house plants outside on my old trailer's porch and was sitting clipping off some small branches with a clipper. I finished clipping, turned sat down the clippers down behind me. I put the tree and pot back in its place on the porch started packing up my tools. For some reason when I was finished cleaning up I went back to look at the mulberry. I bent over and reached down to get the tree and the pot. There was a branch that was pointing in a way that I was unable to see because it poked me right in the eye. It was one of the branches that I had just trimmed so the point was nice and sharp.

The Naming of Cactus Eyed Joe - Part One

The story begins with my layman's interest in plants and in particular bonsai. I have attempted to bonsai just about every tree-ish houseplant and tree that grows wild in my area. Most of my attempts don't survive very long or look very interesting. This isn't surprising considering a good specimen takes years to mature and most wild trees don't survive well as houseplants during the winter. The plant species that seems to survive in spite of my ministrations are jade trees. Just in case you think I am crazy, jade trees are used as bonsai specimens. I also attempt to grow cactus (another plant with less di-hydrogen monoxide dependant properties) and I think my name comes from Biking Brady's confusion between my jade trees and my cactus. Although when I pointed this out during BRAN 2004 (Bike Ride Across Nebraska) where the naming occurred we both agreed that the name Jade Eyed Joe didn't quite have the same ring to it.