April showers are coming late this year. Today is April 23rd and it has been raining most of the day. Kind of dreary, but we're almost 4 inches down from our average rain fall this time of the year. It's not real windy and I won't have to water for several days now. So its tolerable, because I know it's needed and it will benefit us in May. I'm still waiting for my black and Henon bamboo to start breaking new culm. Funny how different species break under different conditions, but they all look closely the same. I find bamboo to be so facinating, but quite simple in design. It's kind of like a living "erector set". All of the parts are very basic and simple and at the same time it's very beautiful too. I only wish I had discovered bamboo earlier in life. I'm going to grow it as long as I have life, I just wish I was more experienced with it now.

I'm not real happy with blogger and its format process for placing pictures in my blog. I like Wordpress much better! Unfortunately WP doesn't support sms uploads, a blogger advantage. A mobile WP would be excellent and I would drop all others as long as it was full featured.
I'm probably going to be moving into a new career direction working for an aborist. This will make my work area much more mobile and I will have a variety of new experiences in the near future. So I will either have to learn bloggers pic format or save everything until I can get behind a keyboard. Which is what I may have to do.

Sharing some pictures Spring 2010

I was able to spend some time outside today, and work with some of the plants. There are so many signs of Spring, I thought I would share some of them.


I am so excited about these new culm shoots on my Yellow Groove Bamboo. There are eight of them total right now reaching out to occupy new territory. I can't wait to watch how this bamboo will develope over the season.




This is my Fargesia that I purchased late in the season, This one is a Dragonshead Bamboo. Fargesia is a mountain bamboo, and I am hoping that this one will really take off this season.

These are some mobile greenhouses my mom found at one of the big box hardware stores. I was sceptical about it, but they were very easy to build and have proved to be a very effective means of greenhouse growing on a shoestring budget. She bought each of them for $20 on sale. What a deal, they are normally $39.95 each.








Do you know what this is?




They can create a wall of purple, and they also come in white.


If you guessed Chinese Wisteria you would be right.



Most of my bananas are trying to pick up where they left off last Fall. New shoot are starting to unfurl how exciting.



I just love canna and I am please to see this one coming back to life after a long winter nap.

CHANGES IN MY APPROACH
I have been in the "nursery business" for five year as of this August. When I started out I knew nothing about running a business let alone a nursery. People think it would be easy to operate a nursery, that it would be "fun". Well I'm here to tell you that its not easy, but I still find it rewarding and I guess even "fun". I have studied things like branding, and wrestled with work practices so I can establish costs and expenses. I have tried different marketing approaches. I've set up at the farmers market, I have sold on Ebay. I have sold plants and gardening supplies via online stores. I have even taken appointments with customers to visit and make purchases. I'm am now at a point that I feel I need to take what works and run with it. Over the remainer of the year you will see changes in my companies look. I will be focusing on specific nursery stock and marketing them alone. .

Conservation and me
I have been having feelings that have led me to take action and become involved in what I like to call conserative conservation and it has nothing in common with Al Gore. I don't know if at a certain age you start "caring" more since this is the first time I have turned fourty. Or maybe it has something to do with empty nest syndrom, my youngest child is 18 and graduates in two months. Or maybe it has to do with a maturity in my Christian beliefs. Whatever the reason, I have conservation fever and it isn't just a passing thing. I have secured a domain for the purpose of sharing my convictions and giving others an opportunity to get involved or to just be informed. I value the land and the environment I live in, but I refuse to believe a tree, a rock, or an animal is my "brother". I respect the world that God created, and my desire is to preserve it for future generations to enjoy.

LIFE AFTER LAYOFF The Rest of the Story

So how much time I will be able to spend with horticulture related projects is undetermined right now. I begin my next step into plant tissue culture next Saturday. The class in Feb was cancelled due to weather. It has been rescheduled for April 17th. My future plans for the nursery are for it to be maintained by a combination of TC and hydroponic methods. I have been studying the techniques and am a member of two groups that practice the art and methods of plant tissue culture. It sounds and looks easy, I will let you know more next Saturday. As for what else I will be busy with, well I have a new web site I am developing to facilitate my conservation beliefs. I will make an official announcement one I have enough of the structure in place. Right now it is pretty bare bones. When I do something I like to do it well, so in that spirit I will share the URL later.

LIFE AFTER LAYOFF CON'T
I have a grow room that I have been developing. For several years I have been back and forth between a greenhouse and a grow room. Each has their own benefits. I have decided to go with the grow room because of the ease of sustainability. There is a permanent structure (my garage) with a permanent covering (OSB and vinyl siding). I have insulated the walls and added some electric. I have a grow structure that I have designed and can't wait to get it operational. The design is based on the Ebb n Flow concept but for a container nursery. I have redesigned it for maximum effeciency so I need to take down the grow chamber and put up the new structure which is going to require time and some money. I still have my job at DHL which is 30 hour a week from midnight until 6am. After the layoff I will start working 40hrs plus some Sundays as needed. .

LIFE AFTER LAYOFF

I'm not sure what life after the lay off will be like, I don't have any solid plans. Here is what I would like to do, I would love to spend my entire day working on my nursery. I have had plans to open a hydroponic shop nursery combination. My heart is really into this, the onlything holding me back is the responsibility of my bills, mainly my mortgage. The nursery I have now I initially started with $200, and to date I have thousands,maybe tens of thousands, of dollars invested. My wife reminds me about all of the money when things get tight. I admit being a dreamer or even a visionary. I don't think that is a bad thing. What makes me different is my dreams don't stay dreams. I work to make them reality, for myself my resources are sometimes limited and I am forced to proceed slower than I like. All of this free time would allow me to grow the business. I will be in prayer about this.

ABOUT ME
For anyone who doesn't know me I am Michael White. I am a husband of.20 years and a father of two. I maintain at least one full time job at all times and a part time job is quite common in my life. I also operate a small class A nursery in Florence, Kentucky. My family tree has roots in farming, and my Uncle Joe still runs the farm and rasies cattle. The hard work of the farm was given to me in a "citified" version by my mother. I always had jobs to do. So if you look at my life and you ask how do you do it? Well I've always been working since I was quite young. My first real job I started at age 15 while I was also in school. So work is not new to me. I just wish more of my time was available for the nursery. That might change here in the near future. Effective April 30th myself and all 800+ other people I work with here at CVG are no longer needed and are laid off!

I was reading my own blog and a thought came to me that when I read others blogs I like to "know them" that is I like to have an understanding of where they are coming from. Is this someone who has a passion or just someone throwing out random thoughts on horticulture topics. So as I was reading some of my own posts and I noticed random mentions of different elements of my life, but really nothing that gives the reader a grasp of who I am and maybe where I come from. So I have decided to do a series of posts and give an inside glimse of who I am and what drives me. Most of my posts are mobile from my $50 AT&T Blackberry and it only allows me 6 screens of 160 characters per text. So that's the main reason for a series of posts. But secondly a series allows for a natural break in ideas and thoughts. It forces the author to be creative in how they express themself to convey what they really mean.

Its been a long time since my last post. My life as been a whirl wind with so much going on all at once. I really do wish it would it would slow down. The first drops of this storm are hitting my side tug window and are getting faster as the storm marches in. I am at work at DHL tonight, I wish I were in my bed warm, dry, and fast asleep. Instead Ill be up all night in a storm working on this ramp. The tapping of the rain on the roof is getting louder and faster. I'm sure that it will be a cold rain. I hate working in the rain. Now the roar of the thunder, it won't be long now before the total down pour begins. I will be loosing my full time job at Comair/Regional Elite in May. I'm not sure how I feel about it quite yet. I think I have not accepted it yet. 21 days left before I'm laid off. I guess Ill have to come to terms with it then. I'm just glad I have my job here at DHL, I am truely blessed.