The Nursery Under the Mountain

I remember the precise moment that I became a nurseryman. I was 36 years old and between real jobs, not that I have had all that many real jobs. I quit my last job as a paralegal with Legal Aid and was doing free lance paralegal training and writing manuals. I became close friends with one of the other trainers, Sandy, and we were walking toward her house in near the Castro in San Francisco. It was one of those beautiful sunlit mornings in the City when the air is crystalline. I had been playing with houseplants and gardening for years. It was such a pleasant diversion from dealing with people's problems. We were talking about this and I found myself saying "Yes, I think horticulture is going to get me". And it did.

That was 23 years ago now and a lot water has gone under that bridge. I started a landscape maintenance business, then that evolved into landscape installation and even design. I started taking horticultural courses at the Junior College and eventually even became a certified Community College horticultural instructor. I started a small nursery to supply my landscape business, and soon growing plants took over my life. Bonsai didn't attract me as an end in itself but as a way to learn how to prune. In the landscape maintenance business pruning means one of two things, round or square. I knew there had to be a better way. Bonsai was that way.

But bonsai is addictive, and I soon found myself ensnared by the spiderweb of rules that governs the creation of tree art. It is so simple and yet so difficult. You look at a bonsai and it might have only five branches and a trunk. How hard can it be? But given a piece of raw material, a beginner, any beginner, feels like a dunce, lost, without a clue as where to begin. So, what started out as a study in pruning soon became the only thing that really interested me. Landscaping became the way to support my habit.

There were many pitfalls and disasters along the way. At times it was excruciatingly difficult to keep up the effort. There was no money in small nursery operations, even less in bonsai. Mother nature had a seemingly endless supply of challenges for me. But slowly the challenges were met, the problems were solved and all the things that I had to do just to support the bonsai habit were abandoned with each new success. For almost two decades this struggle took place in Ukiah California at my little growing grounds of less than an acre. It was time for a change.

Then it happened. In 1998, after another epic struggle, Susie managed to secure her inheritance from her aunt. We had enough money to move. We looked desperately for a location in beautiful Mendocino County, but we could find nothing within our reach. Grapes had caused the usable land prices to skyrocket. Reluctantly, we begin to look in neighboring Lake County for a new nursery home. We spent each weekend for months driving all over Lake County, working from a list that a wonderful little old lady realtor had drawn up for us. We kept getting farther and farther from Ukiah, expanding the circle of potential properties. The farther out we looked, the more I worried. I was going to have to move thousands of trees.

Finally we started looking for property around Kelseyville at the foot of Mt. Konocti, an ancient dormant volcano that rises straight up from the south side of Clear Lake. I had once flown over it in a small plane and had seen the three vents still visible after ten thousand years. It is quite impressive and undoubtedly a source of great power to the Native Americans. We drove out Kelsey Creek Drive  which makes a big loop to the north and comes out just south of Lakeport. We were going to look at a piece at the of the loop before it starts back to the highway. I had no idea how far it was. We drove three miles through typical rural one acre plots with houses next to the road, boring little pony ranches, but with great views of that mountain. Then the road drops down to the side of the creek and finally starts climbing a rock wall through an incredibly narrow canyon. The road is literally blasted out of the rock cliff. No houses, no people, nothing except the steep forested walls of the canyon and the swift boulder strewn Kelsey Creek creek far below the road. It was dark, cool and quiet, an amazing contrast to what came before. It was about a mile before the canyon opened up into a beautiful tiny round valley, not more than a mile across. The entrance is guarded by a sentinel rock precipice topped by an ancient fir tree. There were houses along the road, but only on the creek side. The north side was open grassy meadow studded with valley oaks. It was quite magical.

Another mile, just before the property we were headed for, was a large parcel, relatively flat, that had just been tilled for hay. Beautiful rich freshly tilled earth. There was a for sale sign at the corner. We went past and up the hill to piece we had intended to see. It was a disappointment. It was off the valley floor, covered with chaparral and would require a massive clearing operation to become a nursery. But on the way out, we took down the number of the piece below. It was very tempting. For some reason, it wasn't on our list, so we stopped by the realty office on our way back. Yes, it was for sale. Ten acres on the creek, two dwellings, funky but livable. Flat land with water in full south sun at the foot of the mountain. The asking price? Exactly what we had. Evergreen, Susie, Brent, and the dogs had a new home.