Before I purchased my barrier material, I actually thought I was going to be able to dig the trench through clay, rock and tree roots by hand with a mattock & shovel.
(around 100' x 34" deep)

As luck would have it, I was able to get a backhoe to do it. When I had to chip away at some areas the machine was unable to get to, or to level off ect., that is when I realized I could barely even reach the bottom of the thing with the mattock.

Also:
before filling it back in with dirt, I saved a young robin that was not able to fly well enough, that fell into the trench. I think the parents and siblings were all around chirping trying to edge it on to get out, but it couldn't. I got it out and fed it a worm or two, and then the other birds started feeding it too. After that, I could go right up to the things if I was walking around the yard. It was almost as if they new I was a good guy and wasn't going to eat them or something.
(guess you had to be there)

sorry, haven't forgone my mortgage or moved or sold anything for bamboo......yet

Rick

I once tried to trade a naked lady garden statue for bamboo because I didnt have any cash at the time. I paid $99 for the statue and actually ended up trading for a large pot of S. Fastuosa. You should have seen the ladies face when I pulled this thing out of my truck. I also sold my regular sized city lot for 6 acres. Ah for the love of bamboo. All my friends think im nuts. I guess I am unlike most 27 yr old males.

Water on days I'm not supposed to. Shhhh!

I was thinking about trading my family for that real expensive bamboo that was posted in here a couple of months back....but they were only interested in cash...my wife and kids were lucky...only kidding here....Driven 2 n one half hours to dig some...that is about it for me...

Kurt

1) Came home at midnight from a trip to Mexico and went out with a flashlight to check on the progress and condition of all of my shoots.

2) Drove 250 miles roundtrip to dig free bamboo.

3) Squirrel Wars (I won't give the details...)

4) Because I was running out of room for my bamboo, moved from a house that I had lived in for 30+ years and which had a paid-off mortgage, and took out a new mortgage on a place that had more land.

5) I'm sure my family could offer more, but that's probably enough for starters.

kudzu9,
What was the issue with your #1 above? The only thing I can see wrong is that you went to Mexico (unless it was to pick up some weeping).

That one kinda coincides with going out in the middle of the night to shake snow off. (recommend not doing this one barefoot, the shock makes it harder to fall back asleep)

rfgpitt-
I thought #1 was perfectly normal, but my kids didn't. Oh...and the snow...I've been through that, too...very bracing at 2am!

does talking/ asking questions to my boo seem to extreme,.? then again they havent giving me a wrong answer yet to my questions!.. :)

Hmmm... whacky things I do for my boo? How about sneaking around the neighborhood late at night on the eve of the yard-debris recycling pickup looking for recepticles full of lawn clippings or fallen leaves. Then wheel-barrowing them back to my compost bin for processing before using them for bamboo mulch.

Years ago I quit my job to devote full time to raising and selling bamboo. I had went to college and obtained a degree for the job I quit. Never regretted changing jobs and Gayle and I are happier than we have ever been. It has been touch and go over the years financially, but you have to be happy doing what you choose and we are. I am scheduled for back surgery in the next few weeks. One down side of the nursery business is that it is very labor intensive and can play hell with your health.

Roger Sr.

kudzu9
I wish I could dig free bamboo and only travel 250 miles :-)

My longest trip so far to dig bamboo is Spokane, WA to Portland, OR (350 Miles), dig the bamboo then take the plants to Boise, ID (400 Miles) and plant my brothers plants then back to Spokane (400 Miles) to plant my bamboo.

I have also been buying 20 yds3 of compost each year with most of it going to the bamboos.

And of course bambooweb.info is a plot to get people to send me free bamboos for my programming effort. :-) Thank You!

Bill

Bill-
I forgot we were on that dig together! I think you may hold the distance record...

Actually If you count Hoosier's trips to HI...he might have the distance records....but he is going for something else..maybe...lol....but i think he has brought some back....of course going thru all the proper customs..

Bill....Now i finally understand all the long hard hours you have committed to your site.....It's for more bamboo...lol...I think i owe you everything i have....Can't say enough about the work that you have done. Good to see some of the proper orgs. are helping out with the site.

Carried a 2 gallon container of Sasa palmata on the plane from Atlanta to Boston (got it from Adam and Sue Turtle at the Southern Nursery Association tradeshow last summer). Yes, it went through x-ray without any harm or visible mutation.

Also brought a bag full of 'boo from Seattle to Boston, same routine. No one seemed concerned in airport security.

"on the plane"

did you buy it a seat?

did it react to cabin de/pressurization?

UnAutre wrote:
"on the plane"
did you buy it a seat?

Didn't have to. Stowed it in the overhead compartment, tied up in a plastic bag, the culms carefully bent to take up less room.

did it react to cabin de/pressurization?

No, even though it completely igonred the flight attendant's pre-flight routine about those oxygen thingies.

;-P

Cady, now if the flight attendant had instead lectured about those carbon dioxide thingies I bet your bamboo would have listened.

For those bamboos afraid to fly, just give them an osmocote & tonic water and they won't even know they're on an airplane.

Most extreme thing I've done? Hmm.. nothing too extreme... Just planting bamboo divisions all over the place like a crazed maniac. As for planting them in the vegetable garden, that isn't extreme. After all, bamboo is a vegetable, right?

now if the flight attendant had instead lectured about those carbon dioxide thingies I bet your bamboo would have listened.

Not if it were a night flight. :)

OK, you got me there. Also a day flight wouldn't matter either with the plant stowed away in a dark compartment. I shd know better than to argue with Cady. ;)

Although I might have trouble picking the most extreme thing I've done for bamboo, I just made a reservation to fly to Amsterdam on Thanksgiving day to import new species into the US. I will have the proper permits but it still is a very long shot as to successfully getting it to the quarantine station, at which point I then have to wait for a year and hope that the bare rhizomes will be viable.

I think that this one is probably the most extreme thing I've done yet...

Meeting Brad (Hoosier52) in Honolulu helped me understand that I am not an extreme bamboo person (but believe me, HE is).

I don't know Bob, going to Hawaii just to look at bamboo sounds kind of extreme to me. ;)

Mike. Don't tell anyone, but I may have done a couple of things in Hawaii that didn't involve looking at bamboo.

I would worry about a person who went all the way to Honolulu just to meet another extreme-bamboo geek, nevermind look at bamboo. ;-P

If you haven't been, be sure to see the bamboo when you go, and you will think that's the reason you went to Hawaii too. The Tootsik forest on Maui, about a 1.5 mile hike from the Seven Sacred Pools area, is like a huge cathedral of bamboo.

Of course the coral reefs were nice and the rainforests, volcanoes, deserts, mountains, blue blue water ...

If hawaii has everything you could possibly imagine, why not live there; is the cost of living and lack of jobs preventing people from living there?

Speaking for myself, my imagination exceeds the offerings of Hawai'i... but having said that I have lived there twice in the past 11 years. I currently earn my paycheck there and my employer would absolutely love it if I moved back so the job thing is not a factor for me. What keeps me away is the cost of real estate and the mass of humanity - traffic, no parking. I could never hope to own a home that I'd want to live in and having any size lot at all is an impossibility. I so don't want to live there again that I spend 20 hours per month inside an airplane, and am away from home about 1/3 - 1/2 of the time.

Quality of life means different things to different people; Paradise is merely a state of mind.... have we drifted off topic??????

My wife and I agreed we could never live in Hawaii. Even if the the cost of living were not so high, we would just never live that far from friends and relatives. We thought it was among our favorite vacations though. Next I want to go to Costa Rica. I hear they might have a little bamboo there.