These are odd times we living now. In California we are all under a shelter-in-place order with the spread of COVID-19 spreading around. One bright side of this crisis for bonsai folks is the change to stay home and play with trees more than normal. We and they are a captive audience. The weather here
January has been a ticking clock of work that must be done this month. Today, I finally took on the last major re-potting of the month. Everything else can wait til February and warming temperatures. This month, I had to complete the California Juniper. The California Juniper is an old legacy tree that has been
Well, I have been remiss in posting. Most of my tree work has been done at the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt since December but now it is time to address some of my trees. Pines need to get re-potted and some of my trees are showing early budding which will push their window of
The day after Thanksgiving here and taking time do some house keeping and preparation. The tree benches all need rearranged for winter. Trees going dormant move down and trees needing continued winter sun and cold hardy move up. I always do this in stages. Pulled trees before the rain starts for re-potting. These candidates will
I purchased a Ficus from Brussels Nursery in the early Summer with the intent of using it for several demonstrations this year. It was an old tree that was greenhouse grown and put to the side. It will take some years and some special grafting to make this tree a spectacular one, but it is
Part two of the catalog is primarily tropical, shohin, and mame trees. This is not a complete catalog of all trees but it records the growth and development of specific trees over this past year.
Every so many years, I start a project of cataloging my collection to show how a tree has advanced or declined. All of the trees featured here have been in earlier posts and most have been in my development for a decade now. There are a few exceptions.
There are times in life that the stars align and things just fall in place. This month, I received a special honor. The honor is being give the cover tree for digital bonsai magazine. Golden Statement is California premier bonsai magazine produced by GSBF (Golden State Bonsai Federation). It has been in print for decades
Fall is pushing in on the garden these days but we, here in northern California, are in the throws of a heat wave. Back into the 90’s we go. Some trees are still thriving like crazy this time of year while others have slowed down considerably. So what I have been doing for the past
This time of year, I pay considerable attention to the olives in my collection. I have let them blow out their aggressive growth twice this year; Spring and Summer. The pushes of growth generate a huge amount of leaves and long spikes of growth that strengthen the tree. I even reworked a small olive I
