Bonsai Empire Intermediate Course 2: a review
A few months ago, I got an email from Oscar Jonker, from Bonsai Empire , asking me to give an honest review of his newest online class. I’ve collaborated with Oscar in the past, providing some media,...
View ArticleRehabbing a neglected banyan ficus
It’s been too long since I’ve attended to this poor tree. And the blog. Sorry to the tree and to my readers. I’ve been busy with client’s trees, planning the Bonsai Societies of Florida 2023...
View ArticleBack Bumper Bonsai
Today, I got to diagnose what’s wrong with a 2012 Jeep Compass, take my daughter to PT, and go and take a dog outside to poop. In between the PT and the Dog poop, I practiced a little Back Bumper...
View ArticleI thought that it surely had died…
Here I am, back in Cincinnati, it’s July, 2023, two years since my last visit, and I find that a tree I had worked and, most assuredly, had killed, was still alive. Wow… I’m not a northern conifer...
View ArticleTime for a change
This ficus has been in this remarkable container for..ahem..four or five years, without a repot. I’m sad to say it needs a bigger pot. Sad because I love the pot and the tree combo. Today, I’m hanging...
View ArticleGround Layered Fig Dip
Well now, did the story start with scotch? Or end with scotch? It’s kind of hazy looking back now. But I’ll try….wait, I remember…it started with bourbon! It actually began in 2019, but you didn’t see...
View ArticleWelcome to Tropical Northern….Virginia???
I promise, I wasn’t hanging out with any rich men in Northern Virginia. It was all cool bonsai peoples. See? Not a single politician (I don’t consider Roberto a politician, and he was in Peru anyway)....
View ArticleLeAnn’s buttonwood
That’s Washington DC. I think. Lots of converging lines and paths layered on top of each other. I posted a similar insane street map last time I was up in the area and I visited the Bonsai and Penjing...
View ArticleRock ‘N Roll
Now that’s a chunk of a block of a rock or something. Actually, it’s concrete, a manmade rock. But it’s “done broke” as they say… It looks like a reptiles beak, below. The story begins with a text,...
View ArticleSpekboom Chutney by any other name might just be called dwarf jade relish
Consider the Portulacaria afra, what many call dwarf jade, or port, for short. In South Africa, where the tree is native to, it’s called “spekboom” which literally means “pork bush”. Interesting...
View Article“What are you gonna do with that piece of sh….. “
It’s been about four years since I found this, and every year, looking at it and pondering the next move, I’ve missed the opportunity to work it. Why? I needed to repot it, get a look at the roots,...
View ArticleFicus microcarpa from an auction…..3 years later..
The Shofu Bonsai Society of Sarasota has a pretty good auction every year. Granted, some years are better than others, but the year I got this one, maybe 2021, was spectacular. This tree was on the...
View ArticleFinding Balance
Raise the head, close the eyes, breath in and test the air. Feel the sun come out from behind a cloud, the breeze gives a kiss on the forehead, a caress through the hair. Let the breath out, loud in...
View ArticleA sweet, Dwarf Yaupon Holly
This work was from February or March of this year, 2024. It took me that long to figure out where the comma goes in the title. And which words to capitalize. Not really but an excuse is an excuse. So,...
View ArticleSchefflera for days
Well now, this tree is bigger than my head. Which is saying something, I got a big head. This is what they used to call, in the seasons of my youth, in bonsai, when I was green and learning the words...
View ArticleOmelette
I’ve been asked how I make an omelette.Here you go. Save the recipe To the young @bonsai_evan “Three eggs, beaten, but not like the stepson, just like the middle child. Then salt and pepper to taste....
View ArticleWhy do you do what you do, or, is it a Schefflera, or Heptapleurum?
What we used to call a “Shefflera aboricola” back when I grew up in bonsai, has now been renamed to the oddly hard to pronounce “Heptapleurum arboricola”. This time it was actual genetic testing that...
View ArticleMakin’ my way in the world today
The Orlando Japanese Festival, 2024. Held every year in Kissimmee Florida….. The Central Florida Bonsai Club, my club in Orlando, has been representing Florida Bonsai at this festival for several...
View ArticleIt’s a Hard Rock life, for m’trees, it’s a Hard Rock life, for me
Carry on my wayward sons, or trees….or something like that. Here I find myself in a hotel in Hollywood. Florida, not the hotel in California. Where you can’t never leave. I’m at the Seminole Hard Rock...
View ArticleHoly Toledo, this tree is outta this world
Hmmm. Cosmic Bonsai in the Great White North? I’m in Ohio, and I guess they like outer space a lot; it’s a fact that more U.S. astronauts have been from Ohio than any other state. John, from Toledo,...
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