by Lee Squires

Bonsai, after Thanksgiving, is a time for me to give thanks that I don’t have to water my bonsai anymore this year. They are all safely tucked into their winter beds for a bit of cold tolerance adjustment or, at least, they should be by now. Here we are on Thanksgiving evening, and at 11:00, there is a dusting of snow on the ground and on my bonsai stands. I was just in time with my winter protection.

Our annual Christmas /Holiday party is on December 4th at the Bristol in Prospect.  Hopefully, you will receive this newsletter before it is history. If you haven’t made reservations please call (895-9997). We will be holding Board of Directors elections at the meeting. Earl Ekman will be showing a video/DVD that he took of Dan Robinson’s Elandan Gardens in Washington State a few years ago. Dan is a retired fireman and bonsai expert on collected, "God-made", trees. He is a master wood carver and has an unusual garden on the Puget Sound with trees that he has collected over the years. You don’t want to miss this show.

by George Buehler

Here we are at the end of the year. I don't know about you, but for me the year seemed to fly by. I guess when you are doing something you enjoy, it does seem that there is not enough time. This is a good time of year to both look back and to make a plan for the next year. Hopefully, in looking back, I can learn from the events that happened.

I guess the number one problem I had this year was the hot summer. Some of my junipers went into a state of semi dormancy when it got so hot. They didn't seem to grow much at all. However, when the weather broke for the first time, they seemed to have come alive and put on some really rapid growth - even when the temperature started back toward the triple digits. My old procumbens nana seemed to just sit there during the hot spell, and then took off. Interestingly, when it did start, it mainly put on a lot of new shoots rather than growth of the old foliage. Can't explain it, just report it. Both of my itiogawa shimpaku junipers didn't miss a step and seemed to love the heat. Then the kishu Shimpaku were a mixed bag - one stopped growing, the other continued on just like normal. The difference between them is that one is a shohin in a small pot - the one that didn't grow - the other a larger one in a larger pot that continued on. This led me to looking at the temperature of the pots and root mass (which will be reported in a future issue).

I placed the maples and azaleas under a shade cloth during the hot weather. The the maples suffered the most, and I may have lost one of the shohin Japanese maples. Because of the placement of the table they were on, the one that may be dead got about two hours of full sun toward the late afternoon. If it was a heated root problem, which I think it might be, it occurred even though the trees were watered around mid morning, and then again in late afternoon. According to my records, the smaller pots became drier faster than the larger ones - which one would expect. If we have weather next year like we did this, the maples will go where there is only early morning sun.

by Lee Squires

If you missed our October meeting, you missed a great one. Dr. Doug Hawley from the Cincinnati Bonsai Society gave our club an excellent program. He started with a PowerPoint presentation on the growing of pine bonsai and finished up with a trimming and styling demonstration of Pinus banksiana. He transformed the landscape plant into a potentially great future bonsai within an hour. Selective pruning and wiring set the stage for its future development. Our club will be purchasing the tree in Spring 2011 and sell raffle tickets during the year at $5.00 each. After $300.00 in ticket sales occur, the winning ticket will be drawn. Bjorn Bjornholm, our presenter last Spring, told me that Doug has the best collection of bonsai in our area. It was evident by the excellent collection he brought to the meeting as “show & tell” bonsai. Large Black and White Pines were showcased, with a quiz on how much they cost Doug. After purchase or collecting and years of styling, they looked like $5,000.00 trees. Doug paid only $288.50 for the seven trees. A lot of work on Doug’s part turned the trees from landscape plants  into valuable bonsai in several years.

by George Buehler

The year is coming to an end, and it seems like we have gone from high heat to our normal temperatures overnight. A couple days ago I went out to look at my deciduous trees to see if they were going to have much (or any) color this year. Well I guess I can report that I will have some color – BROWN – this fall. It is still early for the elms, they are still mostly green. But it appears there will be some color in them. The fruit trees have already dropped their leaves and they were brown. The maples are a mixed bag, even within the same groups. Most of the tridents look like they are going directly to brown. However, one of the Japanese maples, surprisingly enough look like it is beginning to turn to red and yellows. Then I examined the location of each tree. Bear in mind that this was one of the hottest and perhaps driest summer we have had. With that in mind:
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When I first decided to run this article on Shohin, I had found a series of articles on “Shohin Europe”, a web site devoted to Shohin. There were a number of brief articles on care, placement, etc. of shohin. I had no idea what credentials the owner of the site had. So I started researching his information. When I started digging into the information contained at that site, I found that there were several of the same articles – worded slightly differently – on different sites with different authors claiming ownership. In order to avoid potential legal problems, I decided to take all the information I could gather and put it into my own words or quoted directly, with the appropriate citation – ED

DEFINITIONS
John Naka states in his Bonsai Techniques II 'the very small bonsai commonly called "MAME bonsai" is known as Shohin or Komono bonsai. Literally translated, it means "small articles", and small bonsai is no longer called "mame bonsai" in Japan. The concept of shohin bonsai is the same except for its size. Materials for shohin bonsai must be selected with both logic and sense, because it must be well balanced as well as miniature in size.'

Depending on the reference source, bonsai are classified into either three or five size classes. There seems to be a number of overlaps of classifications when actual inches are listed. In general, any bonsai smaller than 10 to 11 inches is classified as a miniature bonsai. The Japanese currently list shohin bonsai as between 7 and 10 inches, although this is somewhat fuzzy. Trees that are less than approximately 7 inches are called Shito (3 to 7 inches) or Keishi (1 to 3 inches) bonsai.

Oct. 16, 2010

5 PM Dinner; 6 PM (approximately)

On Saturday Oct. 16, 2010, we will once again have a dinner/demonstration at Jumbo’s Restaurant. Dinner will start about 5 PM and the demo will follow about 6 PM.

Our presenter will be Doug Hawley, a noted physician and bonsai enthusiast. In addition to his demanding daytime schedule, Doug spends his ‘extra’ time on his extensive bonsai collection or writing his quarterly Bonsai Regional Care articles for the Journal of the American Bonsai Society. Doug practices hematology, oncology and internal Medicine in Cincinnati, OH.