by George Buehler

Let me introduce myself. My name is George Buehler and I have been involved in Bonsai for about 15 years. By no means am I an expert in Bonsai. I got my start at one of the Greater Louisville Bonsai Society beginners’ class. My first tree in that class was a Juniper and it is still going strong today. It will never be a true specimen but I still enjoy working on it. I have tried collecting trees and purchasing them from a variety of shops, some have made it – some haven’t. Like many of us, it remains a mystery why a tree decides to give up when we took such good care of it.

Anyway, I have been asked to do the newsletter along with Midge Goeth and Patti Gall. The board’s goal is to send out a monthly newsletter that is more than just a calendar listing. Hopefully, we can expand this monthly mailing to several pages that will have news and articles of interest.

We also hope to be able to include some ‘personal’ articles on some of the founding members or long time members. This will of course require some of the more senior members to jot out some pertinent data and submit it to us.

Earl Eckman has a collection of most of the old newsletters that he let me borrow. In going through these I find that we had some really good issues a number of years ago. We even sold advertisements to help defray the cost.

Before we can sell advertisements, we have to improve what we publish. Again this is where you come in. Please consider doing an article. If you need help or advice, I’m sure we can find other members who will step up. You can mail me handwritten information or email me. If you want to talk about an idea, give me a call (502-228-8545).

Another underlying theme here is that we need new members. I hope to get some of the newsletters out to our local plant shops. This club is for all of us, and it would be nice to have more participation by everyone. We all need to make the meetings, workshops, etc. something that new people can come to in order to get more interested and join.