by Earl Ekman

Our January meeting featured Kenny Popp and his slide presentation of their trip to New Zealand. It was a terri. c show and I want to thank Kenny for taking the time to share his trip with us.

Our February meeting will be at the Bon Air Library on Saturday the 12th from 10 AM till Noon. This will be a bring your own tree workshop. This type of workshop has always been fun and a chance to get together with your bonsai friends and discuss how to style a particular tree. Your tree can be one you have been wanting to style but did not know where to begin or one you just haven’t had time to work on. You can get a lot of good ideas you may not have thought of. If you need material to work on, get out for some fresh air and visit one of the local nurseries. Look for junipers, maples, azaleas, pyracantha, pines, quince, boxwood and many others. This is an ideal time of year to start trimming and styling.

On March 19, visiting master Dana Quattlebaum will be in town to do a demonstration on styling a shimpaku juniper and conduct a workshop. You can bring your own tree or if you want, Dana will bring trees from Brussel’s bonsai where he is in charge of production. Dana told me he has some great white pines, shimpaku junipers, pyracantha, and garden junipers. Please let me know if you want him to bring a tree for you. I’ve got an azalea I bought last year that I’m anxious to have Dana work on. I can hardly wait.

Our April 9th meeting will feature John Callaway doing a Phoenix graft. John did one at our October 9th picnic and it came out beautifully. He will do a workshop for all of us who want to style a tree. Ron Smith has the trunks and the club will be buying shimpaku junipers for planting and styling. Let me know if you want a juniper so I can get them on order.

Our spring show will not be held at Oxmoor Center this year. Oxmoor has canceled all shows. In place of this we have been able to schedule a show at the Yew Dell Botanical Garden in Crestwood Ky. This is the estate of Theodore Klein, who started developing this garden over 60 years ago. It was just opened to the public last year and it is going to be an outstanding botanical garden. Thanks to Lee Squires, who is on the horticulture advisory committee, we were able to meet with director Paul Cappiello. They want to feature the bonsai society on the weekend of May 14-15. We will set up trees in the castle and rock garden and do demonstrations in their lecture barn. This should turn out to be a fantastic event. Tom McCurry and I were so impressed with the garden, we both became members and agreed to volunteer on work weekends.

This looks like an exciting year. Boy, I can hardly wait.