by Earl Ekman

Our April 9th meeting will be at the Bon Air Library from 10 AM until we finish. John Callaway will be demonstrating the design and planting of a Phoenix graft Shimpaku juniper. John styled one at our October picnic and many of you witnessed the development of a beautiful tree at the meeting. If you are not familiar with a Phoenix graft bonsai the meeting, demo, and workshop will be very educational and lots of fun. See John’s description of the procedure starting on page 3. See an example of the Phoenix graft from the Brussel’s catalog on page 8. The club has purchased 10 shimpaku whips and will sell them for $20.00 each. Ron Smith will have deadwood stumps for sale or you can supply your own. Don’t miss this meeting. It will be a truly new and exciting workshop. John has a real talent for styling a Phoenix graft and will be helping each of you. If you have any questions or want to reserve a spot in this workshop, give me a call at 222-7419.

On March 19th Dana Quattlelbaum was here as our visiting bonsai master and it was one of the most enjoyable and informative workshops I’ve been to in a long time. Dana does a very interesting demo and styles a tree with the best of them. It was fun and we all learned a lot. Thank you Dana for all your hard work. Dana is the production manager at Brussel’s Bonsai. If you would like to take a workshop with him, he will be doing several different ones at Brussel’s Rendezvous on May 27 to 29. Quite a few of us are going, so come along and have a great Memorial Day weekend.

This time of year we start to dig our trees out of the winter mulch and do the trimming and repotting necessary for the approaching spring and summer months. As you do this work, try to pick out a tree you would like to show in the Yew Dell Garden show, May 14 -15. This will be our big show for the year and is a brand new location for us. Please set aside some time during this weekend to help at the show. We will need lots of volunteers.

Best regards, Earl.