by George Buehler

This marks the start of my third year doing this newsletter - time has really flown. There are many newsletter editors out there who have done this "labor of love" much longer than I. In doing the newsletter, I certainly have learned a lot about the art of bonsai. I have had to research a lot of topics, and I have reported on several 'experiments' I have personally done - and will be reporting on more in the near future. I know that there have been a number of errors in several of the past newsletters - both typos/grammar as well as errors in content. Interestingly enough I have received only three or four comments back from the members. I have asked for (actually pleaded and begged) other members to send me articles and once again, I have only received a couple. I have even asked for ideas as to what other members would like to see in this newsletter. Again, no response, suggestions, or ideas.

I was extremely disappointed when I received our 2006 membership list from our treasurer Tom McCurry. Approximately 40% of our members decided not to renew their membership. I wish I knew the reason. In looking at the dropped list, it seems that the majority were new to bonsai in 2005. They did their first bonsai at one of our beginner workshops in 2004/2005. Perhaps they lost interest when they found out what they had to do to maintain their tree. Perhaps their tree died and they lost interest. Perhaps we as a club didn't give them what they wanted or needed to be successful in bonsai. I am going to try to contact each and every one to ask why and I will report back to you in a future issue. I still have hopes of growing our membership back to its high level, but it will be harder after losing these folks. All of us need to try to recruit new members. The more members we have, the better our treasury, which means we can afford to get more masters in for workshops. As you remember, we had to cancel one of the masters we had scheduled for this year due to lack of money. Let's all try to recruit new members and do what we can to keep them!

On page three, I decided to list some of the mistakes I have made over the years. I only listed the ones that I thought were appropriate for this time of year. If I had listed all that I had done over the years, this issue would be a major book. Perhaps in reading it, you will be able to prevent some bonsai problems. This idea came about because I started transplanting trees and didn't want to make the same mistakes I had made previously - or at least try not to make them again. So I got out my bonsai notebook and went through it to make up this list. Do you list your mistakes in your bonsai notebook - if not, you should, for it is a great educational tool.

One of my favorite trees is the pomegranate. It blooms profusely, doesn't do a lot of complaining when I do something stupid, and is relatively easy to maintain. I learned something different in handling this tree from Houston Sanders (editor of the Milwaukee Bonsai Society). Although the pomegranate is classified as a subtropical, I let it go dormant in the winter. Read the care sheet starting on page five.