by George Buehler

Spring is a great time of year - at least now that most of the hard spring work is done. As I write this, the crabapples are blooming, along with the redbuds and dogwoods. The garden Azaleas are just about ready to bloom and my bonsai azaleas appear to be within a couple of weeks of blooming. Most of my trees are out on their benches, and I have only had to take them down once for high winds and once for frost. As usual, I'm sure we will have more storms before the summer sets in. The daily watering has begun and so far it doesn't look like I lost any trees. Yes, it is a great time of year.

I picked up a couple of Lee Squires' Kotohime Japanese maples this week. This variety of maple is really unusual. The leaves are about the size of a quarter. From what I found on the net, this is the full size of the leaves. This looks like a fast grower and should make a great bonsai. As with other Japanese maples, it does require protection from the hot afternoon sun. I plan on planting mine in my growing bed (a negotiated addition to my bonsai area from my wife's flower bed). According to Lee it should be ready to pot up in a couple of years. Lee only got a few of these trees; so if you want one, you had better call him soon!

Next month is our garden tour and on the tentative schedule is Midge Goeth's house. As reported a while back, Midge has her back yard under major construction to put in a Japanese Garden. This project has been slow going and has undergone a number of changes. Hopefully, we will be able to run some before and after (or at least where we are at this point) pictures in the June newsletter. I know Midge has put in a lot of manual labor on this project. I think once you see what she has done (even if it is not completely done), a Japanese garden may be in your future plans.

Speaking of future plans, take a look at the schedule on page two. We still have a lot of interesting meetings left, so mark your calendar and plan to attend some of these meetings. They really are a lot of fun!

I hope you find the article on fertilizing your bonsai beneficial. It's very important to get some type of nutrients to your trees - whether it's organic or inorganic. Don't overdo it; this is not an area where 'more is better', and actually more can be very detrimental to your tree. It is somewhat similar to watering in that a tree can drown with too much water. Likewise, a tree can be killed by over fertilizing.

It's getting close to the time when the Board of Directors start putting together next year's meeting schedule. If you would like to have a certain program or workshop included, now is the time to voice your opinion. Call Earl to let him know your thoughts.

For those of you who missed the Matt Ouwinga workshop, you missed some very educational pointers. I had the pleasure of having Matt stay at my house the Friday before the workshop; and, of course, he wanted to see my trees. As we went from tree to tree, Matt offered some suggestions on improving the overall design. He even went to the trouble of helping me restyle one of my Shimpaku. His wiring technique is different than mine in that he tries to use a double strand of wire for each branch. He said the Japanese master he studied under thought that the branch had more support if it was wired with two wires rather than one. He would choose the wire size in the normal manner (approximately 1/3 the size of the branch) and would start the wire the usual way. When he got to a secondary branch, he would split the two wires, using one for the secondary branch and the other to wire a different branchlet. The wiring went much faster and was a lot neater. Do you know the rule of doubles when it comes to the end of the branch? How about how to take care of a 'whorl' branch? He covered all these in his demo/workshop. He was equally at home working on an evergreen as he was working on a Trident. He has a full schedule of workshops this summer in California, New York, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. As I said, if you missed the workshop, you missed a great time.