by George Buehler 

July has come and gone, which means the growing season is about half way done for the year. So far this has been a strange growing season. We had a great azalea blooming year – or at least I did. The weather hasn’t been too bad in regards to heat, but August is generally our worst time when it comes to high temperatures. So it’s time to watch for soil drying out in the pots, especially the small ones. They may require watering twice a day!

This also is the time for the onslaught of insects. I noticed that spider mites have arrived on my garden shrubs, so it won’t take long for them to get onto the bonsai conifers. In my case, I have started spraying the garden plants to try to get the mites under control before they have a chance to get onto the bonsai.
July was a busy month. Linda Kossmann presented her penjing design class, then held her workshop (see page 4 for pictures). It looks like the participants will end up with some nice penjing. Hopefully, I will be able to get some pictures of the final design later this year.

We held another planning meeting for the 2011 ABS/BCI seminar. We are now in the process of contacting teachers and vendors. The seminar seems like a long way off. However, we have to get the list of teachers together, and then figure out what type of workshops they will conduct so that we can start the process of getting suitable materials together. Of course, one of the most important things for any good convention is the vendors – that’s what we really go to meetings for, isn’t it? The chairmen of the committees will be recruiting ‘volunteers’ soon to help with the various planning processes.

Several of us (Tom McCurry, Earl Ekman, and I) went to Nashville to participate in their annual Middle Tennessee Bonaai show. The Nashville club always puts on a great event. The president of the Nashville club (Barbara Bogan, the wife of Dave Bogan, one of our members) had the show organized into three groups. The first was shohin trees (less than 10 inches), Chuuhin (trees 10 to 20 inches) and Ogata (trees over 20 inches). Awards were given in each category, along with a Best in Show, and best Suiseki. There were 48 trees and some of them were really outstanding. You can see from the picture on the left that one of Tom’s trees received 1st place in the Chuuhin category. Tom also got an Honorable Mention for his mountain azalea clump.

This year the show was held at Cheekwood Gardens, a really nice botanical garden in the western part of Nashville. The building where the show was held was great and it was easy to get trees in and out. The building was also very close to the Japanese garden; so when things were a little slow, we snuck out to see it. I wish Louisville had a botanical park – maybe someday Botanica will get their act together and we can have one.

Anyway, the Nashville people welcomed us warmly, as they always do. Warren Hill, a former curator of the National Arboretum, gave a demonstration using a nice large shimpaku. This tree was auctioned off on Sunday at a very reasonable price. He critiqued the exhibit trees and chose the winners. It was a very pleasant weekend. Hopefully, next year, we can get more of our members to exhibit there.