by George Buehler

Mark the date on your calendar – June 16-19, 2011

Look at your specimen trees as you get them out of winter storage and pick one or two to place in the exhibit. Earl Ekman will be contacting all of you to line up trees. We will need about 50 high quality trees.

We have commitments from 12 vendors who will attend the seminar. They are coming from Utah, Texas, Virginia, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to name a few.

There will be 51 classes/workshops at this seminar. Some of the classes include Suiseki, bonsai botany, design of trees, and how to take quality pictures of your bonsai. Workshops will range from wiring of beginning trees to redesign of 100 year old collected junipers. Hopefully, there will be something for all skill levels.

I have been informed there will be a delegation coming from Italy, and Australia, along with a group from Denver (the location of the next convention in 2012).

Start looking through your bonsai related stuff for the raffle/auction. We will need a lot of donations to make this a success.

The convention is now 16 months away and that seems like a lot of time, but now the time is coming when the various committees will need to start putting together their plans. John Callaway, the general chairman will be contacting the various committee chairmen to work out the details. It will take a cooperation of all of us (and our spouses) to make this convention a success.