by George Buehler

Hopefully, you noticed there was no July issue of the newsletter. Seldom have I missed an issue, but I have been out of the country for a month and …. Well I guess that wasn’t much of an excuse, but it’s the best I can come up with.

For this month’s featured article, we have a very informative discussion on Koi and bonsai and how the two are related (and different). I want to thank Mike Pfeffer for ‘volunteering’ to write it. Mike has been involved in Koi for a number of years and has become somewhat of an expert. He quite successfully breeds and raises Koi and is willing to answer questions on them. I hope I can persuade Mike to routinely submit more articles so we can all learn more about starting a pond, populating it and keeping them alive.

When you look around, you will see that there are many subjects closely related to bonsai – koi, suiseki, kusamono, ichiban, Japanese gardens – to name a few. Hopefully, I can find a few experts on these subjects to put together articles for this journal. I know that there will be a nice pamphlet on kusamono coming out fairly soon. It is being written by Pauline Muth, and it will be part of the “Basic” series of bonsai art. I hope to be able to get permission to publish parts of it here. Although not an expert by any means, I have been researching information for an article about Japanese gardens for several years and perhaps soon I will find time to put it all together for an article.

I hope you have taken the advice of Lee and are supplying your trees with plenty of water and some shade during this crazy weather we have been having. When the weather is above 90o, I adjust my watering schedule to give the trees two waterings daily – once in late morning and the second in late afternoon/early evening. For my micro-climate, this seems to work best. As Lee states in his presidents’ message (Page 1), he prefers to water about 1 PM and again after dinner. You will have to find what works best for your collection.

I don’t know how many times I have used the term “what works best for your collection/situation/micro-climate” over the years. However, we all have to find what’s best for our own situation. Many of you know that I have taken over as president of the ABS; and, in that regard, I monitor the ABS forum quite carefully. One of the things that has come up again was when one of the members asked a question about the use of Superthrive. I definitely don’t want to start a discussion on whether to use it or not; but, after many posts on the forum, both for and against with some rather caustic comments one of our GLBS members posted a rather poignant reply that I think we should all consider when we are discussing how or what we do in bonsai. His comments were (and you can replace superthrive with most any subject):

What I have learned from this experience concerning Superthrive

There are no true documented scientific studies completed which proves that superthrive works or not.

That there are those that swear by it and those that think it is a scam

That there are some very good comments made from both sides of bench

That it should not have been an argument. Just answers to questions and comments, without any insults if you disagreed or not.

That some of us will continue to use the product and some of us won’t. As one gentleman stated, there are two sides “experience and scientific”

That on the whole the forum is a fantastic tool. I have read interesting questions and answers that helped me greatly. I will remember this and “not cut off my nose to spite my face”.

That regardless of what I read here I will rely on information gleamed by talking to people in my area that have similar water, weather, insects and diseases that I will experience and have been in the art for many years.

That I will remember that I will be more tolerant of people’s opinions and try very hard not to be insulting or to belittle people because they don’t agree with what I think or do.

I guess you had to read all 50 or so comments to get the full gist of the discussions and the reason I think the above comments were so good. However, the last two comments are most important. We need to learn from people in our area, and just because we do something one way doesn’t make it the only way. Sometimes, those of us who have been ‘around’ for some time forget that new members often interpret what we say or do differently than how we meant it.

PS: if you got this far, I really was out of the country for a month!