My Jaboticaba selected for inclusion in the 3rd U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition

This morning I got a wonderful email from William Valavanis: my Jaboticaba bonsai has been selected for display, and judging, in the 3rd U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition this June 9-10 in Rochester, NY. Naturally, I am pleased, but I am also nervous. I have only displayed it, and some of my other bonsai, in club events. This is something altogether more serious. As I look at it, as it sits in my living room, all I can see is its defects.

My Jaboticaba in this year's Club Show

 Last Summer, I decided it was getting too large (about a yard tall), and did some very radical apical pruning and lowered the root pad by about a half inch. Maintaining a tree at its desired end state is more difficult for me than creating that end state. It also had a very rough Summer because of the horribly weird weather we have been having in CT the last few years. In July and August, the temperature rose to 100 degrees F (38C) in the shade, and the sun shown blisteringly hot. I moved this tree, and some others, into dappled shade and watered every day (even the foliage, which I usually don't do for fear of molds), but leaves still got burned. Some days I even moved it inside. I was forced to remove quite a few leaves. So, now, the apex is just growing back nicely and the partial defoliation caused some nice ramification, and new leaves are budding out all over the tree, but the older leaves look a bit leathery. I think that is because it is Winter and, even with a humidifier in the room, the air is rather dry for a tree that comes from Brazilian uplands.

Now that I have just told the Exhibition's judges all about my tree's fearful faults (in my own eyes), I have a serious job ahead of me: get that tree into fighting shape. The material is still there, but I must justify the Selection Committee's faith in me. It is only mid-Feb, so I am hopeful that I have enough time to help the Jaboticaba shine like a star. As, I turn my head to look at it this instant, it looks pretty damned good.

Maple Forest: Sometimes, you just luck out.

It was mid-April 2011 and I had driven up to New England Bonsai Gardens in Bellingham, MA to pickup an elegant (in John Romano's knowledgeable words) yamadori Korean Hornbeam prebonsai. As I was on my way out, my eye was caught by a strong splash of color. What captured my attention was a forest of Japanese maples in full Spring red and yellow leaf flush. Walking over to it I noticed that it was an intriguing design and made of 7 trees in 2 groups, although one of the trees in the smaller group was a double trunk, so it seemed as if it was a 3 and 5 grouping. The trees weren't the standard straight sticks that many forests are made of, but had some nice movement and, on the left side, a long set of branches made nice negative space. I wasn't so thrilled with the blue pot, as it clashed with the red of the leaves, and it would dominate the trees when the leaves turned green in high Summer. Moreover, it had lived so long in the humid green house that a fur of fuzzy moss had enveloped the trunks to a depth of a few inches. So, I poked into the moss and soil (wouldn't any Bonsaist?) to discover that all but one of the trees did, indeed, have nice exposed roots. It had potential and, it was marked down to a clearance price. No contest of wills; I bought it. Lucky catch. My first, ever, forest.

The maple forest that caught me, immediately after purchase and scraping away most of the bad moss. That pot has to go.

At home with my trees, I quickly started removing most of the fur and saw that the bases of the trunks had been bleached white by the moss growth, but that would disappear in some time. Then, I found out that the trees were growing in akadama soil that had turned to a solid mud and would not drain water. The trees were in a swamp. It just so happened that the Greater New Haven Bonsai Society had just held an internal 75-25 auction, and I had copped a perfectly fine unglazed 19 inch tray-like pot for a dollar an inch ($19 or € 14.40, at today's rate). Just what this forest needed. An unglazed brown pot would seem like an extension of the landscape soil, and not distract from the forest. Although it was now May, an emergency repot was needed.

Not ever having created a forest (I had only designed single trees), I made a basic landscape of my own, loose soil mix that simulated a curved knoll or ridge, something like the original, but more distinctive. The plan was to have a mysterious path rise and disappear over the ridge between the two groups. After clipping the wire hold-downs, I started to remove the trees one by one, but, to my amazement, the entire forest peeled off the akadama like a sheet. And a sheet of rubber, at that, since I could stretch the completely entangled root system, but not deal with single tree placement. Nothing for it but to tease out the small feeder roots, clip the heavy ones, and fit, as best I could, over the landscape base. Stretch, pull, press, mold with my hands, until it looked reasonable. Then water it in. And, since the soil mix was so loose, I put a layer of a thin tractable moss over the entire surface to keep the landscape's shape intact until the trees' roots colonized it (deo valente). The whole process was like plastic surgery and bandaging. I put it in dappled shade and crossed my fingers.

The forest in its new pot after a month, the moss "bandage" removed and leaves clipped. Note the white residue on the trunks from the "bad" moss. But it is alive and looks healthy. The pot is nice with them, too, even if dirty. Also, note the negative space on the left. Should have clipped there a bit more.

 The trees took to their new environment wonderfully well, but was the forest an appropriate shape and form? I knew the general “rules” (odd number of trees in random groups, entire shape of the forest like the common isosceles triangle of a single tree bonsai, yadda, yadda). It complied fairly well, and, most importantly, I liked its new look. In the following month, our Society provided me with an opportunity to participate in a workshop with Jim Doyle of Nature's Way Nursery. If there is something he doesn't know about bonsai, it is not worth knowing. He has seen the elephant. I took my forest for a critique and some hours' work. Maybe it needed another serious surgery, or some drastic tweaking that I didn't know about. Jim examined it after I had explained it's history, made a crack about “akadama haters”, told me that (by accident) I had gotten the trees in an arrangement such that no tree was blocking another, that the two trees toward the center were, since taller, going to be the apex of the triangle, that I should let the branches pointing toward the other group grow (to make the path's disappearance more mysterious), that the negative space was a Good Thing ™, and that I should just clip and grow, starting with reducing the leaf mass right then. And be happy with what happened.

Sometimes, you just luck out.

The forest in Fall. Nice nebari, nice growth, gorgeous color

The Fall leaves with frost.

Is "Naturalistic" Wrong or Useless?

There is a web site called ArtofBonsai.org that is very curious. It consists partly, at this date, of articles by a few of the well known names in the EuroAmerican (neologism alert!) bonsai world, about bonsai as art and, obviously, the art of Bonsai. These articles are, for the most part argumentative and contentious. "Debate" is an often used word there, and the word "art" had become known as "the a-word". Some denied that Bonsai was an art while others demanded definitions that could not possibly be constructed. Such as "What is Art?" (When I was an undergraduate at Yale, I naively asked my advisor what Computer Science was. He answered, "Computer Science is what Computer Scientists do.")  It had very few entries in its "Forum", and almost every time I read an article or posting there, I was the only person at the site. Others, who did dare to post, had the same experience. About 2009, something strange happened to the site. Although it continues to exist, it was abandoned by its article writers (leaving a sinking ship?), and spammers occupied it everywhere. They even infiltrated the articles themselves, between the sentences, with ads for things like Uggs (whatever they are). It is now very much like an abandoned mansion that someone who could not afford it bought foolishly, got upside down with the mortgage, and fled rather than continue payments. Then this edifice got occupied by riff-raff, who turned it into a squat, a shooting gallery. and who knows what else. Yet the articles remain.

One of these articles has an extended comment written by a man I admire greatly, Walter Pall. His point was that a debate about what is "classical" and what is "naturalistic" in bonsai is useless; it has no purpose or knowable outcome. Since I defined my blog and what I do with trees as "naturalistic" and defined the word briefly in the interest of open honesty, I feel compelled to respond to this zombie of an article and Herr Pall's comments. Compelled, because this zombie is still out there for you to read and, if you agree with it, you may call me a naive fool, or as Herr Pall writes:"Too many say classic and mean stereotype bonsai. What is naturalistic? I am afraid that even less know what they are talking about here. Too many say naturalistic and mean unstructured, untidy, sloppy, poor craft - to avoid the word art here"

I am afraid Herr Pall poses a false dichotomy, especially in the use of the word "classic" (you already have a sense of what I mean by naturalistic). The words that I found in opposition to naturalistic are from the Japanese themselves. About the year 970, a Japanese work of fiction , Utsubo Monogatari (The Tale of the Hollow Tree), includes this passage: "A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing. It is only when it is kept close to human beings who fashion it with loving care that its shape and style acquire the ability to move one." This indicates that the notion that the natural appearance of a tree becomes art, only when modified in accordance with a human ideal, and is an ancient and basic concept in Japanese culture. So, the words, and concept, that Herr Pall should have used, instead of "classic", was "Japanese culturally determined ideal". Although ungainly, that phrase is operational and can be nailed down, as in Naka's list of rules. 

The year 970 was a long time ago, does the notion still hold? The answer is "yes". Recently, at our Greater New Haven Bonsai Society meeting, John Romano showed us a DVD video movie called‘Bonsai: Works of Divinity'. Our members made a very perceptive summary and reaction to it: "The movie chronicled one year in the bonsai life of Shinji Suzuki as he struggled with choosing a tree for the Sakufu-ten bonsai exhibition (Professional Bonsai Artist show) and preparing it for that. He made an unusual choice that was not favored among the traditional judges based on his inspiration of nature and visiting the ancient Jomon cryptomeria in Japan (estimated at somewhere between 2-7,000 years old). He wanted to reflect the naturalness of a tree rather than a perfectly coiffed one." and, "it emphasized the Japanese cultural perception of bonsai art being more perfect than nature”.

So, thanks to my fellow members for providing the proper words for me to  use in answer to Herr Pall's comments and for helping me not to feel foolish (any more than I usually do :-) and that I do not "say naturalistic and mean unstructured, untidy, sloppy, poor craft".

Some of the trees in this October picture are bonsai. Naturalistic?