Japanese flowering quince, Chaenomeles speciosa

After an uneventful and on-time arrival in Tokyo our group was “welcomed” by cold and wet snow. NO, I did not order the weather, in fact the meteorological conditions were better in Rochester than Tokyo. But, my wife, Diane, did get stuck at the airport in Newark for several days on her way home from the California Shohin Bonsai Seminar.

Kora Dalager’s and my International Bonsai Tour Exploration this time includes 20 people from New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Australia as well as from the United States. Four close friends from my “Crew” in Rochester joined me this time which are members of the Suiseki Study Group of Upstate New York and also officers of the Bonsai Society of Upstate New York. Two of us will have suiseki on display in the new Suiseki of Japan Exhibition opening on Sunday.

The Parkside Hotel in Ueno…

Well if you havent been keeping up to date with the photographs that have been coming out of Belgium the past few weeks, here is a video of the winning trees from the weekend. All in HD. Thank you Bonsai Paparazzi.

Enjoy

The popular California Shohin Bonsai Seminar was held on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, January 31-February 3, 2014. The event was held at a small hotel in Santa Nella, California, which is a small town (truck stop?) located between Los Angeles and San Francisco to make travel easy for people throughout the state. Several friends from Rochester traveled with me to the event on our way to Japan for the Kikuyu Bonsai Exhibition, Shinseki of Japan Exhibition and to visit public and private bonsai collections in the Tokyo area.

The excellent and well presented lecture/demonstrations were held on Friday. On Saturday morning 12 workshops were conducted by skilled instructors, all in one large banquet room. Although all the workshops were in the same room, everyone enjoyed the individual attention of the teachers and excellent plant material each prepared for their classes. An additional 12 workshops were then presented in the…

So far we discussed a great deal on how to start your trees and your techniques in the right direction. When I was thinking about the path my writing would take, guiding you from complete novice to at the very least “familiar” with bonsai, the next logical step in the progression would be wiring. However, I will not be discussing wiring yet. The first reason is that wiring is one of those hands on things that I really want to do my best to take detailed pictures of and so I think it best to wait until spring time to post on. Second, Wiring is really the last procedure in the process of  the initial styling of your bonsai. I wanted to make it absolutely evident that you have to learn the mechanics of bonsai before you begin to think about the creative aspects. After all, you can’t expect to…