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Winter Intensive Boons 2015

paulkellum
Jan 21, 2015
3 min read

Another trip to Boons and it was great. Boons senior Daisaku was visiting from Japan during our class and we watched him start to wire what will be possibly the best white pine in the United States owned by my good friend Adair Martin and previously owned by Boon imported from japan and allowed to grow well for past 10 years. It was great watching him set the structure that will be this trees future.

Well like all trips to Boons we had great food of course because if there is one thing you will never say at Boons is that you did not eat well. It always a great time meeting new people and making connections some that last much longer after the class is over.

Personally this trip for me was a good deal of refreshment on repotting techniques and and how to different conifers vary in root types and what they should look like. I did repot a collected tree that had been in a pumice mixture with a good deal of collected soil on it. It was a good chance to see the safe amount to remove without stressing the tree and after next year it will no longer have field soil.

We did a fun grafting exercise we did grafts of the plum tree on the side of Boons nursery and to mix it up I did a couple flowering apricot grafts to add some color. We labeled our grafts with a tag so next time we are back we can see what grafts took and what ones didn’t. The truth is we are all competitive when you get down to it.

I am always amazed that each class we have a new person to bonsai dedicating themselves to bonsai and the intensive program. We all started in a different way and interesting to see people interest converge at one place.

I am thinking that 2016 might be a great year to go and study in Japan. I think after Boons intensives it will be a great choice. Boon is a traveling artist so he is on the road a lot and doesn't have full time students at the house. In Japan it would be constant bonsai and learning at a pace that Boon's would have prepared me for. I know some people who are very happy they went for as little as a month but I do know I want more than that. It is a little ways out but in Bonsai 2016 will be here before you know it. So deletions, decisions, decisions.

I had a guy in the class ask me how can you just stop work and life and go. I don't think life should trap you into anything and I like to look forward. I do think I am getting older but I don’t think that should bind us to a life that we can look back at and wish we had done different . Everyone says iv lived 10 live with all the things iv done and that might be true but why chose to stop now. Life is here for us to live it and you can do anything you put your mind toso we shall see what the next chapter holds.