Club News - December 2022
December Meeting/Holiday Party
December 16 @ 7:00 pm – 9:30 pm
Members and immediate family welcome!
We’ll be meeting at a different location this time -
Cubberley Community Center
4000 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94303
Room U7 - building nearest Middlefield on the north end of campus
Out of respect for members that continue to want to protect against COVID-19, this year’s Holiday Party will again serve drinks and finger-foods outside before we go inside at 8:00 PM for our other evening activities.
Masks are optional when indoors for a Show and Tell of decorated bonsai trees, a silent auction and a re-do of last year’s entertaining game of “Select or Steal”
How to Participate
Please bring finger food such as an appetizer or dessert that serves 6 to 8 people. Soft drinks or a bottle of wine are also welcome.
Bring a holiday themed bonsai for a special Show and Tell. The bonsai can be decorated using lights, ornaments, etc. Last year we had two trees decorated with “Covid Balls.” Trees will be displayed indoors and can of any height and size this year.
The silent auction will offer an array of bonsai tools, books, wire and other interesting items. Bring your credit card or checkbook. No cash sales.
All attendees may participate in our Holiday Gift “Select or Steal” Game (aka a white elephant game). To participate, bring a gift that is wrapped and valued at $25 or more. Bonsai-related items or Japanese art are usually preferred by club members but other items like wine and chocolate are also appreciated.
Please bring something that you would enjoy receiving if you opened that gift. Each participant will have the option to select an unwrapped gift from the group of gifts on a table or take an opened gift from another participant. The third person to get their hands on an item gets to keep that item. In other words, an item can only be “stolen” twice. So, the second person to do the “steal” on that item takes it home. This enables us to finish the game in a reasonable time frame and adds more drama to the game!
Monthly Tasks
Each month there are a number of tasks you need to do to your bonsai – from repotting, to fertilizing to spraying for pests. We have put together a checklist, customized for the San Francisco Bay Area to help you. This checklist is adapted from earlier work by Mitsuo Umehara.
This month: December Tasks
Potting Party - Sunday, Dec 4
Rain or shine, this coming Sunday is our first potting party of the 2022-23 season. We will have two additional potting parties in January and February.
A potting party is where we work on trees that are intended to be sold at some point (hopefully in 2023 if they are strong enough). If you find a tree you really like, you can purchase it at the potting party.
We will start at 10:00am and work until 4:00pm including cleanup. The location is at the home of Gordon Deeg, 196 Encinal Avenue in Atherton. Gordon’s home is on the corner of Middlefield Road and across from the Encinal School. The gate to his house will be open for you to drive inside and park on site. We will have hot water for tea, instant coffee and water available. You can bring a bagged lunch in the event you are staying all day. There are two covered areas where we can work and stay fairly dry in the event of rain.
The club will have some trees in need of repotting and you are encouraged to donate a tree if you can. You don’t have to work on your own tree. You can leave it for another member to take and repot and take care of until our sale. Hal and I also have several trees that are from the San Mateo Botanical Society that need repotting and some restyling. The types of trees that we can work on in December include flowering fruit trees, junipers, olives, and cypress. However, we are working on them early so when you take them back home they should be protected in your gardens until our show in April. A variety of pots, wire, and soil will be available for you to use but you will likely need your own tools.
This is a great opportunity to meet other club members, practice your repotting and wiring skills, and learn more about bonsai in general. We look forward to seeing you this Sunday.
Meeting Recap - Steve Iwaki - "Styling a Maple"
At our meeting on November 18, 2022, Steve Iwaki led an audience discussion about a club-owned Japanese maple, a double-trunk, trident, that has been cared for by Suresh Mohan (Mo) for many years. Mo informed us that the tree was first grown in the ground but has been in a pot for about 15 years.
Steve’s father was a member of a group of bonsai friends in Southern California, including John Naka and Ben Oki. He had stories to tell about being with this group as a boy. John Naka was so committed to bonsai and his bonsai work that Steve recalls that he had an old-style black phone in his garden! Although he doesn’t yet have a tree from John Naka, he has been collecting trees from many of his father’s old friends (Ben Oki, Kay Komai, and Frank Goya) and finds joy in carrying on their legacies.
Steve also brought two maples from his own collection, a forest and a root-over-rock, both tridents. Formal upright is another style, not represented.
Steve began his discussion of the club trident by asking, not rhetorically: What do you see when you look at the tree?
Throughout his presentation Steve invited audience opinions and feedback. Participation of audience members was high. Positives comments solicited included: all the branches are tapered; there is already quite a bit of ramification. Flaws included: scars, trunk chops; inverse taper; two main trunks too equal in height; some straight branches; multiple branches coming out of one place, maybe to heal scars; two V branches in the smaller trunk competing.
Nevertheless, Steve said, except for some pruning to help with these flaws, there weren’t major things that needed to be done with this tree. Steve started cutting to shorten the smaller tree. Then simplified the taller one He commented that you rarely see windswept or other distinct styles of maples because when the tree leafs out, style disappears.
An Iwaki tip: should use straight cutters rather than concave cutters, for better healing.
He shortened one of two tall branches. Then he solicited more comment about the long low branch, about which there was much controversy. Some members wanted to keep it. Others didn’t like it. Steve confessed his own bias for not having branches until a third of the way up the tree, a traditional rule. Steve cut back but did not eliminate this long branch.
Then there was a discussion about what is the front of the tree. This tree may have two fronts, or maybe off square on center.
Steve cleaned scars with a Dremel, advising that you want to leave them a little convex so that the healing over will not be flat.
After the break: there was a discussion of the best pot selection for the maple, with a number of options on the table. For deciduous tree, the pot should be glazed. Ovals may do best. The patina on the old Japanese pot may go best with a tree this mature. Tricky to choose a pot that will work for different seasons, as color of the pot may go with the foliage or the trunk. The tree could be potted now but maybe better in February.
Pacific Bonsai Expo
The Kusamura Bonsai Club was honored to assist with the Pacific Bonsai Expo in multiple ways including purchasing tickets for club members, sewing backdrops, lending audio equipment, checking in visitors, setting up, and providing security. Afterwards it was all we talked about for weeks. The elegant displays changed throughout the day as the natural light filtered across the venue; almost in homage to the changing seasons with bright light in the morning and amber hues during the end of the day. We all shared photos of our favorite trees and discussed what we liked about them. At a recent gathering, I asked how many had purchased a new pot or something special for their collections and everyone held up their hand!
The Kusamura Bonsai Club sends our congratulations and gratitude to Jonas Dupuich and Eric Schrader on the success of their efforts and look forward to another exposition in a couple of years.
Here are a few photos from this event
Beginning Workshop Recap
For advice on trees, access to a wide range of bonsai tools, and a fun and informative time come to the home of Richard and Barbara Phillips for our monthly Beginners Workshop. We’re taking a break over the holidays but will begin again next year, so stay tuned for more details.
Last month we focused on “the ABC’s Of Wiring” and how this technique can be intimidating but is crucial in the creation of bonsai. Using simulated trees, we explored how to apply wire that has the function to move and hold branches in new positions yet minimally disrupts the image of your bonsai by “disappearing” on the branch and allows the tree’s beauty and potential to shine through.
This is accomplished by ensuring all wires are properly anchored, using firm and even application of the wire to avoid gaps, and consistently spacing the spiral at a 55-60 degree angle. One helpful tip for wiring odd numbers of branches is to wire the first and third branches together, and then a second wire can easily follow that spiral from the first branch to the second without crossing wires. Another useful technique explored was the “slingshot” method to anchor and move two branches with a minimal amount of wire. An excellent tutorial on this technique from Colin Lewis can be found for free at this link: https://www.craftsy.com/class/bonsai-wiring-essentials/
Practicing is crucial to success, the aim is to apply wire consistently and accurately so focus on building the hand-eye coordination and placing wire accurately and your speed will increase over time. It’s best not to practice on your most precious trees, instead consequence-free practice material can be cut from landscape trees or even dead branches with lots of branching. You also don’t want to use up high quality copper or aluminum wire while you’re practicing the mechanics, so here’s an example of cheap 3mm wire you could use: 3mm Aluminum Craft Wire
Intermediate Workshop Recap
Gordon Deeg unfortunately wasn’t able to attend the workshop so we switched from strictly focusing on maples to a “bring what you want to work on” and “get feedback from your colleagues” kind of event. Attendants were Charlene Fischer, Dave Curbow, Hal Jerman, Idris Anderson, Jenn Tan, Jeremy Jenkins, Katherine Glassey, Lynne O’Dell, Richard Murray and Rita Curbow
Recommended Videos
At our annual Holiday party, members bring bonsai trees decorated for the season. These trees are used as centerpieces for the tables and we all enjoy them. Some are perfect, enchanted, others crazy, bizarre, whimsical. At this time of year Miniature live trees also flood nurseries and big box stores. Many go on half-price sale immediately after or shortly before Christmas, providing us with opportunities to pick up inexpensive trees to work as bonsai. Here are three Christmas tree videos, each with a different approach to holiday bonsai.
Christmas Bonsai Tree
Eric in this video decorates a bonsai tree for celebration at his club’s holiday party. It’s elaborate and colorful! Great inspiration for working up one of your own bonsai for one of our party tables.
Making a Large Christmas Tree Bonsai
Peter takes ordinary little nursery conifers and transforms them into bonsai. As is usual with Peter, it’s all fun and fleet!
Nursery Stock Holiday Bonsai Creation
Simply amazing what Ryan does with this Christmas tree, a marvel of advanced technique: splitting, wrapping with raffia, bending. Every minute is riveting!
Filoli Updates
If you haven’t visited Filoli in a while, we recommend bringing a coat and checking out both the trees in the bonsai collection and the gardens in all of their seasonal splendor.
We’re also excited to welcome the newest tree to the collection, an imported Trident maple donated by the family of a long-time patron of Filoli. While this beautiful tree is new to us, it’s reported by the donator to be 300 years old!
It was purchased on a visit to Japan in the 1980s, and was said to have originated from a prominent man’s collection in the 1960s that was sold to a nursery in Yokohama and later one in Tokyo.
Kusamura continues working with Filoli to care for the bonsai collection, and are happy to include Filoli employees in our work as we care for the trees. Some have even joined Kusamura!
Newsletter Editor: Jenn Tan