Club News - July 2023
Idris Anderson and Bill McDonald – Yamadori/Yardadori
July 21 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
“Bonsai made from yamadori connects us to the wild and a pot-grown bonsai connects us to another person. …it’s curious, is it not, that each is still the medium of a tree, but one speaks with the voice of nature, and the other the voice of community. Both beautiful. Both necessary.”
—Michael Hagedorn
We are fortunate to have a myriad of sources for acquiring bonsai ranging from seed, nursery stock, yamadori, yardadori, the raffle table, a gift from a friend, air layering, to purchasing mature refined bonsai. Some feel they want to experience the entire evolution from seed to maturity while others embrace the specific challenge of a particular technique. Most of us experiment with multiple sources throughout our bonsai years. We felt our many newer members would benefit from information focusing on both wild collecting (yamadori) and urban collecting (yardadori). Two thirds of the evening will be presentations from Bill McDonald and Idris Anderson while the last third will showcase members’ collected trees and stories. We’re expecting a lively Q&A throughout. We encourage members to bring in their collected trees.
Bill McDonald is a recent member of Kusamura who has also been an active member of Sei Boku Bonsai Kai for the past 12 years. His interest in bonsai began in the 1990’s when he collected valley oak and liquid amber at his mother’s home in Redwood City. With little knowledge or success, he struggled with bonsai until he joined SBBK. He is particularly interested in the early development of trees and in experimenting with various techniques. Bill will bring some collected trees from urban and wild areas and talk about his experience in the process of collecting trees. This will include the permit process, equipment needed, specific collecting locations and aftercare.
Idris Anderson became interested in bonsai when she visited Shanghai to evaluate an international school. Her hosts took her to bonsai gardens in Shanghai and Suzhou where she fell in love with little trees, though they aren’t so little in China. She began to experiment with nursery stock in 2013 and joined Kusamura in 2017. In a light bulb moment, a year or two into her experiments, having learned how long it takes (decades) to develop the large trunks of bonsai she most admired, she began to talk to neighbors about their landscaping plans: “If you ever decide you want to get rid of that hedge of boxwoods, the bougainvillea that isn’t doing so well in the shade, those camellias you’ve topped, that scraggly juniper...???” The trees in her collection that she is most proud of are the yardadori she dug and boxed up and that are just now beginning their lives as real bonsai in bonsai pots. She will tell you all about her failures as well as successes. She’ll also bring some of her yardadori and a Western Juniper that she bought from Bill McDonald, which he dug it up in Shasta.
Monthly Tasks
This month: July 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.
Recycle your Aluminum and Copper Wire
If you wish to donate your wire to the club, please bring it to the June and July meetings. Ren You will collect the wire and have it weighed and sold at a recycle center. Copper wire is valued at a higher price, so please separate the copper wire into a different container than the aluminum. In the past we have had to accept a lower price for our wire because not everyone separated the copper wire from the aluminum. You can bring your wire in shopping bags, buckets, or boxes; just remember to keep the types of wire in separate containers. Thank you to Ren who has done this for the club for over 10 years. It feels good every few years to clean out our old unusable wire.
Beginners Workshop - Sunday, July 23
The Beginner workshop is free and open to any Kusamura member who wants to learn the art of bonsai. No previous experience with bonsai is needed and you do not have to have your own tools or supplies to get started. The workshop is held once a month on a Sunday at the home of Richard and Barbara Phillips.
The opportunity to get expert help for your trees is an essential element of the Beginner workshops and was the motivation behind its creation. The atmosphere of the workshops is relaxed with lots of friendly exchanges between participants and mentors while doing the various tasks of bonsai creation.
In this session Richard will give a presentation on using nursery stock for bonsai. Nursery stock is a great source of bonsai material, however, it's not simply a question of grabbing the first thing that catches your eye. Richard will demonstrate how to evaluate nursery stock to ensure that it can be successfully made into a bonsai. He will also share some of his "secret" tips for checking out the plant's potential before you check out at the cash register!
Intermediate Workshop – Saturday, July 29
This workshop won’t be focused on anything in particular. just bring your trees and join us. This workshop won’t have a teacher, we’ll just work together, sharing advice on trees.
We’d like to have some idea how many people to expect so there is still a Sign Up Sheet. Because there isn’t a teacher we can accommodate more people in this workshop.
Location, Time and Cost
Location Change: This month our regular meeting location isn't available. So instead we'll be meeting at Cubberley Community Center - room U7. (See map below)
Please be there at 12:45 PM ready to setup tables and get to work soon afterwards. We will start cleaning up at 3:45 PM.
To help offset the cost of renting this facility we are asking everyone who attends to donate by using the Donate with PayPal button on the event page.
Kusamura’s Bonsai Day at Filoli - May 20
There was a good crowd at Filoli on Saturday May 20 as Kusamura held a mini bonsai show and demonstration. The day started with some wind and chill in the air but the enthusiasm for bonsai rose above it.
Club members Michael Greenstein, Lynne O’Dell, Steve Iwaki, Charlene Fischer, and Rita Curbow showed a total of eight bonsai. Species featured were Bougainvillea, Satsuki azalea, Canyon Live Oak, Grape, Pomegranate, Shimpaku juniper, Plum, and Serissa japonica ’snow rose.’ Visitors really enjoyed seeing the fruit on the plum and pomegranate bonsai which were both heavily loaded. And the flowers on the bougainvillea, Satsuki azalea, and Serissa japonica ’snow rose’ were spectacular. The evergreen bonsai were placed to balance the show of flowers and fruiting trees.
Additional demonstrations throughout the day included club members creating shohin size bonsai using plant material provided by Filoli. Participants at various times included Idris Anderson, Lakshmi Myneni, Valerie Monroe, Rita Curbow and Lynne O’Dell.
In addition to our bonsai display, Barbara Phillips provided a Kusamono display that definitely grabbed the public’s attention. Many if not all of the Kusamono were created using pots that Barbara created. JC Zhang added to the fun by creating Kokedama (moss balls) which were sold to the public with proceeds going to Kusamura.
Hal Jerman and Dave Curbow sold bonsai pots throughout the event for Kusamura. Some of the bonsai pots were from the collection of Barbara Shahinian and Sandy Planting. And Filoli sold a number of their shohin size bonsai in the Gift Shop.
Club members Henk and Susan Harkema, Lakshmi Myneni, Manshu Verma, Maryann Hinden, and Andy Mayhew helped man the show tables throughout the day and answered questions from the visiting public.
As the Club organizer for this event I would like to thank everyone who volunteered that day or participated in some fashion to make this event a success. That includes Catherine Iwaki who provided photos from the many she took throughout the day. It was a really fun event and I enjoyed getting to put faces to some of the new names in our club membership. And this past week the club has had a number of people join the club after seeing us at Filoli.
Lastly, thank you to Filoli for their Corporate Partnership and providing this opportunity for Kusamura. All the Filoli staff were very helpful during setup and throughout the day.
May Intermediate Workshop - May 27
We enjoyed some warm sunshine and a cool breeze at this month’s intermediate workshop, and the St. Mark’s church parking lot turned out to be a perfect spot with dappled shade, plenty of tables, and importantly access to extension cords and electricity. Attendees included Rita and Dave Curbow, Michael Greenstein, Hal Jerman, Idris Anderson, Lynne O’Dell, Maryann Hinden, Jenn Tan, Ajit Narayanan, Katherine Glassey, and Andy Mayhew, and everyone brought a variety of trees to work on.
Of special note was a juniper that Idris and Hal worked on to steam treat and bend deadwood while protecting the living portions of the tree. Hal has previously showcased how a tile and grout steam cleaner can be used to rehydrate wood and introduce bends that will stay once the wood has dried and hardened again. The work was interesting and to watch and resulted in impressive movement in the wood itself. It will be fun to see how this tree develops and the design is elevated from this neat technique.
In Appreciation
I have thoroughly enjoyed serving as President these past two years. During my tenure we have grown as a club and I am impressed by the enthusiasm, generosity, kindness, and creativity of the membership. My husband recently asked me if I will continue as an active member of Kusamura and I responded “Kusamura is like family to me. I’ve formed friendships that will last forever; so yes, I will always be in this family.”
I could not have done my job without the support of Dave Curbow as Vice President. Dave has completely coordinated all of our monthly program topics and speakers. He just knew when I needed some assistance either by creating a survey of members’ interests, organizing online registration processes, researching storage facilities in the area, visiting interesting gardens we could tour, documenting sources of materials and tools, establishing intermediate/advanced workshops, and just generally keeping it easy for me to be president.
Michael Greenstein and Lynne O’Dell are your next round of leadership and we could not have wished for a more perfect team to advance our enjoyment of bonsai. I look forward to the new ideas they will bring forth.
Kusamura Loses a Lifetime Member
Haviland Thompson, known affectionally as “Hap” joined Kusamura Bonsai in 1987 and was a Lifetime Member when she passed away on March 30 at the age of 103. Born in 1920 in Berkeley, she graduated with a BSc in Chemistry with Honors. Soon after graduation she married Paul Thompson, another graduate in chemistry. Hap was the first woman to graduate from Berkeley in Chemistry. When World War II came along there was a demand for chemists and she eagerly made use of her degree.
After the war, in 1955 Paul was posted to Vishkapatnam, India to build a refinery for Chevron Oil. Hap and their two children went too and in 1959 the family moved to Mumbai and Hap studied at the Ravi Shankar School of Music. If that name is familiar it’s because George Harrison of The Beatles studied with him in 1966.
Hap also studied painting at Jamshatji Jeejeebhoy School of Art, the oldest art institute in India, and won several awards for her work. When the family returned to the United States in 1965 they lived a few miles north of Manhattan and Hap exhibited paintings in several Manhattan galleries.
Hap and Paul retired to Menlo Park in 1985. Two years later she joined Kusamura. For fifteen years or so a number of us took a monthly bonsai workshop with Hap at the Planting’s home. Those times are fondly remembered as Hap always had great trees, a quick wit and was a joy to work with. At club shows she often worked at the front desk welcoming visitors.
Hap was very active within the bonsai community and was a regular weekly docent at the Bonsai Garden Lake Merritt in Oakland for many years. She was also a member of the California Shohin Society. Today Hap’s bonsai are considered a Legacy tree by Kusamura members who now own them.
Hap and Paul were also very active volunteers at Filoli Historic House and Garden in Woodside. Hap designed the benches that are still being used in the garden today as well as a very large ornate pergola used for special events including Filoli entry(s) in the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. Hap would design it and Paul would build it.
When not doing bonsai or volunteering at Filoli she and Paul typically spent their time traveling at least two months each year. Their trip from Islamabad to Beijing coincided with the Tiananmen Square protests. In 2004 Hap decided to return to India to visit old friends. While there she decided she’d like to visit the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. Friends tried to persuade her not to - saying that looters and militia might not appreciate an American woman dropping in. But she told them, “I’m 84 years old. I might not wake up tomorrow. I’m not going to be afraid.” (or something similar). She had a wonderful trip and loved telling about her adventures afterwards.
In 2005 Hap sold off most of her trees, stands, tools, etc. because her eyesight was deteriorating. But she was still mentally sharp until the end and she enjoyed keeping up with what was going on in the club. During Covid she took up writing about her travels during her life to the delight of her family and friends.
For her 102nd birthday Hap's son Roger brought her to Filoli where Rita and I surprised her with a tour of the bonsai and some of the grounds. Still sharp in late July 2022 she wrote in an email to us -
It brightens the day to be remembered. You should travel while you are both ambulatory. I went to Angkor Wat when I was 84. You can too.
Recommended Videos - Three of the Rising Stars Competitors who will appear at Bonsai Rendezvous
I’m looking forward already to the GSBF Rendezvous in Santa Nella, October 2023. Here are three videos from three of the six in the Joshua Roth sponsored Rising Stars Competition to be held on Saturday of the convention. Thought you might like a good preview of what they do and how they do it.
Juniper Design
At Baikoen Bonsai Club March meeting, Marcus styles a juniper.
Mike Pistello's Bonsai Collection
Our friend Eric Schrader interviews Mike as he gives us a tour of his collection. (You can see more of Mike’s work on Instagram: mvpbonsai)
Styling a Large Sierra Juniper
Great to listen in on their discussion of design as they work on a Sierra juniper. Eric wants to keep it large instead of compressing it.
Sam Tan with Eric Schrader | Bonsaify
18 minutes, August 2, 2022
Video Link
Sam's Slender Sierra Styling
Sam and Eric continue their design discussions, this time with a tall Sierra. Sam takes the lead. (You can see more of Sam’s work on Instagram: samtanbonsai).
9 minutes, November 30, 2022
Video Link
Newsletter Editor: Jenn Tan