Holiday season is rough. But, this one has a great story line. In November, yes this is an old one that I have not had the chance to archive yet! Al Nelson was scheduled to be our presenter at Baikoen. Sadly, to say Al was not healthy enough again to make it out to us and we had to scramble to find a replacement under a week's notice. Big Joe was in charge of our programs and found one unsung hero to step up to the plate with under 24 hours to prepare. Cesaro agreed but did n

Tom Vuong was our guest demonstrator for the month of February. Again, I'm totally enthralled with his no nonsense way of doing bonsai. Everything he showed us was down to earth and practical in every way. Tom spent the next two hours talking and more importantly showing us his technique in grafting junipers and black pine. The photo above is the example of what the finished product would look like. Just clean neat cuts and clean and neat bandage job. Tom's scion graft on the

We were graced with Tak Shimazu at our last club meeting. Tak always brings a down to Earth sense of conversation and telling everything as it is. At this meeting he transformed a rough stock Itoigawa Juniper with little or no bottom branches into a pretty good looking tree by the end of the night. He said, "Anybody can do this if they have the vision to look beyond what is wrong with the tree." As you can see from above there are no low branches at all. The lowest branch is

At our last club meeting in June. Mel came out from the beach early so he would not hit traffic for the demonstration for the night. What he brought out was an established juniper raft a student gave back to Mel because he was downsizing and moving. Mel decided to bring it in because the extreme hot weather did not co-operate with his planned raft rock planting. It was nice to see a full house and everybody was excited on what Mel brought in. Mel has been known for his unique

Date: April 28, 2016 Location: Los Angeles Arborteum (Oak Room) Time: 7:00pm to 9:00pm Refreshments: Gustavo Duran, Marge Blasingame, Big Joe, and Elaine Jeche Tom Vuong from Orange County will be our star demonstator for the evening. Tom is an avid California Juniper collector and really specilizes in extremely large bonsai specimens! The last I spoke to Tom, he will be working on a juniper species. I hope to see you all at the meeting! Bring a raffle to support the club. #c

Been really busy the last 2 weeks and this is the first time in while I could sit down and post on the blog. So without any other interruption.... Bob was our wonderful demonstrator of the month of April. He was so excited that he drove down the Thursday before! Bob brings a unique laid back point of view of bonsai and it showed at our transforming demo. Bob is the proud owner of Kimura Bonsai Nursery in Northridge and has a ton of good material to work with. He has studied u