REBS Show 2005

Saturday and Sunday, the fourth weekend in August, is the traditional date for the Redwood Empire Bonsai Society Show. I look forward to this date every year, and I don't believe I have missed the show since the first one I attended around fifteen years ago. It is the bonsai highlight of the year for Northern California. This is one of the biggest shows in the country with over 100 major show quality trees from all over the Bay Area as well as the North Bay. It is always held at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Santa Rosa.

I used to attend this show as a vendor. The sales were good, but my business just isn't set up for this kind of event, so it was much more work than it was worth. But the worst part about vending was that I didn't get to see much of the show! Now, I go down for one day and spend it entirely with the trees and my old bonsai friends, some of whom I only see once a year at the show. It is an inspiration to see such magnificent trees. I get energized to go home and work on my own. I haven't shown any trees for a number of years, but I hope to do so again next year. I have three major trees that I hope to have in shape by August next year. I bought a big cream oval pot for my redwood and agreed to have Tom Colby build me a stand for my Pyracantha. Bob Shimon has a pot I want for my Liquidambar, but it wasn't at the show, so I will have to pick it up later. I rarely buy trees anymore, it's too much of a case of 'coals to Newcastle', although I did buy a wonderful old crabapple from Jim Gremel this spring. Pots and stands will take up most of my 'tree' budget for the next few years as my trees edge toward show quality.


It is nice finally to be making the transition to finishing trees, it only took twenty years. It doesn't have to take that long, but that's how it has worked out for me. It's odd, bonsai is an art that is turned on its head. Beginners want to do all the last things first, and necessary things last. You don't get to work on leaf reduction, ramification, potting, and showing until the tree is basically finished. That's the glory stage, and beginners want to jump right into it. The problem is that they haven't paid their dues, the many years it takes to prepare the material, or the commitment to buy quality material, and the years it takes to learn how to deal with it. The years spent getting there look like a huge hurdle to someone at the beginning, but in fact, the getting there is the real joy. It is the joy that you get everyday as you prowl among your trees, getting hundreds of little surprises each year as you discover each little improvement that you and nature have created. Sometimes it's happenstance, sometimes it's planned, but the joy is the same.

In fact, if beginners don't discover this joy of the journey, they don't stay with bonsai. The path is so long that no mortal human could endure the frustration of that delayed gratification. Yes, the oohs and ahs of the spectators taking in your trees is rewarding, but it is only the tip of the total joy, deeply intense, but soon gone. Monday morning brings you back to the reality of watering, pruning, potting, fending off the elements until next year. Yet, shows are a great incentive to stick with bonsai, especially really good shows like REBS. I take pictures each year of both my old favorites and new trees. Seeing these trees again and again reminds me that I have to finish my own; I have to give them their moment of glory. The trees begin to take on a life of their own. Not like pets, because they are totally dependent on your care and love, but a live entity striving for beauty through your efforts. It's important to show them, to let others enjoy the artistic beauty, to be pulled into the frame that cuts through reality.

Old friends are important too. For the last several years, I have made my critical tour of the show with Greg, whom I only get to see once a year. We are fellow nurseryman, so there is a professional bond beyond bonsai. He is a lovable character and it is a great joy to see him. We, and sometimes Jeff, my best bonsai buddy, enjoy and study each tree in the show, taking a couple hours to make the rounds. We absorb the experience the great trees give us, pausing to let the beauty and the story sink in. Then we critically analyze them, both the wonderful and the bothersome aspects, and make suggestions. It's a great opportunity to test your skills and expand your horizons. The opportunities to see such material all at once and in person are so rare, that they cannot be wasted. I find myself finding new fronts for may of the trees. In a few cases I would have made the front the back, but usually it is a more subtle than that, turning a few degrees to display better an important aspect or to diminish a bothersome one.



The vendors section gives me the chance to see old business associates. These are people I love as friends but with whom I can also talk shop. But since they are busy trying to make some money, the conversations are by necessity short and concentrated. I always try to talk to Ian from Lone Pine Gardens, who is a propagation nerd like myself. He actually propagates a lot more than I do these days, but each of us delight in sharing our new discoveries in the prop house. This is also the chance to actually see and feel the pots, stands, and stones that you otherwise would have to guess about in catalogs and on the internet. You get to talk to the people that make and sell them. I had a nice conversation with Tom and went through all the stands he had there, but there just wasn't one big enough for my monster trees, so I am going to have him build me one. It is going to set me back more than I wanted, but it's time for me to make that kind of commitment to the art. I'm not going to live forever and its so easy to keep putting off these decisions until one day you wake up and it's too late or life takes a left turn, and then it's impossible. I don't want this opportunity to pass me by.

Then at the end of the day, after all the chatting and shopping and looking, I go back through all the trees one last time and take pictures. It's such a challenge. The lighting in the hall is terrible and if you use the flash, the shadows wreck the image. I used to spend about an hour on each picture pixel painting out shadows and enhancing them until they looked like what I remembered. Yesterday, I just gave up and took them without the flash and instead spent far less time correcting the color, contrast, and brightness. They lose detail by not using the flash, but the really important part is that the feeling is still pretty much intact, and this is a process that I can stand to perform. There are a few shots in this post, but the bulk of the pictures in much greater resolution will be posted at our website in the coming weeks. I will announce it here when they are done.

On the almost two hour drive home, I think about these things, about what I am doing, where I am going, how much progress I am making. It's one of those time markers that I keep talking about. This is a yearly one, a chance to gauge my life, and the life of the nursery, and the life of my trees. During the six years of the move, these measurements have been difficult. Yes, I was building something better, but I was also sacrificing a lot of things. One of those things was my trees. That's over now. The old nursery has been closed a year, and there have been other setbacks since then, but these too have been resolved. There is still much to be done, but now it is time for a long climb back to the dream, that fateful thought I had twenty years ago as I prowled among my new collection thinking I could spend my life selling these little trees to people.