OLYMPIA BONSAI CLUB

GENERAL MEETING MINUTES

MARCH 9, 2016

The meeting was called to order at 7:03 PM. Visitors are Mark, Marshall and Lindsey.

Announcements:

·  We have lava for sale at $10 per bag. Talk to Wes or Cole if you would like some.

·  There will be a soil mixing workshop this summer, July or August.

·  April regular meeting is changed to the 3rd week, and will be April 21. We will hear Ed Kuehn talk about viewing stones.

·  Cookie/coffee helper position still needs to be filled. Dennis is filling in until someone can be found.

·  Charlie Anderson announced the Evergreen Bonsai Club in Bremerton is having a flea market April 15 from 7 PM. Bring items to sell and money to buy items. It will be at the Crossroads Church in Bremerton. Any items sold will be assessed a 10% fee to the Evergreen Bonsai Club.

·  The azalea that was donated to our club will be worked on in June by Victrina Ridgeway. We are selling $5.00 tickets for a raffle of this elegant bonsai. When sales have hit the minimum amount the azalea is worth, it will be raffled off.

·  Wes has a sign-up sheet at the back of the room for the azalea workshop given by Victrina Ridgeway at the North Olympia Fire Station from 6 to 9 PM on June 10. The workshop costs $40, and there will be 9 or 10 spots.

·  We are cancelling the October meeting because the PNBCA convention is in town at the Red Lion. Annette Clark got up and spoke about the details: The dates are October 13-16. There is a sign-up sheet in the back of the room to participate. You can pay for one day or all three days. There will be demos, vendors and workshops.

·  The Beginners’ Workshop is March 17 and 18, and March 24 and 25. There are one or two spots left. The 24th and 25th, it would be appreciated if Club members would come and help. Times are 6-9 PM.

Our speaker tonight is Dave DeGroot. He has a choice of raw materials: A Blue Atlas Cedar, native to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, purchased from Bonsai Northwest, and raised on Vashon Island; or a Sargeant Juniper, otherwise known as Shimpaku. Both have had pre-training done to them. As a rule, Bonsai nurseries have a lot more prospective material than other nurseries. Bonsai nurseries in the area include Telpurian Farms in East Salem, Oregon, and Bonsai Northwest in Tukwila. Dave asked for the crowd’s choice, and the Blue Atlas Cedar won.

The Blue Atlas Cedar isn’t truly blue. There is a coating on the leaves called “cuticle” that makes leaves shiny, or in this case, the texture of the cuticle makes the leaf appear blue.

When deciding options for the front of the tree, choose where the base has roots that spread out to the right and left, and movement of the trunk is primarily to one way, right or left. Traditionally, Bonsai should welcome the viewer. There are three principles when assessing a Bonsai tree:

1.  Proportion: the lower part is thicker than the top; branches should be thinner than the trunk; branches should be shorter than the tree is tall.

2.  Balance: It should never be symmetrical; branches should be arranged to affect a lean.

3.  Harmony: Perceived pattern; repetition; branch angles and branch position.

He first decided what would be the top of the tree, then decided what would be the front. He selected a front where the tree leans towards him. When removing branches, should we leave a jin? He doesn’t think so. He believes a jin denotes age, and he appreciates a more youthful look in trees.

Atlas Cedars make substantial wound wood. He used a knob cutter when removing a branch so when healed it would be flush with the trunk. He recommends wound treatment for appearances.

When wiring, his approach is to wire branches to the tree itself, so is self-contained, rather than to an external source, such as the pot. When moving a branch to point downwards, he notched the underside of the limb so it will bend easier. Make sure when notching that the wood matches up when bent down. A common mistake is to make the notch too wide, so start out with a single saw cut. Cut through 1/3 the diameter of the branch, then make another cut nearby resulting in a narrow notch.

Spring is a good time to do this. It causes the branch to come out of the trunk horizontally. He uses #5 wire when wiring a branch. When finished with each branch, go to the end and look inwards. Look for unintended gaps between wire and branch. Twist the wire as you are winding. The other hand is moving the branch and wire together. He wired the bottom branch then took the wire straight up the back of the trunk to wire the second branch.

The branch with the notch is stiff so requires two wires. The second wire will come up the back of the trunk to another branch that is very stiff. Why not notch it too? When doing a back branch, if you wire it down it needs to be full of foliage so you don’t see the back side of the branch when viewing from the front.

Atlas Cedar branches are very flexible, but small sprouts are tender and can be rubbed off easily.

Aluminum vs. copper wire: Conifers have thick, spongy bark. Copper wire is the same color as the bark and you can use a smaller size. First stylings can use aluminum which is softer. With aluminum, you can back it off the reuse the wire. Copper wire hardens as you use it. Good copper wire can be purchased from Deer Meadow online. Copper wire from Japan is sized differently. 20 gauge is very close, but as it gets bigger, Japanese wire differs. Japanese 18 gauge will be like American 16. Also, Japanese is not annealed quite as much.

Atlas Cedars bud back very easily.

Cookie break.

Don’t style and repot in the same year. He uses cut paste for aesthetics mostly. When trees are wounded they produce ‘callus’, like a clot, a fibrous blockage in the cells. With deciduous trees with thin bark, if it dries out around a wound, it can die back more, so then cut paste is useful for keeping the wound moist.

Atlas Cedars are easy to care for, not temperamental, though he has had problems when it made cones. Spurs will not produce vegetative growth.

He brought books that came out last June. They are $31.95 each. They can be ordered online at American Bonsai Society store, or at Stone Lantern.

The tree was auctioned off for $150 to Vuong. There was a raffle, and the meeting was adjourned at 8:54 PM.