In the bonsai world, shows happen all the time. That highly reactive interface between human beings, with their individual natures, and little designed trees, each with its own character, can be found at any bonsai show. Our show is different, though. Most bonsai shows last for a few days or maybe a week at the most, while the show in the Arboretum's bonsai garden runs for more than half a year.
Read MoreThe routine so familiar you know it by heart,
a well worn path trod year after year
yet remaining somehow eternally new.
Read MoreLet us take one last walk through the garden, down
The path we have strolled so many times before
In earlier days made golden by the alchemy of time.
Read MoreBonsai can be a vehicle for staying consciously connected to the natural world. It is a discipline, for those who practice it as such, that broadens awareness of the greater workings of life by focusing attention on a small but living piece of nature.
Read MoreBeing in nature is a multi-sensory experience, with things to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Out of this experience comes a feeling, and born of this feeling is the desire to communicate its meaning to others. It was for this very purpose that humans invented art, in all its varied forms. I think bonsai at its roots is an attempt by humans to express to other humans an experience of nature. That must have been how it began.
My mind conjures up an image of all the tiny buds on all the little branches slowly swelling, then breaking, bursting open, pushing forth new growth all at once. Then that new growth begins extending, fresh green leaves unfurling, shoots stretching out everywhere in a riot of unleashed life.
Read More
