Newsletter June 2022

Bonsai Notebook

Meeting Time and Place: June 11, 2022 at 7pm
LAC Arboretum, Palm Room

The June 11 meeting will be at the Arboretum Our guest demonstrator will be Jason Saito, and he will be talking about the history and art of saikei while he demonstrates the creation of a new saikei for us.

Jason has been involved in bonsai for about 10 years now and is primarily focused on saikei, landscape plantings. From an early age, he has had a passion for miniatures including Kokeshi, building small-scale model dioramas, miniatures, and dollhouses. When he began studying bonsai, it led to him creating miniature landscape plantings.

Jason has studied with Frank Goya, Al Nelson, Mel Ikeda, and John Wang.

Come to the meeting ready to learn about and enjoy saikei, and perhaps take one home with you.

President’s Corner

Our Memorial Day Weekend show was a big success. I received many comments about the high quality of our trees, and I know the Arboretum attendees were, as usual, fascinated by what they saw. I am very grateful to our members for sharing their trees, many for the first time.

I also appreciate all the help from members setting up and taking down the show, as well as watching the trees and answering questions throughout the weekend. I hope you all enjoyed the experience.

Thanks to Peter for his very popular demonstration on Saturday. Also thank you to all of our members who worked on trees at our informal members workshop tables and moved around Ayres Hall as docents.The #1 comment was how friendly and knowledgeable everyone seemed to be. Our members are awesome! You sparked new interest in the Art of Bonsai and SABS.

All of you who attended the show saw Wendy & Lorraine working at the sales table throughout the weekend. They were there everyday and did an outstanding job managing all the sales and keeping the room organized.

The sale table was very full, and the sales were a tremendous benefit to the club. Almost all of bonsai items found new homes. Special thanks go out to Doyle Saito, Tom Vuong, Ray Blasingame, Marren Padrones, and Lindsay Shiba for their generous donations to SABS and to the sale table. Membership, the club percentage for sales and donations are what keeps us operational. We have a long history of donating in the bonsai world, and it is what sustains all of our clubs.

The donated cookies, donuts, goodies from 85c and waters were also very much appreciated.

On behalf of the club, I thank you all.

~Dave

Members Corner

– Our monthly meeting raffle table has been fabulous– thanks to all of the members who have generously donated to the table. Please help keep up our club tradition and bring an item(s) to support SABS and buy some raffle tickets. Everyone enjoys going home with trees, plants, pots, tools, supplies, books and even an occasional bag of “bonsai dirt”.

– Our May meeting & Memorial Weekend Show brought us many new members and a renewed interest in our bonsai emailing list.
Welcome all to our SABS Club and website (www.sabonsai.org)
New Members:
Ellen Keneshea
Carol Upston
Becky Villansenor & Katherine Ng
Guillermo Padrones
Anthony Aguirre
Radford & Martha Hunt
Lawrence Ponce
Bruce Tsurutani
Cam La

– We are in search of a hospitality chairperson and committee of 2-3 who would be interested in helping to manage our monthly meeting refreshment table. Please contact Lorraine if interested in volunteering and/or learning more.

– For those of you still receiving the US mail version of this newsletter, better quality photos, club updates and resources are always available on our website. Check us out at www.sabonsai.org http://www.sabonsai.org

– Anytime you have any questions please contact Dave & Lorraine at [email protected]

Thank You To our May Raffle Table Donors

Bob Alderette, Jim & Helen Barrett, Jerry Banuelos, Sue Cook, Daniel Deephouse, YS Farn, Ellen Keneshea, Dave Miles, Peter Macasieb, Jim Pelling, Jack Reynolds, Steve Riley

And to all who so generously purchase tickets

Upcoming Events

July 2-3 2022 Vietnamese Bonsai Society 22nd Annual Show, Vietnamese American Temple,12292 Magnolia St., Garden Grove, 9a-5p, demonstrations 1p daily, bonsai sales and auction

Oct 8-9 2022 GSBF Bonsai Rendezvous, Santa Nella, CA

May 2022 Meeting Highlights

Jack Reynolds was our guest at the May meeting, and he gave us an excellent presentation on bunjin ficus. He talked about bonsai as a living art form: we are sculpting trees. The literati, or bunjin, style epitomizes the artfulness of bonsai styling. It doesn’t follow the traditional rules of bonsai, but generally represents a combination of predominately tree trunk space with limited foliage. Using ficus for bunjin styling is not often seen, so it was interesting to watch Jack and learn how to train ficus into bunjin.

Jack said he starts his bunjin as cuttings so he can control the length and taper of the trunk. As the cutting grows, he trims off all the foliage except one or two branches and lets the tree grow to the desired height. Then he focuses on developing pads of foliage, keeping it to a minimum.

Jack was asked about his soil mix for ficus. He said he mixes two parts of pumice, two parts of lava rock (scoria), and one part either orchid bark or fir bark.

He worked on four bunjin styles during his demonstration, and all were donated to the raffle.

Steve Riley was the winner of two of the trees, and the other two went to Daniel Deephouse and Y.S. Farn. We had an enjoyable evening learning about new material for styling bunjin.

Coming soon to our website www.sabonsai.org…. Check out the Gallery for photos of the display trees and stones at the 2022 Santa Anita Bonsai Society Memorial Weekend Show… Thanks again to all who participated and helped make the weekend a huge success.

Come Join Us

Next Meeting:
Date: June 11, 2022
Time: 7 pm

Location:

LAC Arboretum, Palm Room
301 N. Baldwin Ave
Arcadia, CA 91007

2022 Monthly Meeting Dates

June 11— Jason Saito LAC Arboretum
July 9 — Peter Macasieb at his home in West Covina
Aug 13 — Jason Chan Location TBA

Refreshment Schedule
June 11— Peter Macasieb, Jackie Zinder, Steve Riley, Daniel Deephouse

July 9— Dessert Potluck at Macasieb’s
please bring appetizers & desserts to share with all

Aug 13— Wendy Tsai, Judy Anthony, Manuel Dizon

2022 Refreshment Sign Ups will be available at the June meeting