President’s Message
Update: The good news is that the Cherry Blossom Festival came off with great support. We had a nice selection of bonsai trees to display and talk about to the general public. The festival attendance was overwhelming, with large groups of people throughout the two days.
I want to thank everyone that showed up for the day and supported our two tables with bonsai trees to work on. Especially the newer members that where there experiencing the festival for the first time. A nice preview to our up-and-coming larger show this coming Fall.
A Need to Reconsider our Opportunities
As I'm writing this message to the club, I am deeply involved in the preparation of many of my bonsai trees for the Cherry Blossom Festival this coming weekend. This annual April event is one I've always looked forward to since it forces me to examine my trees and decide which I will include for display both Saturday and Sunday for the festivities. I was deeply disappointed in how few club members were willing to sign up and take the time to be a part of this truly fun and rewarding opportunity. Come on everyone, many of you have been with the club for many years now, and being unable to enter even one tree for the second largest event our club puts on every year is inexcusable. Our club has put down a $500.00 deposit for the bonsai show we put on in October at the Quinlan Community Center where we display a whole room full of bonsai. How can we fill a whole room full of bonsai then and not be able to extend ourselves for a smaller and much simpler event this weekend? After all, the Cherry Blossom Festival attracts many different people with a variety of activities and is an excellent venue to advertise our club and attract new members.
It must be easy for many to just throw the responsibility off on others in the club, to let others work out the logistics with the displays and trees to be transported to the event and to let others fill our area with bonsai for the public to enjoy. I hope that many of you will reconsider how you support our club in the future!
May 5th Club Program
I'm proud to announce that Jonas Dupuich will be leading our programing for the first Thursday meeting in May. Jonas is a professional bonsai artist and practitioner, and a publisher of a weekly blog called Bonsai Tonight where he shares his bonsai knowledge and expertise. Also, Jonas is one of the few people selling bonsai tools and soil in the Bay Area, an enterprise that supports his on-going business as well as providing a great resource for people creating bonsai in the Bay Area.
Jonas has prepared a program for us entitled Long-Term Strategies to Growing Quality Bonsai from Scratch. Jonas has planted dozens of pre-bonsai trees in pots, cultivating them over the many years of his bonsai practice and discovering which methods are the most successful and rewarding. He will share his discoveries from many years of practice along with his steady techniques to teach us the course of action that will ensure us the results we all want
Jonas will include strategies for a variety of different species of trees, both evergreen and deciduous.
This program will both enlighten our new club members and refine us seniors.
Third Thursday’s Program
Our third Thursday program will be our usual workshop meeting. Bring in your trees you need to work on and about which you have questions, the senior club members will support you and get you started. In addition we will continue with our beginners class following the club announcements. Last month, many of the club members that take part in Peter Tea's workshop brought in their trees they worked on that day for comments and review. I believe that this was very educational for the club and that this will be an ongoing segment!
Thanks Mehrdad for your excellent carving program you presented for the club last month, now we're all grinding away on our personal trees!
Have a great month doing bonsai everyone!