Kitsune Miko said .......

....... if we use the dog training technique that punishes the
dog for
returning when called, they won't come anymore.


I agree Kitsune !!

I'm a newbie who started my Bonsai career with a sad looking
mallsai my kids
gave me as a present.
Not knowing much about the art, I visited the local book store
and purchased
a number of books by Colin Lewis, Herb Gustafson, Paul
Lesniewicz and Amy
Lang. It took me another week to find this excellent mailing
list and post a
few "newbie" questions.

I quickly discovered that my little juniper was not a bonsai at
all, but in
fact nothing more than a little cutting that someone had poked
into lousy
potting soil then held it in place with a bunch of glued rocks.


I agree with both of you, but do you know how lucky you were,
Mark? Most juniper mallsai are DOA in the hands of the buyer;
when they turn brown, it isn't the buyer's fault, but most buyers
of mallsai (or, worse, recipients of a mallsai as a gift) don't
know enough about growing radishes, much less bonsai, to know
that they did nothing terribly wrong to cause those brown
needles.

The short story is, a year later, I've taken 8 courses from Jim
Doyle at
Natures Way, and my little mallsai looks great in it's new pot
and soil,
sitting next to the 10 other beauties from my classes. Some day
it may even
turn into a little shohin! At the moment, I'm proud that I
managed to keep
the little critter alive.



Yes! And for that, I hereby award you with the IBC logo medal of
merit. Wear it with pride:

( ==] )

;-)


If it wasn't for the kind and gentle words of members of this
group, and my
insatiable appetite to educate myself, I may have moved onto
other less
demanding sports. After all, it takes less effort to go golfing
on the
weekend than to raise a dozen trees.

When someone posts "I just bought a bonsai at Wal-Mart and what
should I do
with it?" don't get snooty and tell them it's not a bonsai and
it probably
won't live anyway. Encourage them to read and learn, and .....
remember how
proud you where when you brought your first tree home !!

Rather than getting upset with *Mart for selling trees that may
not live,
why not ask them if you could put a pile of your associations
leaflets near
their display. Who knows, you might encourage someone to learn.

Many of us have done that; the bonsai leaflets soon get buried
under a pile of Ortho or MiracleGrow promotional leaflets, or are
sprayed by the automatic water system to the point of
unreadability.


Remember .... we all started somewhere.


Yup. But there are better ways to start -- if you have that
choice (as you didn't).

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - The phrase
'sustainable growth' is an oxymoron. - Stephen Viederman

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