|
Lester: thank-you for your offer. Will take you up on it this spring!
Bob,
everything you see there came from a different place. 3 trees, 3 different nurseries, different place for the soil and the pot. Digging wild trees or yamadori as the japanese call them is using a diminishing resourse and I'm not comfortable with it. No problem with others who dig on private lands or get permits for public. But a true artist with time and patience can make a nursery stock look like it was dug from the wild and that's a gift too! There are those koi nuts who pick out tosai and stay with them. there are those who buy finished koi and work hard to be competitive, keeping them at their best for as long as they can. I quess I'm learning that I want to give to my charges something of myself. Amazing thing tho with japanese gardens or bonsai or koi, the harder you work at something the better you get at it and then the less you have to work on them. Interesting circle,no?
I do like studing many of the japanese arts because it helps me to understand
the culture. our lanquages are so different that many subtelties that go untranslated can be understood if you understand the reasoning behind it.
I think the reason I do so well with my koi is I'm with them everyday. I clean their filters every day. Same with bonsai. I check them every day. During the summer they need watering up to 3x a day. It just fits into my lifestyle and personality. It ain't for everybody.
I don't seek the gift but the giver. to appreciate what a bonsai artists sees
in his work and is attempting to do is the key, not the bonsai itself! A bonsai will tell you what it likes and doesn't like by how it reacts to your care. once you learn the language, you communicate. Like with my favorite asagi. She wouldn't come up and fight with the pigs for floating wheatgerm. She's a lady. She hugged the bottom. I got some sinking food. She now comes up to greet me when I approach her pond! I speak asagi. I'm looking forward to learning
shusui or kosui with Arthur's help. you know kosui (ain't got no bluee! )
|