“If you look after your trees, they’ll look after you.” ~Anon. Bonsai Master
When I’m not tinkering with bicycles, I can often be found torturing trees. It’s a relaxing hobby … bonsai, I mean.
I wish I could remember his name, but the source of the preceding wisdom was the proprietor of a bonsai supply shop on Fourth Avenue, in Vancouver.
I think he moved on, but I remember his mysterious remark, which has become clearer over the years.
I’ve lost more trees (to neglect, disease and insect attack) than I care to admit, over the 22-years I’ve been bending limbs and pruning leaves—the obscure tradition takes practice.
It’s a mixture of horticultural expertise and artistic vision. To attempt to create a tree that expresses nature’s intent is perhaps a severe form of hubris. Nevertheless, if the approach is sincere, and if nature’s form are to be approximated in any credible way, then attention to the wild must be acute. I believe something of nature’s “green fuse,” as Dylan Thomas called it, is ignited within one during the (long) process.
And my trees have looked after me.
They have taught me patience–which really is a virtue. They have drawn my attention to how the natural world is changing. In particular I have noticed their response to climate change. Just like their boreal counterparts, they are more prone to drought, insect plague and stress. (which are all my job to counter).
The tree in today’s photo—a Japapese larch (Larix kaempferi)—has been my teacher for 20 years. I bought it (actually two trees, joined at the hip) and several others, from a nursery in Courtenay, on Vancouver Island.
Over the last two decades it has spawned a couple of other offspring, taken as air-layers from its top. They are now bigger than their progenitor, ready for styling and transplanting into proper bonsai containers. That’s a job for next spring.
They all bring me joy, especially at this time of the year, when they turn gold (larch are coniferous deciduous). They remind me of the great time I spent living in the midst of a larch forest, where I was miniature and the trees were giants.
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Sadly you also lost some beautiful specimens to theft, I wish you would publish pictures of those, at least you have a pictorial memory of them.
Alas! Well, let’s hope they’re looking after someone else.
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