The speaker/demonstrator for the January 27th meeting was supposed to have been Jim Doyle but due to a sudden illness in the family, he was unable to come. So, at the last minute, Dana Quattlebaum, our own Bonsai Society member and resident artist at Brussel’s Bonsai Nursery, jumped in to produce the evening program on Bunjin. The tree selected was a Red Pine. As Dana shaped the tree by removing unneeded branches, leaving some jin, and wiring and redirecting the wired branches, he produced a gently flowing tree, feminine in form and beautiful. As Dana performed this feat, he provided insights into the tree (think of it more as a white pine rather than a black pine in terms of care and maintenance) and this included watering, feeding and pruning. Asked what fertilizer he would use for that tree, he answered “Plantone”, an organic fertilizer and he went on to explain how to place it for use by the tree, not to spread it all over the surface of the potting medium but to place it in small “piles” placed as you would if you were using organic fertilizer pellets.

The tree was then raffled off and won by Kamran Kiani who was thoroughly elated by his win.

Thank you, Dana for stepping in at the last moment to help our Bonsai Society.

More pictures of Dana working on this tree are in our Gallery!