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[00:01:16] Speaker B: The baby trees.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: The Black Pondo Podcast.
The Black Pondo Podcast.
You're going to say you're going to save some for me? You're going to drink it all?
[00:01:40] Speaker D: No, no, no.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: This could get spicy.
[00:01:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Peter, where are you? Where are you?
[00:01:48] Speaker C: What are you doing?
Oh, I'm at my house. I'm inside my house. Ah, nice. Nice.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: Okay.
You're too cheap to run the heater or what?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: Well, you know, yeah, that's a good point. You know, I am.
Well, it's gonna. It's gonna get warm in a couple of days, so I'm just like.
Though I am starting to warm up, it's. Well, the house is like 67 degrees right now, so it's not bad.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Very nice.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Very nice.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Cool.
Awesome, guys. Well, hey, thank you so much for jumping on. I really, really appreciate you.
And I guess before we really get started, I would love to make this very informal, super fun, and just like, we're not going by a script or anything like that necessarily. We can talk about anything you guys would like. I think tangents are. Are encouraged.
If you have to use the restroom or anything, like, you could just get up and go and we'll keep talking, keep rolling if that's good with everybody.
[00:02:54] Speaker C: That is kind of funny because that door behind me is my restroom, so it works out.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Super convenient.
Cool. So, yeah, I guess, you know, the. The kind of idea or thought behind this episode is I was thinking that we could dive into the 2024 Pacific Bonsai Expo.
And I think the idea kind of came from watching I'm an MMA fan. So I watch or listen to the Joe Rogan experience sometimes, and he does these episodes. They're. They're called fight companions. And essentially he just is hanging out with his friends and they are watching the fights and they tell you the time that the fights start, and they're just talking smack, joking around, having a good time, and it's kind of like you're. You're just watching the fights along with them. And so I thought it might be interesting to try it going over the pbe, because the book just came out and I thought it know we've had some time to.
To kind of sit and think about the pbe, and now I think it'd be a good, great time to reflect on everything. So wanted to circle back and, and talk about the pbe.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: Oh, that's great.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Sweet.
What's up, Eric?
[00:04:21] Speaker B: How long is an M. How long is an MMA fight? How long do we have?
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Well, the. The PBE companions, they sometimes go on for hours and hours and hours.
Uh, we can go on for as long as we want. We don't have to, you know, we can cut it short. We can go long.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: It's.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: It's kind of whatever.
Do you have a hard stop at a certain time?
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Nope. I might fall asleep if. If goes on too long, but other than that, I'm fine.
[00:04:53] Speaker D: Old rose burning, 630.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Well, yeah, we'll just keep asking your questions. Eric. Eric, tell us about those paintings behind you.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: What kind of window shades are those?
[00:05:13] Speaker B: I decline to answer.
[00:05:16] Speaker D: Is that your bedroom?
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah, sort of.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Oh, man.
Awesome. All right, well, I thought we should start by starting at the beginning. So could we do. Could we start by doing just a very brief introduce yourself, if that is good with you guys. And then I'm also going to ask you, what have you been up to Bonsai related recently? Like what's been going on in your life? However I want. Let's go with the introductions first and then I'm. I'm curious what's been going on at. In your life, Bonsai related after that?
So, Eric, you want to. You want to start with introducing yourself?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Sure. I'm Eric Schroeder. I've been in bonsai since about 2002.
Studied with Boone Manikativapart, and have been a professional for about the last five years. I run a growing operation and website called bonsify.com and I'm the co. Founder. Co organizer of the Pacific Bonsai Expo.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Eric.
All right, Peter, you want to go next.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: Sure.
My name is Peter T.
My business is ptbonsai.com I started Bonsai in 2000, I think two also about the same time, maybe 2003. That's when I linked up with Boone.
I went to Japan in 2011, did an apprenticeship there, came back, continued my business and do it to this day.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Awesome.
Everyone knows you guys already. We probably don't need to do this, but we're just going to go for a short intro.
Awesome. Cesar, you want to go after that?
[00:07:06] Speaker C: No.
[00:07:10] Speaker D: Yeah.
My name is Cesar Donyes and I started Bonsai just a couple years after them in 2019.
So I'm pretty. I'm pretty new compared to them.
My business or whatever you want to call it is Senkal Bonsai, if you haven't heard of my name.
And yeah, I basically deal with a lot of. Collected all the material that grows well in my area and started doing this full time for actually two years this month. So here we are. Now we're in the podcast with Jeremiah again. Hell yeah.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Awesome. Congrats. I love it.
Cool. All right. Well, yeah, I think everyone knows you already, but I think that was a great little intro.
What fun or exciting things have you guys been up to? Bonsai related or what's your life been looking like? Bonsai related. Eric, you want to start?
[00:08:11] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Actually, I took kind of a left turn bonsai wise recently and decided that I was going to start doing bonsai pottery. So I actually spent the last two and a half months starting to do some bonsai pottery after I harassed now tokotake quite a bit with some questions that I couldn't figure out.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: That was it. That was a departure for me because I. I hadn't. I'd done like a few pots but nothing serious until just recently.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: That's super fun. And guys, please feel free to ask each other questions. We can take tangents. We can go wherever you guys want to go with it.
I think now is a fantastic person to. To ask as he just won. What was that competition called that he won?
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Was it the. The pot competition at the National?
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Oh, I didn't realize he won it.
The ABS pot competition. Yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yes, he definitely won, I believe the main award and I. I think his wife won like second place or something like that. I'm really sorry for.
Probably everyone out there knows exactly, but he definitely won a big award. I thought his pot was really cool.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: I didn't realize he had entered. It's funny because when I visited him, I dropped off My kid up in college in Salem, Oregon. And then I went up there and hung out with him for a few hours one night while he was making pots. He never stops making pots. And he and his wife were showing me, they were actually taking some of the entries to the national and he didn't mention that he was entering.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: That doesn't surprise me for some reason.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: And yeah, I know. Probably well deserved that. He won though, for sure.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: I love his pots. When we were podcast, I was podcasting with now and he, he wasn't even stopping making pots when we were podcasting together. He was just like throwing things together, molding, glazing some pot while we were podcasting. It was, it was great. I respect it.
That's awesome though. So are, are you selling a few of your pots on Bonsai Phi?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Not yet. I, you know, the, the point of making pots for me was actually to be able to have pots for trees that I want to sell and I wasn't able to get the volume that I wanted, so I decided to try to start producing some myself. I brought a few to the Rendezvous to just let people check them out and sold a few. But I'll probably be keeping most of them for the time being until I get to the point where I have trees in them.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: That's awesome. What kind of kiln do you have?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: I'm actually using a community studio. It's two electric, big electric kilns for bisque and then a gas, gas fired production. They do cone 10 reduction only, so.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Wow, that's awesome, man. And it, I guess it doesn't really surprise me because you kind of do a little of everything. I mean, you've made bonsai display tables and now you're making pots so you can have a full on display all by yourself, which is really cool.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: It's an example of my failure to delegate.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: For sure.
Peter, what have you been up to bonsai wise lately?
[00:11:52] Speaker C: For me it's been same. Oh, same old. Just wrapped up some, some traveling for bonsai, but other than that, just managing the garden, doing kind of same stuff, learning new stuff every day.
One thing I learned after doing this for so many years is that there's always something new and it's not really new. It's really. There's always some problem that pops up. So it's just kind of dealing with that and just going at it. That's about it.
Nothing too new in my end.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Were you at the Rendezvous as well? Were all three of you there?
[00:12:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah, yeah. I saw some of Eric's pots there too. It's pretty cool.
[00:12:35] Speaker D: Yeah, I almost bought one, but he took off early and didn't even say. He didn't even say later. But that's beside the fact.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Well, I understand. He told me a little bit about it. I was born a week early, too.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Well, Cesar was. You were teaching a workshop. So I. I was staring across the aisle at his table for the two days, and he wasn't there. So I was like, dang it.
[00:13:02] Speaker D: Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, bro. People. People were requesting me.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: I like it when Cesar came over to my table. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, Caesar came over to my table, and where I was at, he was like, oh, man, you can see the whole show. All I have to see is Eric.
[00:13:25] Speaker D: For real, though, I didn't. I didn't even notice that.
It didn't come to my attention until I saw that view, that other people had different views. But Eric right in front of you in eating grapes.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Well, I was. I shared those grapes, for the record. And, yeah, the other thing was, it wasn't entirely my fault that you couldn't see everything else, because where I was, like, boxed in, I had, like. There was the booth behind me or the table behind me. He put up, like, a black curtain and some shelves instead of a table. And then the same thing with the booth next to me. It was like. There was, like, a wooden shelf, so I was, like, stuck in a corner, even though I was in the middle of the room.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, true, true.
How was the event overall? I totally missed it. It looked like fun online.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: I thought it was pretty cool. I mean, it was. Seemed like it was a pretty good turnout. I think it was the. Jonas and I were talking, and we think that maybe the event has now outgrown the venue again. Like, they went from a bigger venue to this smaller venue, and I think that the venue was too small.
Like, there were definitely multiple vendors that had wanted to vend. That weren't able to. And then the. When I. I don't know about you, Cesar, but when I taught a workshop, there were, like, six other workshops in the same room. And I was having a. Having a little bit of a hard time making myself heard to the students.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, there was.
[00:14:52] Speaker D: Yeah, it was a packed room for the workshops.
And I went by when there was other workshops, not even yours, and it was the same, I believe was like six. Six tables at once.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yep. The hotel was 100% booked, so, I mean, that's great for rendezvous that. That they generated that kind of interest and had a lot of registration.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: That's fantastic. Yeah. How was the new talent competition?
[00:15:22] Speaker D: It was popping.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Popping.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can tell they were all stressed out about it and very happy when they were finished. Yeah, I think.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Oh, man, I would be stressed too, if I was in that situation. Were a lot of people watching them actually work on the trees, or was that kind of like, them doing their own thing and not so much.
[00:15:44] Speaker D: I was busy vending most of the time, but I did go by a couple times, and there was always people watching and they even had, like, chairs. So there was people sitting down or right there, up close and personal, you know, which, bruh.
For sure. I give it up to them, bro. Because I don't think I, I would do that. That's crazy, bro.
I, I, I don't like people. People like, just watching me, you know? Like, I don't know. It kind of puts me out of my comfort zone.
I mean, I do bonsai to chill, you know what I'm saying? Not to. Not to sit there and just sweat my ass off, you know?
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Did you, did you see what happened with Addison?
[00:16:20] Speaker C: The.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: So one of my students, Mark.
Mark, who actually podcast Bonsai, what is it? Bonsai Growers? Bonsai Builders. That's his podcast.
He. He, like, took a picture of Addison off Addison's Instagram page and sent it to. I think it's fathead.com where you can make it.
[00:16:42] Speaker C: They'll make.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: They'll blow it up and put it on a stick so you could, like, like, wave it around.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I saw that. I saw that.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: So you had three of them, and they were sitting there cheering for Addison with these, like, fat heads on a stick.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: That's Cesar.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Do you think that would help you.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: You think that would help you concentrate.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: When you're working on tricks?
[00:16:59] Speaker D: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that would definitely help me.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker D: I didn't notice the picture until I went up close to go look at them, and then I looked back for something and I'm like, what the hell? It was just a big old face right there. I knew it was Addison, which was even more funny. You know, his, his own. That. What do you call it? That's your own. You're your own best critique, right? So he was, he was on himself.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: That's so funny. I love it. I love it.
Peter, what year did you win that competition?
[00:17:28] Speaker B: I mean, I was in the process of leaving as the, as the competition was wrapping up, but I thought all, all the trees looked good.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's Great.
I saw.
So Danny won that, right?
[00:17:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that's the name. Danny Martinez.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Martinez.
[00:17:51] Speaker C: Yep, I think so. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome.
[00:17:56] Speaker D: They were, they were all good, though, which is pretty cool.
It feel, it feels cool.
And everybody was young, you know what I mean? Not like in a bad way, you know, to the older folk, but it's pretty cool to see young, younger people all together doing some shit, you know, for sure. And I just doing bad, doing some good stuff, you know.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah.
So, Peter, what year did you, did you win that competition? It's been a minute now.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: I think it was like 2008 or something.
I, I think. Yeah, yeah, 2008. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Yeah. Before I went to Japan. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. But yeah, very stressful. Very stressful. So I understand what they were going through, you know, for sure.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: When you did it is there when, Go ahead.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: When you did it, was it junipers?
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It was actually procumbens nanas that came from Alabama or Georgia or something.
I remember it was interesting because they were procumbens nanas, but everybody thought they were different because they were all mature foliage, like the entire tree.
And, and everybody was like, oh, we got some new foliage that we can work with. This is great. It's like Kishu and then they all turn needle.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: But yeah, there were small, there were smaller trees. There were smaller trees. I, I, I did have the benefit that they were, they were small and they were more compact in general.
These guys were working hard because the, the material were, was fairly lakey, so, so that's very challenging to make the trees look nice or leaky branches.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that did look tough. It seemed like the foliage was way out far for most of them.
[00:19:40] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's, and it's a toy gawa, too. I mean, just trying to cut that kind of foliage in any kind of hard manner, you know, they're just going to go juvenile. So it would just be very nervous, you know, they're very stressful.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
But cool. Very cool.
Awesome. All right, Cesar, what have you been up to lately? You've been slanging a lot of olives.
[00:20:09] Speaker D: Same different air freshener, you know what I'm saying? Just digging up some olives, looking for more olives. But mainly I'm really focused. I'm trying to focus now on just developing a lot of olives, not just slinging them left and right.
Even though I gotta do what I gotta do, you know what I'm saying? Bills don't wait. But I'm trying to. I'm trying to learn how to manage my time and, I guess, my money. That way I have the time to start developing more.
More olives into a more bonsai ish tree. Because apparently a lot of people are looking for that. They keep asking me, and I just don't have any. So I need to get on that.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Very nice. Where can people buy your trees, Caesar?
[00:20:53] Speaker D: I'm trying to start a little Shopify thing, but it's harder than I thought in terms of, like, posting stuff. I. I need to get kind of.
I. I don't know. I guess that sounds kind of dumb coming out of my mouth, but it's kind of harder.
Like, I just don't. It's hard for me to just go out and just choose like a random tree and post on the website. I kind of always have, like, second thoughts in terms of, oh, well, if I do this, maybe I'll just post it in a couple months instead. You know what I mean? That's.
I kind of don't want to just put. Just straight. I don't know. I'm having a difficult time trying to figure out what I'm a post, but I recently did start one, so I'm trying to post on there, but usually literally, people just literally hit me up on Facebook, Instagram, on the email, and that's. Thankfully, that's been working so far.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Nice.
I saw your page. So it's a Shopify page. What is the website address?
[00:21:49] Speaker D: My shopify.com, i'm pretty sure.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Sweet. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I feel like between the three of you, we got some pretty good trees for sale.
I've noticed Peter has a ton of nice trees for sale right now. Actually, you just posted a Choju buy over rock, and I hope someone buys that because I don't want to buy it. And I feel like I was a little tempted.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't want to buy it either. So Cesar is going to be you.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, I brought it. I brought it to the. To the Rendezvous. I was a little surprised nobody bought it, but.
But I have a feeling probably somebody in the Midwest or East coast will end up buying it. They seem to gobble them up over there.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah, you have. There's all. There's another tree on your site right now. It's a little Sierra juniper that I collected that's now grafted with kishu.
That looks really nice as well that I was kind of eyeing, but I was like, I shouldn't buy another juniper.
Ye.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Buy your own Tree back.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: But it's looking good. It's looking good.
And. Yeah, well, I think it's. I feel like a lot of people don't know that you have trees for sale on your website, PT bonsai.com, but you have a ton of nice stuff on there.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I don't, I don't update it very often. It wasn't until this last month that I was selling a bunch of trees. But I'm trying to change that next year where I'm trying to do a little bit more marketing so people know that I'm selling trees. And surprisingly, I find that not very many people sell bonsai online.
You know, you might find stuff on ebay, but not a lot of people. It seems like the shipping part really kind of gets people and kind of holds them back from wanting to sell bonsai because it can be a hassle, especially if the tree is big.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah. Eric, you know something about shipping trees?
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Although, I mean, I have to say that, you know, Peter I think has got it down in terms of big trees. And we tend to ship stuff that's usually under a foot or if it's not like a seedling or something like that, but like finished or more refined trees, we're generally shipping stuff that's well under 18 inches. And that makes it a lot easier than trying to ship something. In fact, one of your past guests, Sam Tan, was asking me about, was asking me about packing up stuff for shipping trees. And he's like, yeah, I think I'm going to get some 36 inch cubes. And I was like, oh, no, I don't want to get anywhere near that.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: 36. 36 inch cubes.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Wow, that's a big tree. That's a big box, too. And it's just, you know, if you, if you strap them in. And I think, Peter, you're the one that like takes them out of the pot, wraps the root ball in plastic and ships the pot separately.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Yeah. Especially if the tree is really heavy because the pots just get destroyed. So, you know, short of. Unless I ship freight, but they can still. It can still break that way. So I, I just found separating out the pot. Now I. Sometimes I'll give the, the clients an option where they may have a pot and I just give them some credit for the pot, which makes it a lot easier. I've been trying to put a lot of trees I'm selling in plastic pots because those then don't break. So that makes it very easy But I am a little curious because Caesar ships these giant olives are super heavy. I am. I didn't get a chance to ask you, but I'm kind of curious how you ship those without them just destroying the box that they're in because they're so heavy.
[00:25:26] Speaker D: I mean, I haven't delivered a huge, huge one. I have delivered big ones. I don't know how big you think I've delivered.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: What's like the heaviest tree you've ever shipped?
[00:25:38] Speaker D: Man, I can't remember how heavy it was, but it was only like 70.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: Oh, really? Okay.
[00:25:44] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: Do you like, crate it or something? I mean, the heaviest tree I've shifted is like about a hundred pounds.
[00:25:49] Speaker D: Or maybe. Or maybe it wasn't 70. It was maybe more than. Because I would imagine it was heavier. It was a pretty big. It was pretty, like two and a half feet, maybe three feet.
And I mean just raw. Man, I wish I could remember right now. I didn't know. You want him to scratch? That wasn't part of the outline.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: My bad.
Well, I mean, when it's that big, I have to crate it. Have to use wood. I can't just tie it to the box.
[00:26:16] Speaker D: I did a double box. So I had a bigger box, like a heavy duty box outside of a smaller box. And it got there. Got there fine. I sent that one to Florida.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: Okay, okay.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: Have you guys ever tried to ship a tree that was too heavy? Like, is there a weight limit? I'm sure there has to be some weight limit at a certain point. Right.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: I think it's more size ends up being the problem. I think 36Cube is the biggest that most of the standard shippers will take. And then beyond that, you have to put it on a ltl truckload type situation. I shipped like a four foot tall maple grove to New Mexico and I ended up building a box on top of a pallet at the shipping terminal.
That was a few years ago, but I mean.
[00:27:12] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: And they managed to break the pot anyway.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: Of course. Yeah, yeah.
I usually use FedEx and I think their cap for their typical ground transport is 150 pounds. But I'll tell you, once you get 80, 90 pounds, I mean, if they drop that thing, the tree itself is just crushing whatever you built around it. You have to. It's like exponential. Right. You.
The.
The crate has to be even stronger as you just kind of inch up in the weight because, you know, it goes through the machines, it flips around. And so I find anything that's pushing 100. I have to reinforce so aggressively. And then of course, then it makes it super heavy. And then it makes it.
Or the box may have to be a little bit bigger. And that adds to costs and all that.
[00:28:02] Speaker D: Yeah, Actually one time I. I shipped a tree that was like two foot, just like an idea. I don't know if, if you could do was only like a foot and a half tall. And it came in a bonsai pot. And I did kind of what I told you I did on the big olive, but just for the pot. So like, I, I made like a hole on this pot so, like the tree could like still be out, obviously. And I just boxed up the. The pot super nicely wrapped. And you know, all the little packing peanuts in there, box the pot up.
And then on the bigger part, which was how the tree was going to go, a little bit of packing penis on the floor, put the, put the tree on top and just packed it all up. It was, it was cool, but it wasn't. It wasn't a huge tree either.
[00:28:45] Speaker C: Oh, gotcha.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Cool. All right, well, why don't we transition over to talking about the pbe?
[00:28:57] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: So I guess just. Just in case. I mean, I'm sure if anyone is listening to this, they're probably familiar with the pbe, but why don't we give a little brief history on what the PBE is and the significance it has on within the North American bonsai scene.
Eric, I feel like it's fitting to have you maybe answer that question. Would you tell us a little bit about the PBE and the history behind it?
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, Jonas and I, coming from the background in Bay Island Bonsai, with Boone as a teacher, the whole point of the entire existence of the club was to put on a show once a year. And so we were kind of trained in that environment to be, you know, tracking our trees towards show condition on a regular basis. It was. I mean, you were in there too. And so the PBE was. I think Jonas and I both had trees in the Artisans cup in 2015, I think it was. And on our way back from that show, we were sort of thinking, well, we hope the Artisans cup keeps happening. But Ryan had already announced basically that maybe the next one was going to be in Australia or, you know, it was going to be five years later or something like that. So we weren't sure what was going on. And we batted the idea back and forth for quite a while until right before the pandemic, we had actually started looking at venues in maybe 20, 20 and then it got kind of delayed. 2019, but we had the bridge yard kind of lined up. And then once the pandemic restrictions stopped, we.
We kind of announced it and went from there. It was, you know, we didn't know what was going to happen. But there, you know, the. The morning that the first show opened in 2022, there was a line down the side of the building that went all the way.
And I think it wrapped around the corner even of people. Now, partly that was because we were being slow taking tickets to get in, but. But it was nice to see Everybody there.
So 2024 was a little bit bigger. Bigger venue and even better trees. The trees have been really. It's been really great to have the community kind of come out and support the idea. And it's really felt like it's kind of caught on at this point.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: I definitely think it's caught on.
I'm curious maybe for Caesar and Peter, why do you guys think the PBE is such an important event within the North American bonsai scene?
[00:31:54] Speaker D: Peter will go first.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Thanks.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: I was just going to agree with Caesar.
Well, I mean, I mean, first off, I mean, it's fantastic that this show is going on. I give, you know, Eric and Jonas a lot of credit. And then Andrew joining in in 24, a lot of credit in putting the show together. And it's definitely.
It's offered a place to really kind of show off the best bonsai out there, the best bonsai that we have, you know, whereas we just didn't have anything like that before. I mean, like Eric said, you know, Ryan was doing something, but then it just never continued. So I was very happy that they decided to do this. And I. I think it's great. I can already see that just having these two shows, especially the last one, how many more people. How many more people I've met started working with or. My older clients are getting even more excited about getting their trees better, thinking, okay, when's the next expo? When's the next. Next Expo? And I mean, we're. I can't even show any of my trees because I can't show it to like 2032 because people planning out that far or 33 or so. So I think it's got a lot of people excited. I think it's great.
I think it's helping the bonsai community immensely more than. I mean, I don't know what. But definitely this next step in kind of bonsai getting to a higher level for us. This is a big part of it.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
Couldn't agree more with you there, Cesar. Did you have any other thoughts there?
[00:33:37] Speaker D: I guess what I could say, I'm definitely not on par in terms of knowledge and level of, of these guys.
But I guess I'll say from my perspective, in terms of most people's perspective, right, because we're not all Peter T. Or Eric, you know what I'm saying? We're all regular people out here and.
[00:33:56] Speaker C: Correct.
Eric agrees. Eric agrees. I see it in his face here.
[00:34:05] Speaker B: I thought I was regular. I don't know.
[00:34:11] Speaker D: Well, the main thing for sure, I think so.
I've been doing bonsai for six years only. And when I started was around Covid, when Covid was around.
So when I started Bones, I didn't even know there was such thing as shows because there wasn't any shows because of COVID But I thought that was like the norm. I didn't kind of put two and two together.
So once Covid stopped, I believe maybe it was a shohang convention or something that was like the first team that came back.
So I started going to these random shows all over Cali. And yeah, they were sick, you know what I'm saying? But from like I said, like at a regular perspective, you go to a club show, right? There's. There's a couple trees that stand out here and there. But I mean you walk into the Expo show trees and it's just, just banger after banger, you know what I mean? And, and it's. I don't even know how to put it to words, but it really is like jaw dropping to see all these trees and how, how just developed and old they look. And, and in my eyes, how I like to say, just so those YouTube videos from Japan that I used to watch, right? The shows out there, there's so many trees that just look so sick and traditional kind of looking. And, and another thing, actually I didn't since I'm so new also and I don't know that many people, you're surprised how many sick ass trees there is. And these people that you maybe never heard of or you know, didn't really realize they have such a sick tree.
And now I'm trying to show at the next Expo, right? It's like Peter said now, now I feel like a lot of people that maybe didn't want to show that kind of pumps you up to want to show because it's just such a. Not just the tree but the whole, the whole show is such like just top shelf that I feel like a lot of people now Would love to show the tree at the expo, you know.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: I think it really drives the quality of American bonsai forward, and it gives people something that they want to strive for. It puts a real goal in front of everybody and makes us all want to just push forward.
[00:36:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I remember in 22, when I was walking around the show and just looking around, and I talked to some new people that were seeing it for the first time, and I thought it was just so cool because they were just amazed. And I remember one guy in particular, I asked him, I was like, so how long have you been in bonsai? And he was like, oh, I just started. This is my first show. And I was like, oh, my God. You have no idea where you're at right now.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Yeah, seriously, it's. It's.
[00:36:55] Speaker C: Yeah, the quality there is just amazing. So.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: It'S nice to walk around a really good show. And the bridge yard was really beautiful as a. As a setting for it.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: So definitely. Do you guys think that competition is good within bonsai?
[00:37:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Wants to speak.
I think.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: I think, you know, I. I think competition is good. I mean, there are certain people that are much more interested in competition, obviously, than others and different types of competition. But I've always felt like ever since I was a beginner, it always kind of irked me when someone would show up to, like, a show with, like, a bunch of bomber trees, and I'm like, darn it, I just got outclassed again, or whatever it is, you know, like. And you think to yourself, like, wow, I worked really hard on this, and here it is. It's only, like, half the size of that guy's trees, and he's had those 10 years longer than mine. So, yeah, I think competition is good, if nothing else. Just comparing yourself to others and, I don't know, you talking about a competition with measuring or competition without measuring?
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think with measuring. And I'm curious your thoughts on without measuring. I guess, personally, I think that I think about, like, the Olympics, for example, and I just wonder, you know, how hard would those Olympic athletes push if there was no competition? There was no medals, no prizes to win.
It didn't mean anything if you won, and people just played the sport for fun.
I just don't think that they would necessarily go as hardcore as they would if there wasn't competition. And so I guess I feel like healthy competition, if you can create a healthy competition environment, which I don't even know what that means exactly, but create some type of healthy competition, it's Going to drive things forward. It's really going to get the best out of, out of people and push the quality of American bonsai forward. And I feel like a lot of times I've heard a lot of bonsai enthusiasts say that they're not that into competition, which I think is also totally fine.
But I do think that competition is important for American bonsai, especially at the spot that we're at in terms of quality. And I think it's very important for us to see quality driving forward.
And I'd be curious your guys thoughts there.
[00:39:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree that I think the competition in a healthy way is definitely very good. And I hope nobody ever looks at it and takes it as a negative way. I've not seen any evidence of that at the show.
I mean, like you were saying, healthy competition. I don't think anybody that won a prize was going out of their way telling everybody they were great either, so. And all that stuff. So I don't think it was anything bad.
Yeah, I mean, just like anything you get into this style of competition, you're going to have weird things happen. Some people are going to be unhappy. But I do think overall it's. It's probably helping the community.
An interesting point. You know, I talk to clients and some are very interested in winning a prize or being competitive and other clients that are happy to just have a tree. And it's an interesting concept for me because I always wonder if they're telling me the truth. Right.
If they really, you know, because it seems funny to say, well, I want to put a tree in and I want to win.
You know, it seems a little odd. People don't like to say that. I do wish people are a little bit more honest about it. And I have a feeling people who tell me that they're just happy to get a tree in, but they really want to win also, but they just don't say it. That's. That was something that I found to be interesting. And then I asked them a couple more times, we work on trees and then all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, it'd be nice if we can win. You know, that'd be cool. And I was like, that's okay. That's okay to want to win. You know, it does take a certain level or a certain type of commitment to try to get a tree to win versus say, getting into the show.
But I think overall I've not seen any negative things happen, at least with my clients in this kind of style of competition. I Guess.
And there are people that genuinely. Yeah, they're just happy to participate too, for sure. There's definitely people that are just fine with that.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: You know, I mean, part of the organization of the Expo was to, was to set up systems that, you know, so like having professionals jury the entries and make sure that everything that's in the room is past some sort of bar that wasn't set by us as organizers was one. One thing. And then having having the exhibitors themselves judging each other's trees I think makes it sort of a community driven kind of feeling.
And it's very, I think it's very important to Jonas and I that, that the exhibitors. Because in order to be exhibitor at the Expo, you, you have to have put in a fair amount of either effort or money or both.
And that says something to us or it says something in the community about how serious you are and sort of in our opinion, makes you qualified to judge other people's trees. So.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I feel like it's really cool that just getting your tree into the show and of course people do. I mean, like, who wouldn't want to win a prize? That's a really cool thing. But just getting your tree into the show is a accomplishment right there because the bar is so high, there's so many few tree. There's so few trees that actually get into the Expo and the level of quality has been so high that I do think that is, it is an accomplishment just getting your tree in, which is really cool.
[00:43:22] Speaker C: I also go ahead, I mean one, one another point to the having the show and this kind of competition is that in a way, a lot of people ask me, people that I don't work with, sometimes they'll ask me opinions about do you think this tree can get into the Expo? That's like a new bar that has set. Right. Can my tree even get into the show?
And I'll give them my opinion. It's yes or no, maybe all that kind of stuff, but in a way, not in a mean way, but it did kind of get people kind of living in the come out into kind of the reality of what is quality bonsai. And you know, some people are, you know, maybe they're kind of doing their thing at the local clubs and there's a set a certain standard at that club and they're not kind of, you know, mixed in with all the other clubs or realize what else is out there.
So.
So in a way I almost see it like, okay, if you decide to use this as a bar, it kind of brings them out. Then they realize, oh, you know, I.
I was doing pretty good for my club level, but now that we're in this higher level, where we're in this larger community, it's like, wait, I gotta get my, my act together. You know, what I thought was great is now maybe not that great or not good enough.
And so I think that's a good thing.
People realizing that even though it might seem kind of sad at first, right? Because they're like, I worked hard on my tree and all that stuff.
Which is interesting because I recently found out that one of my clients actually cried because their tree didn't get into the Expo two years in a row. And so I felt really bad about that. But they are working at it and they didn't take it as a bad thing. It's just an emotional response at the time, but they're working even harder. And now it is a goal. So I mean, it's helping them. Even though it's kind of rough trying to get past the, the initial kind of acceptance of, or what you would consider it acceptable as higher quality bonsai. So I think it kind of got people kind of kind of woke some people up, which is great.
Yeah.
[00:45:37] Speaker D: I think for me, as of right now, it's like, it's a goal for sure to just be accepted because of where.
How I started and where I've been. Little did I know that there was levels to this.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Right.
[00:45:51] Speaker D: So I'm trying to make it just there.
And the day that I hopefully do make it there, maybe then I'll be like, you know, what if I made it here, bruh, I'm trying to win too. You feel me? Maybe not that first time around, but keep, keep going at it. And if we made it, that means we're going in the right way or, you know, the. The right trajectory. Is that the word? And keep on going until we get a little wordski, you know what I mean?
[00:46:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Love it.
Eric, did you have something there?
[00:46:26] Speaker B: You know, I mean, I could talk about it for a long time. I think that there's a lot to be said for this type of event and I think we're seeing more regional shows.
Even if you consider the Expo to be maybe a national show at this point, we're seeing a lot more regional show is popping up in the last couple of years, I think, as a result of the idea, because, you know, the idea is just take the best trees and show them off and, and all the rest of it is just sort of, you know, how do you decide what the best trees are or who's in the room? So for sure.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, I definitely think that the PBE has changed North American Bonsai and in. In more than just one way. And I think that it is a very good and positive thing. So I'm excited to dive into it with you all.
Was curious. So the new Pacific Bonsai book is out now. What were your general thoughts kind of just on the overall book itself?
[00:47:37] Speaker B: Well, I just want to give a couple shout outs. There's like two main people. Well, there's always more than two.
So Bob King was responsible for doing all the layouts, but Sebastian Fry was the graphic designer and I think he's from the Santa Barbara area.
He did all of the, you know, in the front he did all those layouts. And then Aaron Kupferman from, also from Southern California was responsible for all of the non studio shots. So the book's kind of divided into two parts. The first one is sort of like a coffee table book or the first part is kind of a coffee table book that shows the exhibit from different perspectives. And then the second half is kind of is a catalog essentially of the show trees. So the show trees were shot by David Fenton for the second time in a row. And he did a great job.
I think the only criticism I have is that I didn't provide him with the best table covering to use. And so the black stand legs kind of disappear into the black tablecloth. But if that's my only complaint.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Hopefully.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: The book turned out well enough.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, I just want to say that I think that the book looks absolutely phenomenal. It's gorgeous. All the photography in it is just absolutely stunning and incredible. I love all the casual photos of the trees and the people.
A bunch of action shots of people doing all kinds of different things.
And just the layout is. Is so well done.
Yeah, I saw Sebastian. He's down by me. I think he's in the Sant Inez area.
Super nice guy. Don't know him all that well, but I run into him from time to time down here and so shout out to Sebastian. But I think the book itself is just really well done.
Peter or Caesar? You guys have any thoughts there?
[00:49:48] Speaker D: Yeah, I think it came out looking sick. I'm trying to find out what page I like. One of the, the shots in the.
[00:49:54] Speaker C: Beginning.
[00:49:57] Speaker D: And of course when I need it, I can't find it. But it was kind of like more of a top shoot of all the trees in the show and it just, it's a Different perspective than having the picture up in the front or how we usually see the trees, you know?
But. Yeah, I can't find it now.
[00:50:16] Speaker C: So, like, page five or so. So that one.
[00:50:22] Speaker A: I like page five a lot.
[00:50:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:23] Speaker D: Yeah, it is page five.
[00:50:24] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:50:25] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:50:25] Speaker C: Page five.
[00:50:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:27] Speaker D: Yeah. That picture looks so sick.
[00:50:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:30] Speaker A: I guess that venue was great for taking shots like this. Because there was, like, that upper level. Right.
But I agree with you. I think, like, a shot from up above is very cool. Or maybe they climbed that. That crazy structure, wooden structure that Eric put together.
Yeah.
[00:50:47] Speaker C: Yeah. There we go. He's been up there a couple times. I have never seen him.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: You know, I mean, the venue, the Kaiser, you know, being a historic auditorium, like Oakland Civic Auditorium. And was it the site of the. Holds the record for the most Grateful Dead concerts in one place.
But, like, it was. I think it was nice, historic building. And it worked really well for the show.
[00:51:13] Speaker D: And.
[00:51:14] Speaker B: But as far as the photographs are concerned, there was, like, two things that I think were driving me crazy. That was that, like, it starts to look like a gymnasium at some point if you get the wrong angle. So the book looks fantastic. But I have to really credit Aaron with getting a lot of good photos that show off the trees and the backdrops and the people without going. And highlighting the basketball court too much.
We put carpet over the Cal logo that was in the middle.
[00:51:43] Speaker C: But.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: You can't cover up all the stadium seating, so.
[00:51:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I like. The big difference between this book and the first book is kind of the front portion, where it has a lot more photos of just kind of what was happening. Fender shots, just pictures of people looking at trees, doing things, buying things, all that. I thought that was really cool. I really like that.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Do you guys have any favorite action shots? I Love on page 14, Sam Tan. He's, like, wearing a background, a backpack, and he is just, like, totally hunched over, bowing.
[00:52:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Looking at the street.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: There's a bunch of great action shots in here.
[00:52:35] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:52:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: I think when we were designing the book, Sebastian came up with this. It's page 28 and 29. And it's like. We called it the yearbook page because there's, like, a picture of everybody.
But it's actually a really nice mix of shots that were, you know, maybe didn't need to be quite as big as some of the other shots in the book.
But it's really fun to see all the faces of various people that were there.
[00:53:07] Speaker C: Another.
[00:53:08] Speaker D: Another picture that I really liked was. Is on page 18 with that girl taking a picture of the tree. But then that, you know, that sun's in the back and it's just like darkness.
[00:53:17] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:53:19] Speaker D: It looks pretty sick.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: That is right.
I think she is wearing a black mask, which makes it so you can't see her face.
[00:53:31] Speaker C: But it has a cool picture.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
So that looks like a Aaron Copperman. Am I. I'm saying that wrong?
[00:53:39] Speaker D: Huh?
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Butchering that cut for men photo.
Almost every photo in the book in the first half was done by him. And I'm trying to think of, like, if there are any. There's like, one or two exceptions. That's it.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Cool.
I really like on page 19, the undershot of the cypress that won the big prize.
You can see all the ramification, all those branches.
[00:54:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
That's the cryptomeria.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: Cryptomeria, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So on cryptomeria, that tree in particular, just looking up into the branches is so nice, and seeing all that ramification is just so cool.
And then one of my other favorite pictures on page 29 is now. And he's got his little kid on his shoulder.
Shoulders. And he's got his wife by his side.
I think that's just such a cool picture right there.
[00:54:47] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a little less pots blocking that view now.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: Yeah, he sold. He sold a lot of pots.
[00:54:57] Speaker C: A bunch of them.
[00:54:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:55:02] Speaker A: Very nice.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Get lost in the book.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: Yes, most definitely, I guess. And so. So we're kind of just jumping around here.
Eric, I was curious if you could talk with us a little bit about the next PBE event.
Can you give us any updates or can you tell us anything about the next pbe?
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, we are planning a third pbe just in case there was any doubt. And we are also planning to move the date. So the first two shows were taking place in the fall.
October, November, late October, early November.
But we're going to move the show to.
It looks like the first weekend in February of 2027, which means essentially the organization doesn't change. The organizational details don't change, but you have a couple of extra months to wait.
Rather than it being in the fall, it's in the winter. So that timing aligns, we think, better with ideal show time. It's also much closer to Kokofu, but it doesn't overlap with Kokofu. It's also the weekend between the AFC NFC Championship and the Super Bowl. So we have to think about these kinds of major events that might overlap with the show and impact people's desire to attend so we're kind of trying to. Trying to split it there, but we're looking at moving it to the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. None of this is official because we don't make official announcements until we actually have contracts in hand and whatnot. So this is kind of where we're headed, but not a guarantee.
And it looks like we'll have an even larger building than the Kaiser was and a little bit more ability to organize things sort of as we see fit. So.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: Very nice. Awesome.
I like the idea of that time frame that you're thinking of doing it. I think that will be nice.
You know, I like. Mainly, I think, because I want to see naked deciduous trees.
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it was now who took the scoring from 2024 and did a statistical analysis, and I don't remember where. Maybe he was talking to you on this podcast about it when you guys were talking.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: I can't remember.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: But he was saying basically that the judges penalized the deciduous trees that were in leaf statistically one point out of five.
And there were a couple of really good ones there that had leaves on them. And I have to agree that I probably did that as a judge.
[00:58:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Because it was really disappointing. I was really disappointed that I couldn't appreciate the tree in full.
[00:58:16] Speaker D: You were disappointed that you made a show in October. Okay.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
The entire point of. Of the date was actually my idea. Jonas had always advocated for a January or early February show, and I wanted to try to do a fall show, because fall shows are actually, in a way, harder than a winter show, because you got to nail. You either have to nail the date in terms of the color on the tree, or you have to strip the deciduous leaves off. I mean, the conifers are going to be the same anyway.
But it's harder, actually, I think, than a. Than a silhouette show to actually nail it. But we didn't. And what I realized in retrospect is that the best fall shows that I've seen were some. That Marin.
The Marin Club. Now, I'm not going to say they're the best in the world or something like that, but the best that I've seen were the Marin Club. A few years ago, they would put on a fall show, but what they would do organizationally was they would just go find the best trees that they could that were already in color, whereas we're selecting the trees six or eight months in advance of the show. And so we can't predict which ones are going to be in color for the show. And I think that that kind of kneecaps the whole fall show, combined with the juried show idea and moving back to a silhouette show is probably the best way to solve it.
[00:59:47] Speaker C: So.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you guys think that you can judge a deciduous tree in leaf?
Well.
Or is that not possible?
Because I have a hard time judging a trees and leaf. Deciduous trees and leaf.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: I think the pool of. The pool of exhibitors has told us that. I mean, assuming now's analysis is correct, that the judgment is harsh because they want to see the tree and leaf and they're not, you know. No. I think the answer is no. You can't. You can't properly judge a deciduous tree with leaves on it.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: Peter, what do you think?
[01:00:29] Speaker C: I. I think it's very difficult to judge a tree in. In leaf for sure. I mean, you have to really look in there and get super technical, which I don't think.
I don't think a lot of people are kind of ready to do that anyways. It's definitely much easier when the leaves are off. I mean, in the first show when I was showing some of my clients trees and they were in somewhat color and we left the leaves, it was very apparent to me that after the first show that people just walked right past it. They just didn't care that it was in color. The leaf just kind of blurred everything out and that the trees that were.
Didn't have any leaves on definitely was looked at a little closer. People seem to have appreciated it more. And so like in the. In the 24 show, even though that show was. It's actually a little earlier than the 22 show.
I had clients sitting there taking leaves off their elm trees. Right. It took them forever to do it, but, you know, that's just how it goes. So they can. So people can see and seem to appreciate the tree more.
[01:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I.
More recently, I. I was offered a few trees to purchase, a few deciduous trees to purchase in leaf.
And I saw extensive video and photos of these trees, but I just couldn't tell if I wanted to buy them or not because I. I'm like, I need to see these trees without leaves to determine how good this tree is and like what kind of shape it's in.
And so I just feel the same way about judging. It's just hard for me to judge a deciduous tree while it's in the leaf.
[01:02:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
And really, when a tree has a lot of leaves on it, one of the things that might ding you is that if the leaf color is not good or there's Variations in color. You can tell there's an imbalance in the tree when it's deciduous. In a way, you kind of get the benefit of the doubt that, oh, everything's alive, everything's okay. You don't see any kind of imbalance. You can barely tell when a tree is in deciduous form. If a branch is actually dead. It just all blends in.
So something that does have leaves on. You get a couple of yellow ones or brown leaves, and it looks a little funny all of a sudden. So people are probably going to ding the tree for that. Or it just has this weird balance issue because of the different colors, for sure. Which would be very interesting. Right. Talking about fall shows versus a winter show, because some of the. So moving aside from saying deciduous trees and them not having leaves, now, the show is going to be in February, which is maybe the coldest month for me, but could be the coldest month for a lot of people. So it'll be interesting on the conifer front what those trees are going to look like because they will look different because of the cold temperature and how people work with that for the show and how.
How involved they are in the preparations for getting the tree to show its best. When it's really cold outside.
Just. Just like what they do in Japan when they're preparing trees for Kokofu, they don't leave them outside. The tree would be purple, you know, juniper would be purple or brown. Right. And they're just not going to do that.
[01:03:42] Speaker B: I went to, I think one of the trips where I went to Kokofu, we went to Shinji Suzuki's place in Nagano just a few days before Kokofu was set to open, and he had all of the Kokofu. And for those people that don't know, Nagano is kind of where. Near where the Olympics was. So it's way up in the mountains, very snowy and cold, and he has lots of greenhouses. But the kokufu trees were inside a greenhouse that was inside another greenhouse.
They were very green. They were not getting cold at all.
[01:04:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So it's going to be a challenge for people who are not used to doing that.
Just thinking about, well, you know, how long do I protect the tree? Or, you know, just all this timing stuff. It'd be interesting. I mean, lots to learn. Of course, when you're doing that, which is fun.
[01:04:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
Do junipers turn pretty bronzy in your area, Peter? For the most part, if you don't protect them in winter, like February.
[01:04:48] Speaker C: Yeah. They'll turn bronze or dark purple?
Not. Yeah, there are some that will turn bronze color. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of them will just kind of turn kind of dull or kind of a darkish dull purple color.
Even pines will do that too. They will kind of dim out and look a little funny because of just the.
The cold.
[01:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, got it, got it.
So one question and then why don't we jump into the trees?
I'm curious, do you guys think, is the PBE for hardcore enthusiasts only?
Should it cater maybe more for the general public?
I'll leave it at those two questions right now.
Eric, do you want to start with that?
Sure.
[01:05:38] Speaker B: I mean, I think you can compare it to kind of like a dog show. Like, if I see a dog show on TV and I'm looking at the dog, I was like, yep, that's a dog. You know, like, I got no idea what I mean. I might be able to name the breed or whatever, but, like, as far as I'm concerned, one corgi looks like another corgi. Like, it's like, how do you decide which corgi is going to win a dog show or, you know.
So my point being that I think it takes some amount of understanding and education of the scope of detail and artistry that goes into bonsai at a higher level that the public just doesn't really generally understand that in the United States. I think maybe there's a better understanding in Japan and some. Some other Asian countries, but I think we're still a long way away from the general public in the United States understanding anything other than part of the intro of this podcast, which is that, like, they're teeny trees.
[01:06:45] Speaker C: Some not so teeny too.
[01:06:50] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you know, running a business where. Peter, your business is very much focused on high end trees, but my, I interface with like, the public all the. And you know, most people, they want a tree that they can put in their kitchen. And I just, I just shake my head and I said, well, how many, how many grow lights do you have in your kitchen? And they're like, what? And so, I mean, you know, the, that indoor thing. I've always. I wrote an article for, you know, our website about what Karate Kid got wrong for bonsai. All the scenes in the original Karate Kid where they're doing bonsai are inside.
They never show the trees outside.
And I don't know whether that's the reason why every American thinks that bonsai belong indoors and that you have to.
[01:07:34] Speaker A: I don't know. I think that's part of it.
[01:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:07:41] Speaker D: I think when I read the question on the outline, because I read it all.
I think I definitely. The first thing that came to my head was it's definitely for hardcore people, because the way I just. Like you said, I think a regular person or the general public can go to your most basic club show and be wowed and then go to the expo and also be wild.
But you know what I mean? And it takes somebody that kind of knows how stuff works and how that tree got there.
And, you know, I definitely do think it's for hardcore people.
[01:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah, got it. Yeah, I would agree.
[01:08:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say, generally, I agree. I mean, based on, you know, vendor locations, you know, not a lot of just general public people just walking by or anything, but. But it is interesting. I. I do hope that more general public do tend to go because I've run into a couple of people who are again, just starting out or they were just general public, they heard about it from somewhere, they decide to show up. And it's very interesting to hear what they have to say about what they see. I mean, some people do recognize that there's something different about it. So it's always amazing in what they see or what they. They have to say about the show. You know, some other people are going to be like, yeah, tree is a tree. I thought it was just juniper. That was bonsai, you know, that kind of thing. Right. I didn't know you can do a lot of different trees.
But it's always nice to have some general public there because just to see what they have to say. And it kind of gets me out of my bonsai mindset too, because they'll say things that I don't think about or maybe I just never thought about because I'm just stuck in whatever bonsai mode I'm at and they have kind of this fresh look at it. But I mean, the original question is, is it really for more bonsai pain? I mean, I always felt like it was really catered more for bonsai people.
You have to really like bonsai. I mean, just thinking about costs and stuff like that, it's. It's not like, you know, people go to the museum and sign. There's like 10 bucks, right? You know, this costs a little bit more, so you have to kind of. I think you have to kind of really want to learn more about it or, or really see it to attend this event.
[01:10:07] Speaker B: All that said, I think that we would be absolutely thrilled if there were more general public interest in the show and we got to capacity. Obviously the priority is to get everybody into the room who has a passion for bonsai. But beyond that, introducing new people, like Peter said, is really important.
And I would hope that the Expo is as much an attraction to someone who has maybe a. A budding interest in bonsai as, you know, one of the public gardens or anything else. So, yeah.
[01:10:45] Speaker A: Now I'm curious. Do you guys have any ideas on how to increase participation with the general public?
I guess one thing that I kind of think is that I feel like workshops are very important to the general or kind of like the newer enthusiast. I know that's when I first got into bonsai. I did a Golden State Bonsai convention and I signed up for a redwood workshop with Bob Scheiman. And I was so excited about that. And I feel like a lot of newer enthusiasts, they want to go and get a tree and work on it and bring something home.
I'm curious, do you think that would be a big attraction and could that be a possibility in the future?
[01:11:35] Speaker B: I'm not sure I understood that question.
[01:11:38] Speaker C: Are you going to have workshops in the future?
More people in, Eric, that's the question.
[01:11:43] Speaker B: Are we going to have workshops at the Expo?
I think that's possible. I don't know that it would actually. I mean, if you look at starting points for people right now, there's some businesses that are spending tens of thousands of dollars on Instagram marketing and whatnot for beginners classes.
And that could actually have an impact on the broader community if you start to have enough people exposed to bonsai and bonsai beginner classes so that they understand some of the basic parameters or the idea of potting something down rather than just potting it up.
So, I mean, the houseplant community is saying, well, I'll just put it in a bigger pot, and we're going the opposite direction. So I think those kinds of things could have a benefit. As far as putting on workshops at the Expo itself, I don't think that that's going to move the needle because you have to kind of get to people where they're at. You have to say, oh, let's have a workshop. Let's go, you know, do some fun stuff. Kind of like Peter said, the Expo has a little bit higher barrier to entry, both from a cost perspective, time perspective.
You have to realize that it only happens one weekend every two years and actually make the time and effort to be there. So I think that those workshops that happen on a local, you know, all around the country and local places and where there's actual advertising being thrown at People are going to have more of an effect on the general public than if we decided to have workshops at the, at the pbe.
I'm not ruling it out, but yeah.
[01:13:24] Speaker A: Just curious. Another thing I'm curious if you guys have ever talked about and this is probably a really bad idea, so probably don't go with this, but I'm just throwing it out there for funsies.
Have you ever talked about combining with the Rendezvous?
And probably the reason I bring it up is because the national show combined with another event it seems this year and I think that that had an impact on the number of individuals that participated.
[01:13:56] Speaker B: So in terms of combining the Expo with anything, I think that the thought process would be how does this benefit the Expo? Because the obviously GSBF and the Rendezvous existed when the Expo was created and we felt like there's, there was something missing, there needed to be something and that was the Expo that GSPF wasn't managing to execute for whatever reason.
So in terms of, you know, I think as we've moved through time from 22 to 24 and forward, I, Jonas and I are both more aware of the inner workings of GSBF and there might come a time where we do decide that there is our joint ventures that we're going to, that we're going to undertake. So certainly. And GSPF has been a big supporter of the Expo, sponsoring awards and whatnot.
We've had many sponsors, so it's possible.
But the question really is does it align with the goals of the organization to bring in another organization? So we really think of it as a community driven event. And so for 27 there's been a bunch of proposals in terms of additional things that might be happening on site at like a Suseki exhibition or a pot competition, like what happened at the national and all of those things are definitely possible and it just has to be organized in such a way that it feels like the Expo that it's, you know, that maybe the Suiseki exhibit would be juried by someone who's qualified to jury Suiseki because I have no idea.
And then there would be multiple exhibitors and whether or not it's judged, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:15:47] Speaker A: Very nice, very nice. I like it. I think that's great. That makes total sense to me. I wasn't saying that's a great idea. I just like to throw it out there for funsies. So, you know.
[01:15:58] Speaker B: Well, I mean organizations combining is actually the, in a way it's. The original idea of the, of the Expo was to bring people Together with the best trees all in one place. And so combining efforts has definitely always been on our mind. It's just a question of how do you accomplish that?
[01:16:18] Speaker A: Totally. Totally cool. Well, why don't we dive into some trees? Does that sound good?
[01:16:28] Speaker C: Yeah, sounds good.
[01:16:29] Speaker A: All right, so why don't we start on page 110?
We're just gonna go smallest to largest with the prize winning trees first. Sorry. Starting in the back.
[01:16:41] Speaker C: Okay. All right. One set.
[01:16:43] Speaker A: So we're gonna work our way up in terms of size.
So 110, we're starting the smallest. This was the best shohin award.
[01:16:54] Speaker C: And.
[01:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I don't know. You think I should read through the description or should we just. Just start chatting about it?
[01:17:05] Speaker B: I mean, these trees are so small. I don't know. How'd they win an award?
Don't they need to be bigger?
[01:17:13] Speaker C: Yes. Yes, they do.
I, I would say that, I mean, you probably don't have to read it. The people who are listening, they can probably just read it and then we can just jump right in.
[01:17:24] Speaker A: I like it.
[01:17:26] Speaker C: So, I mean, something I would like to just start off with is that when we're looking at these photos, as you all know, because you are all there, is that when these trees were displayed, they weren't displayed exactly like this.
They're a little bit further apart.
[01:17:44] Speaker A: Good point.
[01:17:44] Speaker C: Just for the photo, it had to be kind of pulled in together. So I just want people out there to know that not all of these displays were actually set up this close to each other. It was done for photography purposes.
[01:17:57] Speaker B: And that's a common compromise in show albums both in Japan and Europe and in the United States, because otherwise you just end up with a bunch of empty space and you can't actually see the trees.
[01:18:10] Speaker C: Yeah. So if anybody's looking at this book and thinking, okay, I want to use this as a way of learning how to display. Just realize the space is a little bit bigger than what you see here.
[01:18:22] Speaker A: Very nice. Great point.
I'm curious, first off, what do you guys like about this composition and, or what stands out to you about the trees or composition?
[01:18:42] Speaker C: You starting?
[01:18:43] Speaker B: Let me just go, Let me just go off on a. I'll just get on my soapbox and put it out there. One of the ideas that, that I was advocating recently in a meeting with Jonas and Andrew was that we were going to throw out the. We're going to throw out the traditional Shohin display convention and force everybody to enter Shohin as individual trees. The reason I Suggested that is that I.
I feel like when I look at these shohin shelves that it looks like a tchotchke collection. And that when you, when you are able to appreciate the trees individually for what they are or in a more minimalist display, that it's better highlighting the. The quality of work that's gone into each tree than when they're put onto, you know, a set of shelves like this. And for Mame, it's even worse. If you've looked at it at a gaffy 10 book, there'll be like two of these shelves in a six foot display.
And I just. It doesn't do anything for me. So all of that aside, all that aside, there's actually some really great things about this particular display.
I particularly like the fact that there is so much seasonality in the crabapple that's outside the box. You know, we in wanting to have a fall show, I think that was some of the stuff that I was really excited about. Fall color and fruit and that kind of thing and that definitely tick that box.
[01:20:13] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[01:20:17] Speaker D: Even the little ax is cute.
[01:20:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. It's like a little succulent.
[01:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah. I love the flat or, excuse me, the fruit on the crab apple. I think that is a major key element right there and just adds really nice color and is just a beautiful little accent of. Of color on that tree.
I like the variety of types of trees on this display. I think they did a really good job with that.
I'm curious which tree out of the group you all would pick to. If you could have one of these trees, which one would you go with?
I think I'm gonna go with the persimmon just because I like persimmons a lot and I think hard to find good princess persimmon. That's interesting little trunk right there.
[01:21:17] Speaker D: I think I like the crab apple too though. But maybe the trident is my second.
But I would love to see it in a tiny ass spot where it just barely hangs on. You know what I mean?
I think it would look so sick.
[01:21:33] Speaker C: Yeah. I'd probably have to cop out and say I'd probably pick the black pine.
[01:21:37] Speaker A: The black pine.
[01:21:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Just because I really like the trunk. It looks very old.
[01:21:42] Speaker B: That's funny.
[01:21:43] Speaker C: At least from the first.
[01:21:44] Speaker B: I was going to say the black pine.
[01:21:45] Speaker C: Yeah, right. That's what I thought too actually. Yeah.
[01:21:48] Speaker A: The black pine would probably be the most valuable tree in the group.
[01:21:51] Speaker C: Right?
Probably. Yeah, I would think.
[01:21:57] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:22:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Interesting thing about, you know, what Eric was saying about just displaying shohines and I. I Find this the case with other categories. Also just thinking about sizes of trees. Now everything is under 8 inches in Shohin, but because there's so many different ways of displaying it, you look at this setup, the you know, traditional box, there's five trees, six trees total. And then you look at page 111 right next to it, that has four trees, for example. A lot of times the trees that when you have the full six, they tend to dominate more.
So this just gets back more into kind of the judging is that I have the bigger display so it grabs more attention.
Yeah.
So that's one of the variabilities in the Shoahin display that if you show six trees versus like two trees, it's. It's hard for people to look at the two trees and not just really like the six tree display.
[01:22:58] Speaker A: That's a great point.
I knew.
[01:23:04] Speaker C: Oh, go ahead.
[01:23:04] Speaker B: It's one of the, it's part of the problem with the format is that like when you're, I don't know, like you don't, I guess in the, in the medium category, which I guess we would be moving on to next, you know, the bigger the tree or the closer trees are in general to the height limit or whatnot, the more likely it is that they're going to win a category just because they're bigger, more impressive trees and they're still in that category.
But I don't know Shohin display. I don't know. People can let me know if you hate this idea and I'm going forward with it, just ping me an email.
[01:23:46] Speaker A: I like your idea, Eric.
I think it's a good idea.
[01:23:49] Speaker D: I actually never thought about, I never thought about that at all.
[01:23:54] Speaker C: And.
[01:23:56] Speaker D: From that from like a person that loves Shohin, of course myself and wants to show a Shohin tree for the Expo. My biggest problem was having four or six sick ass trees for the, for a display. Right.
And I think I 100% agree with you.
I feel like it even opens up more doors right. For more people in that sense. And you do get to actually see the tree instead of looking at it for, let's say just as an example. Right. Looking at it for 30 seconds because you got to move on to the next tree because there's six in that box and you want to see them all, then just sit there and look for one for a whole minute.
[01:24:36] Speaker B: It's also an outlier in terms of the judging because it, as Peter was saying, it's hard to judge of a four tree Shohin display against the six tree against a two tree shohin display. And in a sense, the people who, when we're judging shohin displays were judging the display rather than the trees. Whereas in all of the other categories, we're much more heavily weighted towards judging the trees themselves instead of the display.
And you know, that's probably part of it, but really it goes back to the tchotchke shelf thing.
[01:25:19] Speaker A: Very nice. Well, I am a fan.
Go ahead, Peter.
[01:25:23] Speaker C: I'm going to remember that from now on. I'm never going to forget it now.
It's seared in my brain. I will never look at these the same way.
[01:25:32] Speaker B: Sorry. Not sorry.
[01:25:41] Speaker A: Cool. I really like that idea, Eric. I. I would love to see that go down. And I feel like, yeah, it is an outlier in terms of how we're judging.
We're judging the display as opposed to individual trees. And I would like to see some really nice individual shohin trees win the award.
I think that could be cool.
I guess kind of circling back and this might not be important for the next exhibit. However, for someone that doesn't know shohin very much, that is looking at this and trying to learn about a traditional box display. Can any of you guys give just some general hints or suggestions in terms of how you want to display trees in a traditional box? Play like this.
Like, what are some things you should avoid and some things you should do?
[01:26:36] Speaker B: I think Peter should answer that question.
[01:26:38] Speaker C: Well, yeah, well, I mean, I'm not a. I'm not a. I definitely don't do a lot of shohin in general. I usually like bigger trees, but just from what I know of shining is in this kind of big box display, I mean, there's so many variables. Right. That you. And which is why it's. It's difficult in the sense that you need so many trees to kind of make a display work out.
Like Eric was saying about seasonality, you see some trees that are deciduous, some trees or have no leaves, some that have fruit. You have some conifers in there and where do you place the conifers? And are they facing each other kind of to make kind of a cohesive display? Which again, that's why people judge these heavily on how it was displayed. Not so much just as the one tree.
So I mean, just looking at this display, there's a lot of variability.
There's different heights to consider.
You don't want anything in line with each other.
You don't want things to look like they're repetitive. Like, for example, you got the juniper and you got a trident maple Right. If, say, the juniper and the.
I think that's the chojabai on the top left were swapped, it would look a little funny because it's just heavy deciduous on one side and then real green on the other side. So it's just kind of those things you have to kind of mix and match. And then on top of that, if you use the stands, you don't want them to all be the same looking either.
And then you follow kind of the same guidelines in stands, Taking up too much space or taking to drawing too much or has too much visual weight, and that can kind of throw the composition off. So, I mean, it's a. It's a ton of stuff, but, I mean, this display is a good study in.
And how you can do it. Well, because it does kind of hit on a lot of these key points and in variations and things pointing together.
[01:28:35] Speaker A: Very nice.
Yeah. They always talk about you just need a ton of shohin trees and little stands for each tree to sit on and a variety of pots. You just want a variety of. Of all these different items. Right?
[01:28:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:28:52] Speaker A: To make a good display.
Cool. Awesome. Well, any other thoughts about this one? Otherwise, I think we should move on to the next size up, which would be medium. Right.
Can you guys help me find that page? I think it's 102.
[01:29:11] Speaker D: Yep.
[01:29:13] Speaker B: 102.
[01:29:14] Speaker C: 102.
[01:29:16] Speaker A: Cool. So page 102.
This is the tree that won best medium display, sponsored by the San Diego Bonsai Club, owned by Jeff Stern, worked on by some.
Just total.
[01:29:35] Speaker C: Nobody. Yeah.
[01:29:38] Speaker A: Some total nobody.
[01:29:40] Speaker D: Yeah, Regular person.
[01:29:43] Speaker C: Some. Some dude.
[01:29:44] Speaker A: Some dude. Some dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have a phenomenal Kishu juniper here. What kind of tree originally was this, Peter?
[01:29:55] Speaker C: Rocky Mountain, I believe. That was a Rocky Mountain. Yeah, it was a Rocky Mountain. Yeah.
[01:29:59] Speaker A: Okay. And it's Kishu foliage.
[01:30:01] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:30:02] Speaker A: And then we have a cork bark elm, which is one of my. My favorite deciduous species. I love cork bark elm. Eric does, too.
[01:30:11] Speaker B: Same thing.
[01:30:13] Speaker C: Nice.
[01:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:30:15] Speaker C: Interestingly enough about that cork bark elm, Jeff air layered that years ago, and it was like a third the size when he air layered it. And originally it was supposed to be a show.
[01:30:27] Speaker B: Just need to.
[01:30:29] Speaker C: It just got rid.
I'll pass that on to him.
It was in such a tiny pot, too. And I was like, and Jeff, you're really trying to push the shohin category.
He's like, okay, we'll make it a medium kifu.
[01:30:45] Speaker A: So do you know how. How many years ago this tree would be classified as shohin?
Like, are we talking 10, 10 years ago.
[01:30:54] Speaker C: Well, I'll be honest with you. I don't know if it was ever shohin really.
[01:30:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:30:59] Speaker C: It's just what I was told. Yeah. When I got to it, it was pretty. It was like 9, 10 inches already, so.
[01:31:07] Speaker A: Got it, Got it. Makes sense.
Yeah.
Caesar, what do you like about.
Do you want to take the juniper or the elm? Which. What do you like about them, Ambrose?
[01:31:25] Speaker D: No, no, I mean the reason I'm saying that is because I've seen these trees plenty in person. You feel me? And bro, yeah, I mean I'll leave that juniper somewhere else because.
Or maybe I'll talk about that juniper because I love that juniper, bro. I mean I've seen it plenty up close every time I'm at Peters and that's just ridiculous. Like.
[01:31:49] Speaker C: With.
[01:31:49] Speaker D: Just from a lack of words I would say kind of just perfect branching or, or pad set up. I don't know how you know, I don't have the, the best vocabulary. But I mean everywhere I look on that tree in person, I'm just wowed. It's. It's a tree that looks fake.
It's a tree that.
It's a tree that I definitely pictured as a bonsai. When I, when I first started seeing that there was real high end bonsai. And dude, I love the, the, the, the trunk on it. I love the deadwood on it.
The reason why it's called what it's called, I think that pile goes super well with it, but I just can't get. The first thing that stick out to me is just that green, you know, and it's just so perfectly done.
I don't know. Was that supposed to be something bad about it? Because I, I don't, I don't.
I. I just love this tree a lot. You know, ever since I first saw it, I was amazed. And every time I go over, I literally do, you know, just be amazed because it's such a perfect tree all the way around and it's not your. It doesn't have like the. Too many pads per se. Like, like in, in different spots that you could tell. But it's just so perfectly done to where you do see the, the lower first kind of branch pad half of the tree to where then you see the back branch hanging off just a tad bit higher and then going back to the, to the full dome.
I think it's just perfectly wrapped around that trunk and that deadwood as well. I, I don't know, bro. I really, I really love that tree. I mean, Peter's got all right trees but this one that he's worked on is so sick, you know, it's definitely one of my top, top five, top three trees in the garden for sure, you know.
[01:33:42] Speaker A: Nice.
Peter, is the Shari on the juniper, did you, is that, is it twisting or did you improve the, the movement by adding that Shari?
Did you make it look like Shari on the.
[01:34:00] Speaker C: Oh, on the cascade portion?
[01:34:03] Speaker A: Correct.
[01:34:03] Speaker C: The cascading trunk part of the trunk.
Yeah, I added that Shari.
I can't remember when I did that, but they were.
The bottom one stayed big. The top one almost kind of healed shut, actually. It used to be bigger, but the trees, the lifeline was growing so aggressive. It just kind of started healing. So I might have to open it again. But it actually worked out well because when I originally put the Shari, I was going to continue expanding it because it kind of looked like a candy cane a little bit because it was very similar in size.
But once it, it's kind of closed up. So I just left it for the show. So it didn't look so much like a, like a candy cane.
As a, as a side note on this, I can't remember if we did it on display, but we did it on one of the other display. Is that something we've. We found out with the photographer, David, is that. I think we may have done the same on this because of the way the stand looks like when you look at the stand, you see it's kind of dead straight. You only see two legs.
I think this is one of the ones where we may have turned it for the photography so that you don't see this weird three leg effect. And it looks like it's very clean.
Like if you look at some of the other photos, even on the next page at page 100, because of where the focal point. Oh, that's Eric's display, actually, that you can kind of.
You can see that third leg, right? A little bit. Because you're looking at it like an angle.
[01:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah. The camera perspective is difficult to get right.
[01:35:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So when I was doing the photographing with David, we were kind of playing around with that a little and we kind of found out by accident on one of the bigger trees that I was showing. And this kind of helped kind of clean up the way the photograph looked. If that's important for people, if they really wanted, say, to look clean in a photo. That was kind of a neat trick we, we found just to clean it up. And all we did is essentially turn the, turn the stand towards the camera a Little bit and left the tree as is. And so the stand looked straight even though it was actually crooked. Interesting when you look at it in person.
Yeah. If we. If we see the other photo, I'll. I'll point that out too.
[01:36:23] Speaker A: It's a very interesting detail.
I like the gin that. That's sticking up out of the canopy of this tree. And I feel like Jeff's other Kishu juniper that won the previous year's award had kind of a similar thing going with. With gin sticking out over the apex. Do you feel like that's a Jeff thing? He likes that a lot.
[01:36:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I've talked to Joe and a number of people have talked, especially on that first tree, about reducing the gins, because it bothered a lot.
And Jeff keeps telling me, you know, that he's been scarred in the past, because before the trees finish. Right.
Professionals will try to make the gin shorter because it looks extra long when the canopy is not there. And then so it gets shortened so it looks good that day. And then when the tree's finished and the canopy's bigger, the gin's gone. Like, it's too short now, which is something that I find to be. That happens all the time, is people tend to make the gins a little too short and they don't realize the canopy is going to get bigger and hide most of it, so.
And then they lose it at the end. So Jeff just kind of is. I think he's kind of taking it one step further where he's just like, there's no possibility of that gin being lost because the canopy got bigger or got to the size that was intended.
So he tends to leave them a little long.
[01:37:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great tip right there. I mean, you can always keep something.
[01:37:55] Speaker C: Yeah, you can shorten it anytime.
[01:37:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you can shorten it anytime.
[01:37:58] Speaker C: You don't have to. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:38:00] Speaker A: You should definitely keep it long if you're unsure.
And just. That's a great point right there. You need to think about, hey, the canopy is going to be getting wider, and so this is going to look different over time. And maybe we shouldn't make a judgment on it today. We should wait a while, see how the canopy looks, and then reduce the gins in the future. But I like it.
[01:38:22] Speaker B: I think.
[01:38:22] Speaker A: I don't think it looks too, like too much, personally, to me. I don't know.
What are your thoughts?
Like, if this were your tree, Peter, would you reduce them slightly?
[01:38:34] Speaker C: Oh, for. For this tree, I'd probably just keep them. They were the Natural gins that were there. I think they were all the natural gins that were there. Maybe the one all the way on the right was. Was man made. It could have been alive at one point or alive when it was being turned into bonsai.
I was more referring to the other tree in 22, where the genes were extra long, really sticking out.
There were some people that were thinking, well, you know, we should probably pull those back. They're a little bit too far out there.
[01:39:04] Speaker A: Gotcha.
[01:39:05] Speaker C: I think the link here is, okay, yeah.
[01:39:07] Speaker B: If this one. Jeff calls this one the elk according to the caption, is the other one the moose?
[01:39:16] Speaker C: No, That's a good point. I should tell him that you should call it. He actually calls the other one the alien because it reminds him of, like Jaws. Like an alien jaw tentacle kind of thing.
[01:39:26] Speaker B: I remember when I was just a year or two into bonsai, Walter Paul came over and he did a program for the local club. And he.
I think it's not. I don't think he originated, but he was talking about how the jinner, like. Like, they feel violent, like, as, like visually violent in the composition. And it makes for a good contrast between the sort of, you know, calm, peaceful effect of the green with the violent aspect of the. Of the white gin sticking out of it. So I think it's a. It's a great composition.
[01:40:05] Speaker A: Nice.
Ah, I love that elm. I would love to have that in my collection. Right there.
[01:40:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:40:15] Speaker A: I just feel like a tree, a deciduous tree with corky bark and, like, super fine ramification. I love, Peter, that you have the nice, thick, tapering branches on that tree, especially like the key branches, the lower branches are nice and thick and they taper out to this tiny fine point. And the ramification that you got is just, like, so well done.
And it's just a really nice cork bark elm. Big fan of that tree.
[01:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, I was talking to Jeff the other day about this display, and he was wondering if people were judging the. The elm more than the juniper.
Because I know the judges were supposed to look at the juniper because that was supposed to be the main tree and the elm being kind of the secondary tree, which is not judged. But he was kind of wondering because a lot of people seem to be commenting on the. On the elm.
[01:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess.
What do you guys think about the size comparison of the two trees?
[01:41:21] Speaker B: I actually think that's.
Jeff probably learned his lesson from 22, when he may have won the best medium category, except that that the secondary tree was too close in size. To the primary tree?
[01:41:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. As you nailed it, Eric, it turns out that, yeah, if we had defoliated that tree, it would have looked a little bit smaller, and I think it would have balanced things out a little bit. But with it, because we were thinking fall color and all this stuff, but the trees just look huge, especially in the photograph. Then you really see it. It's just, wow, they're about the same type.
I mean, even though one tree was elevated, you know.
[01:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah. To give Jeff credit, I mean, Jonas and I have spoken about the sort of history of some of the trees that. That are now winning the Expo categories. And Jeff has been working on these trees for 15 or 20 years. It's not. This has not been. He just showed up and bought a bunch of trees and, you know, or imported them or anything. Like, he was slaving away when I was a begin on these trees in workshop after workshop after workshop, and he. I think it's. It's well deserved that.
That he's winning a lot of prizes now because it's that longevity and sticking to it for that long that really makes a tree great.
[01:42:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:42:46] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, Totally agree. Shout out to Jeff.
He's the most winningest PBE recipient in the entire world.
[01:43:01] Speaker C: I'll tell them that.
[01:43:07] Speaker A: So, Peter, in a perfect, perfect world, like, you could control the size of these trees. You had a magic shrink ray gun. You could shrink down the elm if you wanted to, or.
Yeah, I guess that would be the only option here.
Would you shrink the elm down a smidge, or do you think that it is a good size?
[01:43:28] Speaker C: I think it was a good size. I. I think out of all the displays we've put in, I would say I was probably the most.
Not.
Not that I'm proud. Not proud of other trees, but I think I was probably maybe the most proud of this display in particular, because everything just seems kind of came out just ideal, you know, the tree happened to be ready at this right time. The elm is the size at this right time.
Everything just kind of fell together really nice.
So I. I don't know if I would change too much on it. I definitely wouldn't want the elm bigger. If it was smaller, would it help? I can see that if it was just a little smaller, then it would bring the focus back to the main tree. But I think the main tree is just big enough that it's just that it works well together.
Yeah. Now, two years from now, three years from now, would it not be the same? Absolutely. It'll be just a Little different. So. So I think everything just kind of fell in place for this one.
[01:44:29] Speaker A: Very nice.
And to me, I mean Peter, this, this work is exquisite. You just knocked it out of the park in my opinion. Everything is so perfect. So on point.
I am curious though, you critiquing your own work, do you see the future of either of these trees changing at all?
I'm sure it'd be slight adjustments if anything, but.
[01:44:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I think the elm inevitably will get a little bit bigger as it gets more ramification. I mean that's inevitable. It'll just get bigger and it might get big enough to the point where it might be the standalone main, main medium sized tree. It has the room for that and it has the trunk for it.
[01:45:16] Speaker A: For the juniper tree one if that that tree wins in the future, it's.
[01:45:22] Speaker C: Like, come on man, you already won.
Yeah, exactly.
[01:45:25] Speaker D: Right.
[01:45:27] Speaker C: Yeah. For the juniper, I think with the juniper, if there was a little bit more time, I would maybe separate the paths just a little bit more. Yeah. Kind of. It's all blurred together a little bit. But you know, it's interesting. I found that to be kind of a similar style as tre seem to get a little.
Even in Japan, the smaller trees, they all just kind of all globs together and it kind of leaves it up to the. The person looking at its imagination to see that there's something going on in there. Whereas. Because you just can't physically fit a lot of all these individual pads, say in a. In a small structure. Right. If you look at a lot of shohin displays in Japan, black pines and all that stuff, it's. They tend to be kind of like, like one glob. Right. It's probably the most abstract version of bonsai or the most unnaturalistic way of unnaturalistic tree that you see as the trees get smaller and smaller because you just can't physically fit so much of those naturalistic characteristics in them.
But I think any kind of improvement would be to try to show maybe a little bit more separation, maybe make the lifeline a little thicker. All these things to make the tree feel even older.
[01:46:41] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:46:43] Speaker D: That ant looks old as is huge.
[01:46:49] Speaker C: It's pretty. Yeah. I mean that's a nice.
Really just makes it look old, right? Yeah.
[01:46:55] Speaker D: And not just the trunk, but the overall shape. It just looks ancient. It looks like a really, really old tree.
[01:47:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean that's, that's something I try to do with bonsai is try to make the tree whole trunk is big, it's got cork. That helps. And just the tapering of the branches, I mean, that, that really sets that timeline. Right. Of what came first, what came next and so forth.
[01:47:18] Speaker A: Nice.
I like that all the elements of this display are different, so even down to the color of the wood that the stands are made out of.
And yeah, you got a deciduous and a conifer. You've got a. A glazed and an unglazed pot. And then you've got like three different wood types. You've got three different stands, essentially like a jita, kind of like another jita, but not a rough edge burl type jita, just a super round. And then you have a. The cascade stand for the juniper.
All just different elements. Looks good.
[01:48:03] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. Thanks.
[01:48:05] Speaker D: The pot's super nice on the elm.
[01:48:08] Speaker A: Is that koyo?
[01:48:11] Speaker C: It's actually a yamafusa pot, I believe.
[01:48:14] Speaker A: Ah, nice.
[01:48:15] Speaker C: It's just got a bit of patina on there, so it's kind of. Really kind of dull and older looking. It's not shiny.
Does.
[01:48:22] Speaker A: Does that elm live in a different pot year round? Is that the show pot?
[01:48:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's the show pot. It's in a little bit wider pot normally.
[01:48:32] Speaker A: That makes sense.
[01:48:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we stuffed it in that guy.
[01:48:38] Speaker A: Nice.
[01:48:40] Speaker C: The juniper is in that pot normally.
[01:48:42] Speaker B: It's another good thing about cork albums, though, is that you can stuff them into tiny pots.
[01:48:46] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's one thing I like about the show being in February now also is that that I had to put this elm in that pot one year in advance. Yeah, right. Whereas now at the show, I can do it right before the show, so it's a little bit safer in a way.
[01:49:04] Speaker B: And then pop it back out the.
[01:49:05] Speaker C: Week after pretty much.
[01:49:08] Speaker B: I mean, that's what they do in Japan. So I know why we should be doing it.
[01:49:11] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
[01:49:15] Speaker A: Awesome.
Hey, I would like to take a quick restroom break.
[01:49:23] Speaker C: All right.
[01:49:23] Speaker A: Anyways, what's going on? Okay, we're back.
Okay, let's go to what. What's the next. Next size up?
[01:49:32] Speaker D: Large.
[01:49:34] Speaker A: Why don't we go large conifer?
Okay, so that is page 95.
And this is a Kishu juniper.
Peter and I talked about this, this tree in particular quite a bit on a podcast, and it was mostly ended up being about grafting our native yamadori or not.
But I think this is a really cool tree, really interesting tree, and I'm curious all your thoughts about it.
I don't know. Eric, do you want to start off on the. On this particular juniper? This is a California grafted over with Kishu.
[01:50:13] Speaker B: Now I have a question. Just remind me, is this the one that got chopped in half, essentially made into two trees?
[01:50:20] Speaker C: Yeah, the top half got grafted off.
[01:50:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:50:26] Speaker C: I actually, the. When that separation happened, it was in 2011 or 12 because I had come back to visit when I. During my apprenticeship and I was at Boone's house when Jeff and Boone chopped off the top. And then I ended up repotting the bottom part where there was like, no, there was just like whips attached to it. There was like, no. No real. Any structure yet.
[01:50:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So you built this whole tree is what you're saying? Basically, yeah.
[01:50:55] Speaker C: This whole tree was built with the Kishu grass. I think there was two, three, something like that.
[01:51:01] Speaker B: Well, I think it's a testament to like the.
That combination of native deadwood and. Or native trunk, I guess I should say, and the grafted foliage, because.
I don't know. I was telling someone the other day that I.
At one point, I was wiring Utah junipers and some of the, like the twigs and bigger than I expected would just like, literally fall off in my hand.
It was just so frustrating.
And then, you know, a few months later, they would just be completely out of shape again and I would try to bend it and more twigs would fall off. And I was just like, what am I doing here?
So I'm definitely an advocate of Kishuu and Itoigawa in terms of foliage types as. As well. And as much as I have a.
Appreciation for Sierra, anyway, not a big fan of Rocky.
It's just sort of. Just a little too delicate. I don't know.
Either that or I'm growing it wrong.
[01:52:07] Speaker C: No, it's. It's tricky. I mean, I mean, don't get me started in the whole native foliage stuff. I mean, people really like what I say or they disgusted by it. I mean, whatever the case is, it's like I said, I mean, we. We talked about Jeremiah in the. In the last podcast I did with you, and I still stand by this. It's only a matter of time when people figure that out. And if they're not going to figure it out, they're just being stubborn at some. At some point.
It's just so difficult to work with. And if you really fundamentally are looking at trying to create something that's very old, it's just so difficult to do that with young foliage all the time that you're replacing every five years. Like, you know, Eric was saying, right, Foliage popping off, it grows out of shape now. You got to cut it, grow new branches.
It kind of goes against kind of the fundamental concepts of older, ancient looking trees. When all your branches are super young.
[01:53:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:53:04] Speaker C: Forever, every five years.
It's not like I dislike those trees.
Every tree is going to grow the way they are. It's just not quite ideal for what we're trying to do. That's all I'm saying about it. Right. That's all.
Who doesn't like Sierra foliage? Right? It's blue. It's pretty cool.
It's just difficult to work with. And then in what we're trying to do.
[01:53:26] Speaker A: For sure.
Yeah. This tree is so pleasant to look at. Peter, like you, like you highlighted the last time we spoke about it. It's just. It's very nice to look at. And it's interesting because it's tough with junipers. There's just. There's so many good junipers out there. There's so many junipers out there in general with really crazy, twisted trunks.
And this trunk. It's a very good trunk, very nice tree, but it's not like crazy twisty or anything like that.
And what you were able to accomplish with this tree by building the.
The pad, all these pads out, it just like looks so nice and you did a. An incredible job. Like, it looks. It looks very, very good.
[01:54:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate that.
[01:54:20] Speaker D: The flow on it is just so smooth, you know, the whole tree is so smooth.
[01:54:27] Speaker C: Yeah. This is, this is why. And a number of people have asked me about, you know, the fullness of this tree and the trunk and things like that. And I find this. This happens to be kind of one of those combinations where the trunk alone is interesting, but it's not, like you said, real twisted and.
And super crazy like some of the ones out there. So a lot of the load is in kind of completing the display. It's not just all on the trunk, right. It's. You got the trunk, it's pleasant to look at.
And then just having kind of this full canopy that kind of put it all together. So it kind of a.
Both of the canopy and the trunk kind of plays a role in kind.
[01:55:06] Speaker D: Of.
[01:55:08] Speaker C: You know, having something pleasant to look at. Whereas sometimes those super crazy junipers, it's not really about the canopy. It's just. It's still always focused on the interesting trunk. And the canopy is kind of like an afterthought, right?
[01:55:21] Speaker A: For sure.
Yeah. I think that in the grafting versus non grafting discussion with this tree in particular, if it was a California native juniper. California.
And it had the California foliage, like, there's just no way to make it look, look this good. Like, it just the, the result. Even if you spent, I don't care how many years on it, it's just not going to look this good.
That's my opinion at least.
I think it just the, the scale is just not right, especially for this size of a trunk and it's a large tree, but still just that, that California foliage is just not that pretty.
[01:56:04] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And, and that's all it really is. Right? It's a scale issue a lot of times other than, you know, things don't look old. Right. It's, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, you should use the natural foliage and all that stuff, but nobody seems to be, have a problem when they say, oh, look at this. You know, nobody's using like a Canadian maple with, you know, leaves that are the size of dinner plates and saying, well, we should just accept it for what it is. Like nobody uses it. Everybody's okay in saying, well, that's not in proportion.
But when we get into junipers, it gets, it's different for some reason.
[01:56:45] Speaker B: Peter, I want you to start using big leaf maples more.
[01:56:48] Speaker C: I want you.
[01:56:50] Speaker B: It's a native tree and I think you need to use it.
[01:56:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be giant leaf.
[01:56:56] Speaker B: We could just graft one onto each Japanese maple that we have.
[01:57:02] Speaker A: That would look pretty wild. I want to see that now.
[01:57:06] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's just like Daimyo oaks, right? We got one in the collection at Lake Marriott. You got this big tree and it's a big tree too. It's not a small tree, but the Daimyo oak leaf, I mean, it's literally 12 inches long.
Right.
How do you make that work? How do you scale that down for it to look like a small tree or a mini version of a big tree? I mean, sometimes there's material like that, it just doesn't work out. But it doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. You can still work with it, but the scaling is going to be the tricky part.
[01:57:40] Speaker B: So at the, at the 22 Expo, just to, just to throw a monkey in the, in the machine here.
Sorry, that didn't come up.
[01:57:50] Speaker C: A wrench?
[01:57:50] Speaker B: A monkey wrench? Yeah.
No, no animals were harmed in the.
[01:58:00] Speaker A: Making of this podcast.
[01:58:04] Speaker B: Yeah, but okay, so to throw a sabo into the machine and do some sabotage, you know, I was walking down the aisle in 2022 at some point and there was a well known bonsai professional critiquing the tree that I earlier named the moose Jeff's winning Kishu grafted onto, was it rocky also?
[01:58:33] Speaker C: I think that was a Western.
[01:58:35] Speaker B: Western, yeah. So what he was saying was it really needs to be a little bit more negative space in here. I would just open this up and I would make a little bit more space between there.
And I thought to myself when I was looking, as you were talking about this Tree on page 95, what are your thoughts in terms of the spacing of the pads? Like the, they're, they're pretty close. They're not right on top of each other, but they're pretty close. Not a lot of negative space in there. So when you think about the design of the tree, is that a, you know, you like it a little bit more full? Because the, what you were saying, the, the crown is doing a lot of.
[01:59:11] Speaker C: Work in this composition for this particular one. Yeah, I, I, I think having more negative space might kind of weaken the whole design because it plays such a large role. But, yeah, it's interesting, the concept of negative space.
Part of it is going to be based on what the trunk really kind of looks like, and if it's appropriate.
I do think people tend to overuse the concept of negative space and they confuse it with just having space in general. Right.
Most of the time, if that makes sense. Most of the time. I mean, when I go and hike up in the Sierras, and I'll tell you what, there's no negative space. I mean, I see some space here and there, and usually there's space. And if, if I, I might have purposely an open space. If there's something other to something else to see there, like there's interesting dead wood or it's interesting gin that you can see through the tree and it's in the back of the tree, then I might do that. I tend to fall on the fuller side because a lot of these old naturalistic trees tend to be much fuller. And I think trees that have a lot of negative spaces, very much more of an abstract interpretation of trees, which is still fine. It's just I tend to maybe lean more towards the fuller tree. Now, if I was working on a Bunjin and stuff like that, yeah, I put plenty of negative space there. It seems more appropriate in that kind of styling because Bunjin is technically more abstract style.
So abstract that the Japanese have a hard time developing those trees versus, say, like, the Chinese. They, they tend to be much better at it, I think.
But that, that's why I tend to have it more full, partly because I, I just see this fullness in nature.
And. And then part of it is that we just don't see this kind of fullness in bonsai in general. So it's kind of nice to kind of throw that out. It just looks different than.
I mean, people can always have too much space in their trees, but very few people are able to create something that is very full but still separated.
[02:01:18] Speaker D: It.
[02:01:18] Speaker B: That's interesting that you threw that in there at the end. That, like, it's. In some way it's a reaction to the current state of the community.
I mean, that's not a criticism.
I think that showing really full trees and getting people used to seeing really full trees is actually something that we need to do.
And then, you know, maybe if the community decides after we have both options fully, that there's some middle ground.
I think in this case that the density is nice.
I don't think I would make it any thinner either.
[02:02:00] Speaker D: I love it.
[02:02:02] Speaker C: There's a little space right in the middle there on the left.
[02:02:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:02:06] Speaker D: And in snap space.
And it looks even cool because it's not like space in between pads, but space in between branches, which looks just even sacred, you know?
[02:02:16] Speaker C: Well, that. That's some of the things that I. I try to teach my. My students and clients is that if you can at least show pad separation, that in itself makes it look like a space, Even though it's not just this dead, like, open, clear, visible space. You know, there is a difference in one to the next. It doesn't have to be a physical space, but just the structure, how the structure is set. You know, you're going from one to the next and the next without having to see white, you know, or the background through. Through the. The pads.
[02:02:54] Speaker A: I misspoke earlier. I said it was a California juniper originally, but in the description it says Sierra juniper.
[02:03:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that might have been a mistake because the trunk is a California.
[02:03:05] Speaker A: Ah, okay.
[02:03:06] Speaker C: I'm pretty sure it's a California. Yeah. Yeah, I think.
[02:03:09] Speaker A: I think it looks like a California trunk to me. It's hard to tell, but it does look more like California than Sierra to me.
Cool.
[02:03:22] Speaker C: Whose cat is that?
[02:03:23] Speaker A: Oh, it might be mine. I. I got two cats, actually, and one of them, Peter, is. Is deaf, actually. And so she like, meows all crazy like my old loud.
[02:03:35] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Oh, boy.
[02:03:39] Speaker A: So sorry for anyone listening out there, but awesome. Any other thoughts on this tree or should. Or should we move on to best large deciduous?
[02:03:51] Speaker C: Okay, let's see. Anything else?
[02:03:56] Speaker A: The stand is not perfectly square like. Like in the other photo where you can see the back legs, like.
[02:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't do it on this one. Yeah. So, yeah, it's an example of the difference, Right?
[02:04:11] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah. I like when it's really clean and you can't see the back legs, actually.
[02:04:21] Speaker D: Yeah.
[02:04:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:04:24] Speaker A: Okay, so let's go large. Deciduous.
[02:04:31] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:04:32] Speaker B: Page 80.
[02:04:36] Speaker A: Yeah. One question for you guys while. While we are flipping over to page 80 is, have sizes of trees become way more important in the bullseye community? Because used to be, I feel like that people didn't talk about it quite as much, and now it's like, oh, is this right under 18 inches?
[02:04:59] Speaker C: Everybody talks about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the. One of the problems with that is. And I don't know how to figure it out, because Japan has the same problem, which is why some of the trees in Japan have gotten so big and bigger and bigger and bigger. Bigger to. To the point where it's. It's just not really bonsai. It's like a garden tree. Right. Because they. They don't have a cap in the size, or there is a cap, but bigger always looks better. Right. It grabs more attention, so they just keep pushing that level.
Now, in the case of the. The pb, where there are size categories, except for the extra large, which it just keeps going. I don't know if there's an actual cap, but, you know, before there was a. Before the large and the extra large category, there was just everything above 18 inches was considered in the large category. And, yeah, it's tough.
You know, it's hard when Your tree is 20 inches tall and it has to compete with a 38 inch tree, if that's what your goals are. Right. So.
So the tough thing now is a lot of people are. A lot of my clients or people in general are saying. Saying, well, you know, what size is it? Do I have a. Do I have a chance in potentially winning, you know, if that's your goal or showing? Well, and, yeah, generally trees that. Now, the interesting thing about page 80 or this Korean horn beam is that it's not very big for the size category because it's only 22 inches tall, whereas a large caps out at about 32 by 32 because the cutoff is 64 inches.
So for a smaller tree, it actually still was able to take a prize. Right. So this is one of the exceptions. But if there was another Korean hornbeam that was bigger, that was right at that size, would this one be able to compete? I don't know. It's tough.
It's just the visual weight of a giant tree just, just outweighs a small tree so much. Which is why there's category sizes in general. I think, think my feeling is I wish there was more category sizes because now you have people who have like 14 inch trees and they're like stuck in this void and they're like, nobody respects those trees now, which is unfortunate because the trees could be really good.
But that's kind of the nature of the. We got to pick a number at some point, I guess.
[02:07:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's kind of a double edged sword. You know, there's certain things that kind of lead into like I've had multiple conversations in the last few years with clients about, well, do you want to cut this back and restart it? And if so, do you want to try to keep it under 18 inches so that it would be in the medium category?
And you know, sometimes that seems like the best decision and it kind of leads into the whole proportionality that we see coming out of Japan. You know, things tend to be a little bit tighter, they tend to be a little bit, bit more squat.
But it also leads to sort of extremes. And I think we've seen in the recent GAFU 10 that we now have 12 inch wide trees that are 8 inch tall winning the, the, you know, the, the Shohin competition.
[02:08:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:08:11] Speaker B: And it's kind of crazy. The trees just keep getting wider because there's no width restriction.
So I don't know, you know, categories are categories and if you can make the tree bigger within the category, then it's somehow going to be more impressive, at least on average.
[02:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that's totally true. And I, I wonder if trees that are right on the edge in the top percentage are going to be worth more.
[02:08:41] Speaker C: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean that, that's why you get a, a tree In Japan that's 8 inches and it's, let's just throw a number, it's 10 grand and it's. And then when it's 11 inches now it's like worthless.
It's because of just the nature of how the show is set up and how that competition is set up that, you know, now we're not highlighting the best trees. Right. Because it just doesn't happen to fall into that category. But I mean, that's the name of the game. I don't know what, what we can do about that really.
I suppose you can always do more size categories to, to pick up the slack, but it's like, you know, you're always going to want to Be at the top end of the size. That's what people want.
[02:09:25] Speaker B: So I have a solution that we, we can, we, we can decide whether we're going to agree on it.
All right, so for each show, the, the size categories are only announced at the beginning of the submission period and the size category definitions change for each show.
[02:09:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I can totally see that. Now everybody's just like, okay, it's up in the air. You don't know. Right? It could be in that.
Yeah, I guess I'd have to think about that for a second.
How do people strategize working with that ruling? Right. And what those numbers tend to be?
[02:10:13] Speaker B: Well, to put it more solidly, you know, we were talking about as organizers that we felt like there weren't enough trees in the Shohin cat or enough displays in the Shohin category this past time. And as much as we can encourage that, there's only so much we can do.
But where there are fewer entries, we could combine categories. And so if we said there was a kifu category or up to 12 inches and we just said that's the same as Shohin now you have a different, you'd have a different boundary and you could encompass trees that are up to 12 inches, which would hypothetically be displayed differently than trees that are up to 8 inches. It's a little bit more of a wild card.
[02:11:01] Speaker A: I guess. You know, I'm curious if you guys see any value in having a standard for size just in terms of communicating within bonsai. Like I really like knowing, hey, a medium sized tree is up is somewhere between, you know, 16 to 18 inches.
I think that's nice. Just from a communication perspective and for ease of reference, I kind of like that there are size categories. I guess I'm maybe more in the Peter boat, what you were talking about earlier. Just some more size categories would be good.
But I like having a standard and I feel like it'd be nice if that.
[02:11:41] Speaker B: I don't know.
[02:11:42] Speaker A: I like having a standard.
[02:11:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I can understand because I can see that if say, for example, the sizes were announced after the fact, after the trees got accepted it, I think the results end up inevitably being the same. Is that some trees that happen to fall out of whatever size that gets set still are still underappreciated anyways.
So I'm not 100% sure that would change anything.
[02:12:16] Speaker B: Disclaimer. I'm not saying that's going to be what happened.
I'm just, I just threw it out there as a, as a way to, you Know, kind of sabotage the, the, you know, trying to conform to the categories in advance.
[02:12:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Caesar, you had something to say there.
[02:12:36] Speaker D: I can't cut you off.
[02:12:37] Speaker C: Sorry, you forgot.
[02:12:41] Speaker D: I think, I think what I was trying to say is, you know, before the Expo being.
Because I'm sure a lot of people kind of think the way I, I do in terms of I never wanted to show a tree when like my first four before the, the Expo, basically I could care less.
So honestly I didn't even ever because you know me, you know me, I don't know about pots, I don't know anything about stands and stuff like that. So I never like studied or really paid attention to all these size classes and how you to display trees.
So what I'm trying to say is I was making trees that I didn't care how, how like the, the actual size of it was.
But now that thanks to the Expo, I'm literally now every tree that I've bought. And ever since I think about that, right. It's like I needed to be like a certain size and, and, and I guess now that I'm saying it, that's kind of depressing because I was, I was just making just all kinds of juicy for, you know.
[02:13:41] Speaker C: Well, it's interesting, right, because it seems like you were doing kind of a pure form of bonsai. You're just being creative with what you're working with. And there was no, oh well, it's not worth working on because it's 19 inches versus 18 inches and now that it's 18, it's very much worthwhile. So I can, I can totally understand that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing either what, what we can do about it.
Yeah.
[02:14:06] Speaker A: Double edged sword for sure.
[02:14:08] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:14:10] Speaker A: Interesting.
All right, well let's talk about this horn beam. Yeah. So another Jeff Stern Korean horn beam, 22 inches. What is the large size category up to again? Do you remember?
[02:14:26] Speaker C: I think 36.
I think it's height plus width is 64.
[02:14:32] Speaker A: That's right.
[02:14:33] Speaker B: Something like that. Yeah.
[02:14:34] Speaker C: Or under 64 something. Yeah.
[02:14:38] Speaker A: So not at the max of the size category, but very nice tree. Do you think this is Yamadori, Peter?
[02:14:50] Speaker C: That's what they say. They said, well, yamadori in the sense that it was field grown, I believe. I don't think it was something they found out in the forest somewhere.
So, so I do wonder when they say some of these Korean hornbeams are yamadoris that. Oh yeah, they dug it out of a field that they grew and not some random tree they found. But I'm not 100% sure because I seem to see a lot of these that look very similar and they call them yamadori just like the, the big one in the display in the extra large category. I can't remember what page it was but those I've seen a lot of them look like that and sometimes they call them yamadoris also. But there was very much feel good ball.
[02:15:36] Speaker A: That's interesting. I, I always thought that they were collected tree collected hornbeams collected in Korea.
I think even the name. Like I tried to look it up and I saw that they, they call them rock, horn, beam in, in Korea.
And I thought a lot of them were collected.
[02:15:56] Speaker C: I mean I could be totally wrong. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
[02:15:59] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know either. You know, I feel like we'd have to talk to someone that saw them being collected in Korea.
[02:16:07] Speaker C: Well, yeah, it's interesting, right, because when you try to collect any other deciduous trees, for example, when you see deciduous trees out there, I mean the likelihood of finding a deciduous tree that has some kind of taper this short is like almost impossible. I mean it's like non existent.
Why would. So it's hard for me to kind of think that, that you can just find something like that and have somehow skinny branches also because on the trunk itself there isn't.
I mean there's some, some indications of past old wounds that were cut, but nothing major.
Nothing that was say 4 inches wide or anything like that. And then they healed it over kind of thing.
Not to say that there weren't some big branches on there that got replaced over time. But that taper just seems very suspect just because deciduous trees, when I see deciduous trees just growing randomly out there, they're always giant poles and all that. So I don't know. I don't know.
[02:17:15] Speaker B: I think that there are some monkey grazed monkey grazed monkey.
[02:17:28] Speaker D: They're.
[02:17:31] Speaker B: Herbivores, you know, like they eat the, they eat the tree and then year after year it grows.
So they're monkey grazed Korean horns, cow graze.
[02:17:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:17:41] Speaker B: They even have monkeys in Korea.
[02:17:44] Speaker C: I think so. Oh yeah, I'm assuming. I'm guessing.
[02:17:47] Speaker B: So then that's what's going on here, obviously.
[02:17:50] Speaker C: Yeah, there you go.
[02:17:56] Speaker A: Very interesting.
I always thought that they. But many of them were collected. But you're changing my mind. I mean the taper thing, you got a point there for sure. Like how would it have such nice taper I thought that basically they were collected from the wild and maybe there was like two sections of, of of taper and they chopped it and then they grew the next leader. So.
[02:18:22] Speaker C: And that, that's very. That that could be the case. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:18:26] Speaker A: But I don't know. I don't know. Now I'm, you're. You're definitely making me second guess what.
[02:18:32] Speaker C: I was thinking, because I, I mean, they've, they've done that with black pines where they'll. In Japan, they'll collect these old black pines that are stunted, and then what they end up doing is they then put it in the ground and field grow it and then get this giant trunk with that old, with that old product.
[02:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
Side note, I think that that is exactly what we should be doing more of in the US Like, I feel like, especially on the east coast where they're collecting these American hornbeam, American beech, I feel like they need to collect things that are, you know, 15 year projects before you start working on the primary branches where you're just growing the next couple sections of taper, but your field growing or growing in a big box or something like that. I think that's what we need in the US or we collect pines, just like you said.
[02:19:20] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[02:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be great.
[02:19:22] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[02:19:22] Speaker D: Somebody should definitely do that. And we'll buy them when they're done.
[02:19:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Caesar, collect some olives and then replant them in the ground. Get them bigger.
[02:19:38] Speaker A: Well, do you know how long, Jeff. Let's see. He said he got this in the early 2000s. 2000.
[02:19:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I think he. This is one of his earlier trees that he got when he first started, because I think he started in 2001 or so. Yeah.
[02:19:54] Speaker A: Okay.
Now it, I mean, the, the level of ramification that you two have achieved is just, just very high level.
I'm curious, you know, is there anything that you would change about this tree or any critique on it? It looks very, very nice.
[02:20:20] Speaker C: You guys have any opinions? Don't worry, it won't hurt my feelings or anything.
[02:20:28] Speaker D: Go ahead, Eric.
[02:20:30] Speaker B: Well, I mean.
[02:20:33] Speaker A: Start talking about monkeys again.
[02:20:40] Speaker B: I heard a monkey say that the, that the.
No, seriously, the. There was a.
I heard a critique of this tree which I actually disagreed with, but the critique was that, that the first couple inches of each one of the branches doesn't have any divisions or taper to it. And that would be indicative of something where the owner had previously cut the branches back but had decided to leave those sections in place. Now, I'm not really sure that's true, but I don't, you know, knowing that, Peter, you're probably only been involved in the sort of outer section of the tree.
Based on the timelines, I really don't know what happened with it. But the, the.
I think what they're saying is that they think that the interior portion of the branches looks a little bit kind of static looking.
And like I said, I sort of disagree with that. I don't have any issue with it.
[02:21:44] Speaker C: I see, I see.
[02:21:49] Speaker A: What do you think, Peter?
[02:21:50] Speaker C: Caesar, you're up. Caesar.
[02:21:52] Speaker A: Oh.
[02:21:55] Speaker D: I'm not sure I understood.
[02:21:58] Speaker C: That.
[02:21:59] Speaker D: They're just too long in the beginning.
Is that what you meant?
[02:22:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, Eric was saying that the person that was critiquing was saying that some of the branches or a number of the branches, when they start off from the trunk, they came out. There wasn't a lot of division or taper change.
And then at some point it started ramifying.
Now, part of that could have been that there were branches there. And in the development process, branches on the interior, sometimes they don't quite make it to the outside or it was not cared for properly. And then some of them died off along the way, and that could be the reason for that.
[02:22:38] Speaker B: Do you fully defoliate this multiple times a year?
[02:22:41] Speaker C: I never defoliate this tree.
I just leave thinning. Yeah. I would say that this tree genetically seems to grow denser than a lot of hornbeams and the leaves seem to be smaller.
So I can't really say that I take a bunch of credit for it, but generally I don't really defoliate hornbeams. I've done it in Japan before as kind of an experiment, but I'm not 100% sure I'm on board that it's required to get a really ramified tree.
[02:23:13] Speaker A: Eric, do you defoliate your hornbeam?
[02:23:18] Speaker B: I don't fully defoliate hornbeams, typically. I usually use the cut back to two leaves and remove the inner of the two leaves technique that I've been using more on cork elms. I don't have a lot of hornbeams, so especially in ramification stage, but I do have a couple.
And that technique has worked reasonably well with the younger of the two rafts that I have.
The older one has been a little bit spotty in terms of growth.
[02:23:55] Speaker C: So when the, when the branches or the foliage comes out, you're taking the two interior leaves off.
[02:24:04] Speaker B: Well.
[02:24:04] Speaker C: So what are you doing?
[02:24:06] Speaker B: So I'm letting the shoots run for some amount of time, usually until they're, you know, six or eight leaves long. Then I'm taking the shoot, cutting it back to the first two leaves that are on the actual shoot. And hornbeams kind of tend to have, in some places, like kind of a. A few extra leaves at the base of the shoot. So normally take all of those basil leaves off as well as the first leaf on the shoot, leaving just the leaf close to the cut point.
[02:24:38] Speaker C: I see, I see. So you're kind of like, thinning out any extra leaves that are a little too close to the inside out.
[02:24:44] Speaker B: Right. So what I've seen from that is that it creates pretty good ramification because you don't get any twig die back, and you get buds opening further in because you're letting a lot of light in and. And you're also cutting it back at the same time and removing a lot of the leaves.
[02:25:06] Speaker C: So it was very interesting. When I was. When I was an apprentice, we had a big Korean horn beam, and I think. I think Jonas was there at the time when we did this.
We had this giant one, and we decided to defoliate the entire tree just to see what would happen happen.
And it was interesting because what we saw was that the buds on the exterior, the big buds on the exterior, you would think those would be the first to come out.
But the weird thing is that a lot of the interior buds on the inside of the tree were the ones that leafed out first, then the ones right on the outside. I mean, it seems totally backwards, but we did see that happening, which is very unusual.
I don't know if that has anything to do or if that she has any light on anything, but I thought that was an interesting thing.
I'm trying to help. I don't know if that helped.
I don't know if it's a. I don't know if it's a horn beam thing, because you. You would just assume the exterior would be the part that grows first, not the interior. But it was like all the interior stuff grew first, and the exterior actually grew last after defoliation.
[02:26:24] Speaker B: Almost like a fire response. Like, you know, like the defoliation was like, you know, an oaks that when they burn, they'll just, like, bud out all over the trunk.
[02:26:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So there you go.
Yeah.
[02:26:39] Speaker A: I remember Ichan having some. Just ridiculous. This horn beam, it was like, so thick and extremely rapid taper.
Do you remember that one, or is that the one that you're referring to?
[02:26:53] Speaker C: I. I think that was the one. Yeah. It was giant. I mean, the Trunk was like, I don't know, 30 inches wide or something.
[02:26:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[02:27:00] Speaker B: Oh, geez.
[02:27:01] Speaker A: Was.
[02:27:01] Speaker C: It's just a ridiculous looking tree.
[02:27:03] Speaker D: Yeah.
[02:27:04] Speaker A: Was it more recently imported when you were there?
[02:27:09] Speaker C: I want to say I remember him saying something about that he may have just got. When I got there, that tree was already there.
But I don't know exactly when he got it.
[02:27:21] Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha.
[02:27:23] Speaker C: I thought it was very interesting.
Mr. Tanaka's philosophy is you would think a tree like that you probably wouldn't want to experiment on. Right. And defoliate.
He always said something, he was like, if you're going to experiment and really find out if something works, you can't just do it on a crappy tree. You got to do it on a good tree. Then you know it's meaningful.
So. So when we experimented, we always used a pretty good tree. Then we really know, you know, are we really going to do this or are we just kind of putzing around, you know?
[02:27:58] Speaker A: Interesting.
[02:27:59] Speaker C: But I mean, it survived. So it was good. It survived.
Nice.
Yeah.
[02:28:07] Speaker D: So I think this.
[02:28:09] Speaker A: Go ahead, Cesar.
[02:28:10] Speaker D: I was just gonna say I think this hornbeam is just like a perfect example of an old tree or an old tree as a bonsai.
I mean, it just looks old. The branches. I mean, the ramification obviously is just ridiculous on this tree.
It definitely looks old as a bonsai and also as if it was a tree. But I mean, you could just tell it's been a bonsai for years.
[02:28:37] Speaker C: And I think, you know, that that's something that, you know, Jonas and Eric with the, with the PBE are talking about is that, you know, they're looking for trees that, that show that they've been bonsai for a long time. Right. It's not something that was just worked on for the last couple of years and. And then now it's there. Right. Kind of thing. And.
And I think this is a good example. Like you were saying, Caesar, that, that you see it in this one, that, okay, it's been around for a while. It's not something that just was quickly made.
And I think that's the bonsai we're looking for or the goal we're going for.
I mean, improvement wise. I think the tree can probably be a little bit wider still.
I wish the trunk didn't have that big root on the left side. But it is what it is. There's nothing we can do about that at this point.
That's just what it came with.
[02:29:32] Speaker B: Just cut off all the branches, field grow the trunk and then start over.
You don't need those branches.
[02:29:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't need. Yeah.
This tree buds out from the trunk like all the time. I have to keep pulling little leaves off the trunk. That's like non stop.
[02:29:53] Speaker A: Peter, I'm curious your thoughts on what Eric mentioned earlier regarding the critique and having some legginess in the beginning towards, towards the interior branches. Do you have any thoughts on that?
[02:30:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if we were really strict about. I mean, we can always look at a tree and pick apart. Pick it apart. Right. There's always something that could be better. For sure.
Not to say that that's just a negative way of approaching it, but yeah, there's always ways of approaching, of things being better. That's how things get better. We just always looked, how can we improve it? How can we improve it? Now the difficulties on this tree to improve, say those interior branches would require somebody to go through and restart the tree to get those things back.
And it's just a matter of someone's willing to do that.
Is it a big issue for me at this point, I would say no.
If this was 30 years later and every tree looked like this and now we're like, well, yeah, it would be better.
And then say the, the trees that win 30, 50 years from now, for example, have better branching than this, then yeah, of course.
Would it be better if there was division closer? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen Korean hornbeams in Japan that has division way closer than this and it's way denser than this and of course that one kokofu.
So you can always fall back on that, which is interesting. I'm not trying to fault a person that's critiquing trees.
I've sat through a number of critiques and it's interesting because you have to try to figure out are they critiquing the tree because that's something that's reasonable to do, or are they just looking for something to say, Which I always find very interesting. Right. Because the person critiquing, you know, they have reasons for saying what they're saying, good or bad, whatever the case is.
And I always try to filter, you know, listen to what they're saying and kind of filter out. Are they saying something to say something, or they actually. Or is it kind of a reasonable thing to expect to do?
Someone can always say, yeah, the tree would be better if it was 2 inches wider on all sides. I would agree with that.
But how meaningful is that? That's really the question, right. At this point, relative to everything else we're seeing, because you can always say that. You can look at page 81, the tree next to it. I can say it'd be better if there's more fruit, if that's meaningless. Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's tricky when people critique trees. And I always wonder, is it because it's something that is helpful or is it something just to say to make it sound like you know what you're talking about? Again, this is not. I'm not bashing the person critiquing the tree or anything like that, but that is something that I do notice.
[02:32:57] Speaker A: Very valid points.
Yeah. One thing I would like to point out about this tree is simply the fact that I don't think that there are many other deciduous in the United States that have achieved this level of ramification, especially with the majority of the branches created in the United States. Like, I just think that there's not that many of that much ramification on a tree that was basically created in. In the US So massive Props on that to you, Jeff. Everyone that worked on this tree.
It's looking really good.
[02:33:39] Speaker C: Oh, it's interesting. This thing says the stand is made out of Tom. Made by Tom Colby. That's actually incorrect.
Who wrote this? Let's see.
That's weird. I think.
[02:33:50] Speaker A: Is that a David.
[02:33:51] Speaker C: It doesn't matter now. Now it's actually a David Niddle stand, so I gotta give props to David Niddall. He didn't get credit for that. Nice. That's a David Niddle stand.
[02:33:59] Speaker A: He makes great stands.
Also, is this tree usually in a antique green pot out in the yard? I feel like I remember seeing that.
[02:34:09] Speaker C: But I could be wrong.
Normally it's in this Japanese antique.
Don't let antique fool you. It just means it was old. It's not great great. It's just in a green pot that happens to fit. And this is just a show pot that we put it in. Ah.
[02:34:30] Speaker A: Awesome. Any other thoughts on this one?
[02:34:35] Speaker D: Just greatness.
[02:34:38] Speaker A: Well said.
Well said.
I like it.
Okay.
All right. What are we going large or. Let's see. Extra large conifer.
[02:34:52] Speaker C: Extra large conifer.
[02:34:55] Speaker A: And I also think we can jump around if you guys want to do different trees. I was hoping that we could all maybe pick one or so.
[02:35:05] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:35:07] Speaker A: Do you guys want to go extra large conifer or do you want to. Do you want to start picking and we're going late already, Which I'm. I'm totally good with, but want to be respectful of your guys time too.
[02:35:21] Speaker C: I'm chilling, bro.
[02:35:21] Speaker D: You know me.
[02:35:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:35:23] Speaker D: Just Just vibing.
[02:35:26] Speaker C: Yeah, me too.
[02:35:29] Speaker B: I'm half asleep already.
[02:35:30] Speaker C: You're absolutely okay.
This is Eric half asleep.
[02:35:36] Speaker A: You did of a lot. Why don't we. Why don't we jump ahead? We have to hit best in show, right?
[02:35:43] Speaker D: I was already there.
[02:35:44] Speaker A: Okay, you cannot Best in show. So let's go Best in show.
[02:35:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:35:49] Speaker A: Even though XL Conifer was awesome. Is awesome.
[02:35:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So Cryptomeria.
This is submitted by an anonymous participant and it is a cryptomeria that won the best in show award.
Eric, you want to give us your initial thoughts here?
[02:36:19] Speaker B: Sure. I mean, it's interesting that I think that probably very limited number of people in the United States have actually experienced wild cryptomeria in person.
I seem to remember traveling to a particular place in Japan where there was a shrine.
Well, there's a lot of shrines in Japan. But anyway, it was outside of Tokyo and there were these giant cryptomeria and it, it really made me appreciate the, the idea that a formal upright cryptomeria could be, you know, a really beautiful tree.
And I've always found it interesting the way that this is a very traditional styling, it seems of a cryptomeria in the sense that it's a formal upright, has very detailed fingers of sub, you know, secondary and tertiary branching.
One of the atypical things about it is that it actually has a shari on it, which I believe in Japan is kind of frowned upon for cryptomeria that would. They would normally want a tree that has bark on the entire thing.
But I think that the funniest thing about this tree actually is There was a YouTube video where Jeff was. No, not Jeff.
Maybe I'm thinking of a different tree. Anyway, there was a.
Morton used to own this tree. Right. When it was like many years ago. And someone was talking about the tree. And Morton just sort of sidesteps into the video and starts telling the entire history of the tree because obviously he knew it. But nobody who's watching the video actually understands that Morton used to own the tree.
It was pretty funny. There are some pretty funny comments on it. Anyway, sorry, that was a pretty bad tangent.
[02:38:13] Speaker A: That is funny out of context.
Nice. Yeah. I think this tree is absolutely stunning. I. I just feel like it has a. A presence about it. Would you guys consider this a formal upright? 100.
Is there any question there?
[02:38:37] Speaker D: I mean, is the question.
Is the question just because it slightly goes to the right?
[02:38:44] Speaker A: I don't know. It's. It's a very straight trunk.
Because it's pretty straight. It's pretty straight.
[02:38:50] Speaker C: Yeah. I, I Think the.
Yeah, the trunk about, I don't know, 80% up actually stops and then something else takes over.
So I. I would say in the traditional sense of an informal upright, it's not technically straight all the way. It's actually leaning to the right a little bit. Bit. And then it continues to the left a little bit to build the rest of the tree. I mean, we can argue about that, but I would say at this point, we just say, yeah, it's informal upright. Right.
[02:39:22] Speaker A: And does that even matter?
[02:39:24] Speaker C: But if somebody really want. Yeah. Does it really even matter? We get the point, you know.
[02:39:28] Speaker A: For sure.
[02:39:29] Speaker C: For sure.
[02:39:31] Speaker A: It won Best in show.
Yeah. I like the basal flare. It looks very nice. Nice, I think.
I don't know if you call that nabari, I guess.
[02:39:43] Speaker C: Right.
[02:39:44] Speaker A: The nabari is nice. Gives the tree a very nice, stable feel. I love the ramification of the tree. Also love how the pot, the antique pot, matches with the tree. I just feel like it gives it a greater sense of age.
And I am a big fan of this composition.
[02:40:04] Speaker D: Yeah, the pot goes very well with it. And it's also a tree. Kind of like the horn be. In a sense where it looks old, too, as a bonsai, you know, And I love the fingers on it. I think that's my.
That's like one of my favorite things about these is you could really just kind of show those fingers off.
Not in a rude way. You know.
[02:40:29] Speaker C: A bunch of middle fingers.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. I think the tree's great. I've been around when the tree was.
When it was at. When Morton owned it. That's when I saw it probably the most.
Yeah. Tree's great. Especially knowing the history of the tree, too, because there was a period where it wasn't doing well, and it's. It's just bounced back really great.
The only thing I would say is I. I love that they used the red clay pot, because I don't think people. I think that's a little bit underutilized.
But the only thing that stands out for me is I wish the pot was just a little bit smaller.
When you look at a lot of the other trees in the show, you'll notice that the canopy in most trees overlap the pot, which makes the tree stand out more and makes the tree look bigger.
And when the pot kind of holds the canopy within it, it starts looking like a tree in a pot as opposed to a tree growing in the ground.
So that was kind of the. The only thing that I saw that kind of. That threw Me a little bit is. I wish the pot was just a little bit smaller, then the tree would just stand out.
But I love that use of the. The red clay.
[02:41:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's probably expensive pot right there.
[02:41:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:41:57] Speaker A: I like that red slate too. And you don't see it used very often here. It's probably because it's hard to find that nakuata.
I'm not sure if this is Nakuatari, I would assume, but I. I think so.
[02:42:11] Speaker C: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And people tend to. It's. It's not. It's not a kind of a normal thing. It's kind of out of their comfort zone. People tend to fall back on, you know, brown color pots or purple, dark brown kind of color pots. Even. Even with the stands. Every time I pick different stands for people's trees, the. The light color stands are always. The stands nobody picks. They always go with the dark. Anything that's red, they're uncomfortable with it. Maybe it's too loud for them, but I think there's definitely a place for them and they're. I think they're a little underutilized, so I love that they did that.
[02:42:49] Speaker A: Awesome.
Yeah. You know, Peter, you had the. A tree at the John Naka Memorial Expo, I believe. I think Tony owns it.
Not a Cryptomeria, but a Hinoki.
Is that Jeff's tree? I don't know whose tree it is.
[02:43:11] Speaker C: Oh, that was Jeff's tree. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:43:14] Speaker A: Okay.
And anyways, I. I took some videos of it from the. Underneath the underside so you could really see the structure of the pads. And I feel like similar to this. There's just like the ramification. Looks so good.
Almost feel like.
Well, one. I guess those videos got a ton more views than just a picture of the tree straight on. On which I think is kind of funny, but it also makes sense.
[02:43:42] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.
[02:43:44] Speaker A: Because you can really, like, see the work that was put into the tree and you can see how the tree is built and the. The time and maturity of the tree and the level of ramification when you look from the underside. I feel like this tree also looks really cool from that underside. I'm glad they have one shot of it looking up into the pads.
[02:44:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[02:44:16] Speaker A: Fantastic.
Well, any other thoughts on this? The best in show tree? Shout out to Michael Hagedorn for working on this. He's done a. Yeah. Awesome job just getting it in super good health and doing some incredible work on it.
[02:44:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:44:35] Speaker D: It's tall. Ass string.
[02:44:37] Speaker C: Yeah, it's very tall. Yeah.
[02:44:40] Speaker A: I'M a big fan of Michael Hagedorn's work.
[02:44:42] Speaker B: He does such a good job.
[02:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:44:45] Speaker A: So creative, too.
[02:44:51] Speaker D: With the weird stand is pretty cool.
[02:44:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Why don't we.
[02:44:56] Speaker C: Oh, his other display. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:44:58] Speaker A: Can we all pick a tree? Is that cool?
[02:45:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
Let's see here.
[02:45:08] Speaker A: You know, maybe I'll start, if that's okay.
[02:45:14] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:45:17] Speaker A: Well, actually, I kind of have two I want to talk about, but.
[02:45:24] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:45:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[02:45:25] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:45:25] Speaker A: Why don't we do Eric's on page 100?
Uh.
[02:45:29] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[02:45:32] Speaker C: Here we go.
[02:45:34] Speaker A: So this is a trident maple grown by Eric.
Surprised there's no monkey incorporated in the display, but.
[02:45:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:45:49] Speaker A: Well, go ahead.
[02:45:51] Speaker C: No, I have a sticker of this tree on my workshop door.
[02:45:55] Speaker A: Oh, do you really?
[02:45:56] Speaker C: Because I know Eric made a number of stickers of this tree, I believe.
[02:46:00] Speaker A: Dude, where's my sticker?
[02:46:04] Speaker B: Actually?
[02:46:04] Speaker A: Come on, man.
[02:46:08] Speaker B: I don't know if I have any more. I might have some stickers left.
We actually produce a lot of stickers.
[02:46:16] Speaker A: I would love one.
[02:46:16] Speaker B: One.
[02:46:18] Speaker A: Okay. So I feel like there should be a distinction for anybody that has grown a tree from seed, cutting, or air layer and got it into the pbe. I think that is an incredible accomplishment right there.
And I also feel like just stats like that. I would love to know about the pbe. Like, are there any other trees where someone has grown it from seed, cutting or air layer? I think there's. There's definitely a few Bill Volvanis. This for sure, just off the top of my head. Oh, yeah, I'm sure there's. There's probably some other. But kudos to Eric for growing this tree from seed. That is absolutely incredible. And didn't you make the stand or. No, I did.
[02:47:02] Speaker B: I made the stand. I also made the pot that it's in.
I made that pot when my older son was a year old and I had a friend who had a kiln.
So the stands. It's kind of a funny story. I started it, I think, in, like, 2010 or something. So I, like, cut the lumber and made all the sticks and the joinery, and then I just never put it together. And then, you know, two days before the show, I finally finished it. So it was sitting, gathering dust on a shelf as a pile of sticks for, like, almost 15 years.
[02:47:38] Speaker C: And then I. Wow.
[02:47:39] Speaker B: Finally finished it for the show.
[02:47:41] Speaker C: Nice long curing. Yeah.
[02:47:44] Speaker B: Time barrel aged.
[02:47:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:47:49] Speaker D: I'd love to see how much thought you put into this whole display.
[02:47:58] Speaker A: Did you use copper wire for the little metal pieces that connects the upper portion of the stand with the lower portion. Portion.
[02:48:07] Speaker B: Yeah. That started actually a long time ago. I.
[02:48:13] Speaker C: The.
[02:48:13] Speaker B: So if you look back at the Artisan's cup, the tree that I had in the Artisan's cup, it was one of those stands that has all the pegs in, like, right below the tabletop. And I was trying to make the pegs out of wood, and I just. I didn't have a dowel jig or anything like that. And the rest of the stand had been made out of this. This particular type of walnut that's native to California.
And so I was getting really frustrated, and then I was looking around the shop and realized that I had a bunch of scrap copper wire and thinking like, oh, you know, like, copper wire is a bonsai thing. So I actually ended up using.
That was the first stand I used copper wire on. And since then, I've incorporated copper wire in a number of different stands. So. Yeah, long story short, it is copper wire.
[02:49:05] Speaker A: Very nice. I like it. It looks really good. Like, I'm very impressed that you did all of this.
What kind of wood did you use for the stand?
[02:49:16] Speaker B: It's Claro walnut, which is.
It's a California native. And the funny thing is, I got the wood from my dad. He had had just piles of wood sitting around when I was a kid and that he never used. And so there were all these scraps. And making bonsai stands is a great way to use up short pieces of lumber that are really pretty.
[02:49:44] Speaker A: Very nice.
[02:49:45] Speaker D: So that tree, that pot, and that stand is all Cali grown?
[02:49:50] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah.
[02:49:51] Speaker A: That's cool.
[02:49:52] Speaker D: The holy trinity.
[02:50:00] Speaker A: So that's got to be a.
A unique thing. I. I bet no one else made the tree, pot, and stand.
[02:50:09] Speaker B: You know, actually back to Rendevu. I was actually in the show at Rendevu and you were.
Don't mess with me.
[02:50:27] Speaker C: It's just not there the entire time. That's awesome.
[02:50:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I didn't get the punch on the third day in my card for, you know, the frequent flyer.
No, seriously, it was. I think it was Ryan Pitts. He was in the. The new talent competition. He had two trees in the show.
I don't know how he pulled that off, because they were all supposed to be from different clubs.
So maybe he's in two clubs and he was representing both of them. Anyway, it was like a California juniper in a pot that he had helped. So he made the tree. Then he went up to Portland. I asked him. He went up to Portland and he worked with now to make the pot and Then someone else told me he made the stand as well. So if so, props.
Either way, props. It was a very nice.
[02:51:13] Speaker D: I think you're right. He did make the stand for it. Yeah.
[02:51:15] Speaker B: So he had a hand in all three elements.
So, you know, maybe I'm not going to say everybody should do that, but I do find it impressive.
[02:51:26] Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
[02:51:30] Speaker A: That's so cool.
Very nice. Very nice.
[02:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:51:35] Speaker A: Awesome work on the.
[02:51:36] Speaker C: The.
[02:51:37] Speaker A: On every piece of this interesting trident. I like the exposed root. It's a funky tree, but I think it works well.
Came out really cool.
[02:51:50] Speaker B: Thank you.
[02:51:54] Speaker C: That's an interesting reading. About the small juniper is your second tree, that the tree was made from one graft. I guess the trunk was maybe some kind of a pastrada or something or a Virginia pine that was growing in.
[02:52:08] Speaker B: A landscape, you know, let's see.
Back right when I moved back from Southern California to San Francisco, I went to the San Francisco Club, and they had just gotten done with collecting a bunch of. I call them Westlake junipers, But that's because they came from Westlake. I have no idea what the actual variety was.
[02:52:30] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:52:31] Speaker B: But, you know, it's like the kind of juniper that everybody had planted in their front yard. And so some, you know, homeowner in. In Westlake wanted all of these junipers dug out. And so the club had like 50 of them or something.
And they did what Tim Kong used to call the Iron Bonsai challenge, which is he'd get, like, five people up there, each working on a different tree, and. And he'd, like, walk around being the emcee or whatever, and. And like, narrating what was going on. And so my.
My son won it in the raffle, and so it's. Technically, it's his tree. But then it was just a terrible type of foliage. So I grafted it and actually grafted. If you look carefully, I closed my book, so now I gotta open it again.
If you look carefully, I actually put the graphs.
[02:53:29] Speaker A: So the.
[02:53:29] Speaker B: The foliage is one graft, but then there are gin that are grafted on, but they were grafted on when that part of the tree was still alive.
So I.
[02:53:41] Speaker C: Wait, what?
[02:53:44] Speaker B: So the top of the. You know, the dead part at the top, that's all gin.
When I first started working on the tree was live, and I put a bunch of graphs up there. But then I did.
I didn't want to use those graphs, and I didn't want to use that part of the trunk, so I killed off the whole trunk and used the graphs. That I put on as gin.
[02:54:02] Speaker C: Nice. Nice.
[02:54:06] Speaker A: Awesome work, man.
[02:54:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. That's great. That's something that a lot of people don't do. I mean, that's definitely just thinking way out there and just creating that tree from one graft. I mean, it just shows what you can do with just one.
One piece of foliage, which you can grow it into.
[02:54:26] Speaker B: Kishu is pretty adaptable.
[02:54:28] Speaker C: Yeah, Eric, it's funny. Speaking of. Oh, I'm sorry.
[02:54:35] Speaker A: No, go for it, Peter.
[02:54:36] Speaker C: Speaking about kishu, just going back to. About the whole grafting thing, I recently had somebody that contacted me online because I have a Sierra juniper for sale on the website, and I grabbed a kishu on it about two years ago. And so I wrote that. And. Okay, we're converting this.
And the person emailed me and says, I told myself that I would never buy a kishu ever again. And I love that sierra foliage. Do you think we can save this tree?
[02:55:09] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[02:55:11] Speaker C: And I was like, well, you could always cut the kishu off and just keep the Sierra. I mean, I get it. It. But I thought it was very funny when they said that they swore they would never grow kishu. I don't know the backstory behind it, but I've never heard anybody say that. That they swear they would never buy a kishu ever again.
Yeah.
[02:55:31] Speaker B: The only thing I can think of is that some people have so much spider mite problem with kishu.
[02:55:36] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[02:55:38] Speaker B: You know, itoigawa doesn't. It's not nearly as susceptible, but. But Kishu, for whatever reason, is just a magnet.
[02:55:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. Kishu is in the Midwest. I have clients in Minnesota, and they get crazy fungus problems on Kishu. Just nails them hard. But a toy gawa doesn't seem to get it.
So now they're using more itoigawa because the Kishu, if you don't spray on a timely manner, I mean, they just tip, like, just destroys them. It's crazy.
[02:56:05] Speaker A: Interesting, Eric, do you find in San Francisco Kishu or itowagawa to grow better.
[02:56:15] Speaker B: In the city? Kishu looks better to me. I like the bluish tinge. And because it grows so slowly, it gives you kind of like a head of broccoli kind of look without really very much work.
And so, you know, I think that at least local to San Francisco, itueigawa is a little bit harder to grow then Kishu. Kishu just sort of does what you want it to do almost by itself.
[02:56:45] Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah, gotcha.
[02:56:46] Speaker B: Unless you want it to extend, in.
[02:56:48] Speaker C: Which case you're screwed when you want it to grow. It won't do that. But yeah, I love how Kishu grows in San Francisco.
I'd love it if I can grow it that way. It's just super dense.
I can't grow that.
I missed that. What? You can't grow Kishu?
[02:57:12] Speaker D: No, not definitely. Not as. As good looking as that. No.
[02:57:17] Speaker C: Oh, really? I see.
[02:57:19] Speaker D: He doesn't seem to like the hot and like Eric said, it seems to love spider mites. So yeah, out there spider mats are.
[02:57:29] Speaker C: Like a huge thing because I know that.
Oh, jeez, Damn, I forgot his name. The big nursery down there by you.
[02:57:40] Speaker A: Ed Carhartt.
[02:57:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean he grows a lot of his Kishu and Itoi Gawas inside greenhouses and they seem to be very dense for him also.
But I've also seen his irrigation come on in this greenhouse. I mean, it comes on for a while. I mean, it's pretty moist in there.
[02:57:56] Speaker D: There.
[02:57:56] Speaker C: Pretty. Right, right.
[02:57:57] Speaker D: Yeah.
[02:57:57] Speaker C: So maybe that's why it's getting so dense for him.
[02:58:02] Speaker D: Yeah, he has, he has pretty good growing methods and he's told me before that I need to get on that and, and do some, some greenhouses and stuff. But you know, we can, we can't all be Ed. You know, I don't know how. I don't know how the hell he does that.
He's a machine, bro. Because he's just got crazy.
[02:58:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, that guy's a tough dude.
[02:58:26] Speaker A: Definitely.
Awesome. All right, Peter, you want to pick a tree?
[02:58:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually have two I just want to briefly talk about. One is on page 98 and one is on page 94.
Two black pines.
[02:58:45] Speaker A: 98 first.
[02:58:48] Speaker C: Sure.
[02:58:51] Speaker A: Jonas.
[02:58:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
So these two trees, you know, 98 and 94, they're not too far apart from each other. Is.
I'm just happy to see that there's some really nice black vines coming up and we're seeing it in this last show. I mean, this is good stuff. I know Adam Toth wired this tree and it just looked really great and I really appreciate it. One is being a medium 98 and 94, I think it's in the large category. But it's been a while. I mean, it's been a long road, especially growing black pines and waiting for bark to appear and things like that. And now we're starting to see that on both of these trees they got nice big trunks. They're starting to develop a lot of bark. Especially the tree on 94 has got much thicker bark. Dark. And it's You. You get this fullness that a lot of people are having a hard time developing. So those trees definitely stood out to me at the show, and I really appreciate them because that's. That's something I haven't seen for a while or I've not seen yet, but it's now happening, which is great.
[03:00:04] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, when I read that question on the outline about maybe we might get to choose a tree, I literally had. Had the Jones's tree, like, folded up like the page a little and the other one side by side because, bro, they're both just sick as hell, like you said. I really like both of them. And. And I was there at Adams when he was wiring this. This. This pine.
He had it. And, bro. Yeah, I mean, that's. It's so dense, and. And I'm like, bro, it's. It's crazy how.
I mean, to. To wire that up is just insane. And how it came out so sick. It's even more insane, you know, but it's super dense and super. I mean, there's branching all over that thing, so it's. I could only imagine how. How. How hard it is to wire it up.
[03:00:53] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And I. I give credit to Jonas, too, for growing a, you know, super healthy tree and. And getting that ramification in there.
[03:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[03:01:04] Speaker D: The other one definitely looks like a monster. And for some reason, I really like that pot that it's in.
[03:01:10] Speaker C: I think it's a very appropriate pot. Yeah, very. It's. It's not very wide left and right, but then it makes it up for the. With the depth.
[03:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah, both. Both of these are really nice.
On 94, Alexi's tree.
I really like the bark and.
[03:01:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:01:34] Speaker A: It's looking really nice.
[03:01:36] Speaker C: Yeah. Everything's been, you know, very proportionate.
I. I would say I. I do wish the stand was just a little smaller. That's all. That's about the only thing. But everything about it, the tree, the pot. I like the accent that they use. Got a little color in there.
Amazing.
Yeah.
[03:01:56] Speaker A: Definitely.
Very nice. Is that Caesar, do you think that's one of your olives right there?
[03:02:07] Speaker D: Oh, no, no.
[03:02:08] Speaker C: That one.
[03:02:10] Speaker A: Not two.
[03:02:11] Speaker B: Not two.
[03:02:12] Speaker C: All olives point to Caesar.
He had.
[03:02:16] Speaker D: He had that one already.
He didn't get mine until later.
[03:02:21] Speaker A: He cheated on you.
[03:02:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:02:28] Speaker D: It's all right.
[03:02:29] Speaker C: That's why, you know, when they published the scores for the PBE, this on 98, the Jonas's tree, I think it was like second.
Second place to winning the medium category. Okay. I would say that just Joking. But if he had gotten the olive from Caesar, it might have.
But this. But I mean, jokes aside, this is great competition. I. I love it. I love it. I mean, I, I swore I. I thought this tree was going to win.
[03:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[03:03:03] Speaker C: When I saw it in the display, I thought I was going to win.
[03:03:06] Speaker A: So the refinement and the needle length looks so good to me on Jonas's tree.
[03:03:12] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[03:03:17] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[03:03:17] Speaker C: Think.
[03:03:21] Speaker A: Eric, do you have one you want to talk about?
[03:03:25] Speaker B: Sure. I, you know, I'm going to pick the one. Bill Valanis's tree on page 59 opposite the.
The best in show award. Because there's just something. So I'm growing a few kime. And apparently he was the person who introduced them into the United States.
It's a strange maple variety that I have. I mean, the leaves get super tiny. They come out in these really weird, dense clusters.
And then I don't even know how to ramify it, to be honest with you. But the thing about this tree that really stands out for me is just that it just has this sort of wild kind of character and very old feeling. And even though there's quite a few sort of technical imperfections, it has a really interesting overall age and feeling to it that I feel like it's just kind of a product of that time and training. I think he's been working on this for, you know. Well, it says right there.
[03:04:33] Speaker C: Yes. 40 years.
That's.
[03:04:36] Speaker A: That's rad.
[03:04:37] Speaker B: I mean, that's just crazy.
[03:04:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[03:04:41] Speaker A: Oh, I was very impressed with this tree. I love this tree. I. I don't know. Yeah. Something about it, it just looks like so funky, but in a. In the best way possible.
It almost like a. Like a creepy forest, which is funny for a maple, but it's just. It's really beautiful. Nice. Nabarion it.
I like the different trunk heights on it and I think it's really cool tree.
[03:05:16] Speaker D: Yeah, it looks super gnarly, for sure.
[03:05:24] Speaker A: It's crazy that he introduced this variety to the. To the States in 1971. That's crazy.
Six trees over 40 years old, grown from cutting. Wow, that's so cool.
[03:05:38] Speaker C: Which.
[03:05:38] Speaker D: That's the coolest part. I think too that they were separate trees and now they're just all clipped up together because it's been so damn long.
[03:05:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah.
[03:05:50] Speaker A: So nice.
[03:05:50] Speaker C: So nice.
[03:05:55] Speaker A: Awesome.
Any other thoughts on this one?
[03:06:01] Speaker C: Let me get your guys opinion on 70 on page 70. What do you guys think of the stand?
I've heard some people talk about it recently.
I'm Just curious what your thoughts are.
[03:06:15] Speaker D: The stand. Look at that big ass piece of bark laying there.
[03:06:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a big chunk of deadwood as one of the legs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:06:27] Speaker A: So my opinion on this is that it's very cool and I like it, but it also, it's just a little too distracting for me. I think, like, I think that's one.
[03:06:42] Speaker D: I think that's one of those pieces you hang up on the wall. You feel me?
[03:06:47] Speaker A: For sure.
[03:06:48] Speaker D: Like, it kind of just kind of. Of kind of.
I don't know. You want to look at, you want to look at that piece of bark instead of going to. Straight up to look at the trunk of the tree. You know what I mean?
[03:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I like, I. I really like this. This tree is awesome. Ponderosa, that twisty, is very rare. I mean they're definitely, they're out there, but like it's a, it's a really cool trunk, really cool tree.
And I, I just feel like I'm kind of. My eyes get drawn down to this big chunk of deadwood down there, which is very cool. It's a cool piece of deadwood. I like the idea. I think it was. It's really cool, but at the same time I kind of just want to look at the tree. Like the trees enough.
And I think that that's just my personal opinion, though.
I don't know.
[03:07:37] Speaker C: Okay.
[03:07:38] Speaker B: You know, in the artisan's cup, the winning. The tree that won the. The main prize also had a really unusual stand and accent plant. And I think if the stand was like three legged, basically because the gin was projecting out forward over the rim of the pot so far and then kind of. It optically went down sort of in front. So if you actually took a picture, it almost looked like a lay a fourth leg on the. If I'm remembering it correctly, I could be mistaken. But there was then the accent plant, I feel like was some sort of rusty metal, almost like a horseshoe or something like that. So it was a very western, kind of western Americana kind of idea. And I feel like this is kind of in the same vein. You know, it has that sort of mountains and prairie kind of feeling from a traditional standpoint. I agree with you, Jeremiah, that the deadwood has a leg feels a little bit distracting. And maybe the repetition of the tree element in the stand, it still seems like it's possible and maybe the execution just needs to be a little bit different than what we see here.
[03:09:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I like that.
I mean, I, I definitely saw this and I, I just like The.
Just the thinking behind it of somebody trying to do something very different and very creative. And I hope people keep trying to do things like that. I mean, I agree with what you guys are saying. I think if the deadwood leg is. Was just a little smaller and wasn't, like, bigger than the. The tree trunk, it may be. May have toned down. It may have worked a little bit better. But. But I. I like that. That people are just trying these things out and kind of seeing how it goes and then, you know, hopefully improving on it and modifying. It's very, very different. Very cool.
[03:09:43] Speaker B: Replace the pegs in the middle with deadwood. Just five.
[03:09:48] Speaker C: Perfect. Oh, there you go.
[03:09:49] Speaker B: Oh, that's five perfectly straight pieces of gray deadwood.
[03:09:54] Speaker C: That'd be cool.
There's go. That's the next stand. That's the next stand right there.
[03:10:02] Speaker A: This is a really cool tree, though.
I mean, any tree with that amount of twist, you just have to give the tree props.
[03:10:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[03:10:14] Speaker A: Who collected this one?
[03:10:20] Speaker C: I don't know. He said they collected it. It says, I collected this tree in 2015.
[03:10:26] Speaker A: Oh, cool.
Right there. Right in the beginning.
[03:10:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah.
[03:10:30] Speaker A: It's a great. It's a really nice tree.
[03:10:36] Speaker D: We can see. Who reads outlines?
[03:10:44] Speaker A: Fantastic. I like it.
I don't know.
[03:10:48] Speaker C: Let's see that. What else is there there?
[03:10:50] Speaker A: Oh, you know.
Can we go to the Next page? Page 72, talk about the oak?
[03:10:58] Speaker C: Yes. Okay. Yeah.
[03:11:01] Speaker A: So Mike Pelo's Coast Live Oak won the Large Broadleaf Evergreen Award. I guess, personally, I really like this oak. If I knew he was selling it, I would snatch it up from.
I think what I really like about this oak, it feels like a oak in nature. I really like that.
But then I love that it's got nabari and it's got a trunk that just looks extremely old. Like, it's got really nice bark for an oak.
[03:11:40] Speaker D: And that.
[03:11:41] Speaker C: That.
[03:11:41] Speaker A: Like that. That's very hard to find. I've seen a lot of oaks, and even, like, big mature oaks sometimes barely have that going on.
A lot of times if you collect oaks that size, they're just gonna be that grayish, white, smooth bark, and they don't have bark that looks like that. So that I don't know if it's a genetic thing or if it's the age of the tree, but I love.
[03:12:05] Speaker C: The bark that's going on right there.
Yeah, I wondered about that when at this last rendezvous, I saw.
I was chatting with Garrett Sheppard, who collected this tree.
[03:12:16] Speaker D: Tree.
[03:12:17] Speaker C: And.
And, yeah, he. I mean, he mentioned the Bark. And it was unusual that it would have bark this thick. And he said he's only seen one other example where they were collected and it had bark like that. So I. I do wonder if it's some kind of a genetic thing. And that's just kind of a rare thing that we see because, I mean, I've seen some old live oaks that will have some bark on there, but just nothing ever quite like this is.
If you. Mike's going to. Mike's going to be.
He's going to regret selling it. Now.
[03:12:53] Speaker B: If you look on page 25, I think there's a really beautiful shot of the.
The tree. In fact, I had lobbied for that to be the COVID shot of the book, but.
[03:13:07] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I can see that.
[03:13:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[03:13:10] Speaker B: But we ultimately decided to go with something that was more similar to the.
To the first book.
But the interesting thing about this is it's like the. The accent plan is from the neighboring display, and then there's the display divider, but the shadow kind of ties the whole thing together. It's a really great shot.
[03:13:33] Speaker A: Shadow is epic bark.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I. I gotta think that it has a lot to do with genetics, getting bark that good.
I do. I. I would be curious, I would ask the collector what type of situation or environment was. Was the tree growing in when he collected. I. I want to know that. Like, was there something that kept this tree dwarf for a long time?
[03:14:00] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Good question. Yeah.
[03:14:06] Speaker A: But great oak. Very nice coast live oak, for sure.
[03:14:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:14:11] Speaker A: Also wonder, like, could it be a hybrid of a different type of oak? I mean, it looks like coast live oak to me, but I know that oaks hybridize with other types of oaks here.
[03:14:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
[03:14:34] Speaker D: That was probably one of my favorite trees on the show.
Just because oak screams Cali, too. You know what I mean?
[03:14:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it's definitely a cal. Yeah. Especially the evergreens. Right. It's very California thing.
[03:14:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[03:14:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:14:52] Speaker A: What. What kind of pots do you like, coast live oaks in. Do you guys, like.
[03:15:01] Speaker C: I. I tend to fall into, like, in Japan, for example. I don't always mean to reference Japan. It's just. It's not that it always has to be that way.
Broadleaf evergreens kind of fall into this kind of in the middle category when we're talking about should it be in like a. Of glaze or unglazed pot?
And at least in Japan, what they've decided to do is that if it's an evergreen or it's even a deciduous tree sometimes, but let's say it's evergreen that if you have something that's very powerful, they tend to go with a unglazed pot. And if it's a little softer, then they tend to go with a glazed pot.
And I think in the case here.
Oh, I. I do wish it was in a unglazed pot. Then it would kind of contrast everything.
[03:15:50] Speaker A: A little bit unglazed.
Cool.
[03:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of times, any kind of bigger oaks that I. I see, they. They seem to work out a little bit better in an unglazed pot.
[03:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
Very nice, Eric.
[03:16:10] Speaker B: You can kind of ride the, you know, the kind of middle ground where you have like a really earthy glaze or.
[03:16:17] Speaker C: I like that.
[03:16:18] Speaker B: Or an unglazed pot that has some sort of like my big old oak I have in a Japanese pot. But it has like a speckle to it. It's not just like a plain clay.
And I think those types of things work really well for broadleaf evergreen.
[03:16:38] Speaker A: Nice. For some reason, I think, because I look out in California at the rolling hills and often they're very dry and there's this kind of like golden wheat looking dry grass around.
And always thought that if you could play around with some like warm golden colors or warm cream colors, that could look nice for coast live oak potentially. But I also like unglazed. I think both could look good. Or maybe like a shiro Kochi, like a heavily patinaed white could look cool as well.
[03:17:16] Speaker D: Yeah, I think I agree with you too. I think I.
Or I don't know if I agree with Eric or a little bit of both. Some earthy type of tannish will look sick on that, especially like you said, because I live where there's oaks and around them is nothing but pure dry grass. It's just dry out here.
[03:17:40] Speaker A: I don't know if that's, you know, dead, dead grass is a good visual, beautiful reference or anything like that, but.
[03:17:48] Speaker C: Like, I don't know.
[03:17:51] Speaker A: Works for me.
This.
[03:17:53] Speaker D: I remember when I seen the street too. It's so sick because, I mean, you see in person, you see it more. It's got like.
It looks better, I guess, in person in terms of the movement on the tree. And I was like, I never seen an oak like so sick like that. Right. It has the movement. It's got a little bit of the nabari too, which I. I realize I seen obviously probably not as many oaks as you guys have, but the ones that I have don't have really like a. Like a nibari to them. Right. It's kind of more of a.
Of a bulge that they get.
So this tree is pretty sick all around, which is probably why it won, I would guess.
[03:18:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I would say it seems like we should at least talk about Michael Hagedorn's display on page 104.
Yeah, I think that's probably one of the most creative display.
Very different than everything else that was in the show.
[03:18:52] Speaker D: Yeah, I really. I actually really liked it. Liked it because, like, you said, it was super random. And then when I read what it means, it's like, even I. I like it even more. You feel? Because I kind of see.
Yeah, I see what it means now. You know what I mean? And then the tree is literally hanging off of the last part because that's just kind of floating that it's on. You know what I mean? Mean, like, that's pretty sick. It's a sick story that this thing is making.
[03:19:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:19:24] Speaker A: I have really appreciated when Michael Hagedorn experiments and just goes with whatever's in his mind. It seems to work out really well. His. His previous tree. His previous pine on a metal sculpture was really badass as well. Just like this one.
[03:19:43] Speaker B: One.
[03:19:43] Speaker A: I really like the rusty metal look. I think that that just goes really well. It feels very wabi sabi.
And then I think it's so cool that he just plants these trees on, like, nothing.
And it's just. You just see moss and tree. I think that is so cool.
[03:20:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I like the creativity behind it and.
And the story that goes with it, of course. And it just kind of puts it all together.
I do. You know, and something like this, just from a show perspective. Right. It's just so very different.
You know, this has. Because some people are going to look at this and they're just not going to like it. Right. Just because it's different or there's something about it that they dislike, and then some people love it. Right.
And this is definitely not. Not.
He's gonna do what he wants to do, what he wants to talk about. It's not about, you know, winning the prize or anything like that, because in this particular case, if people dislike it, it's not going to win. Right. Because there's so many judges involved.
I do wish, just looking at the overall display, and I've looked at this over over and over, I.
I kind of wish that it was the same design, just taller, so it just took up more of that space because everything was hovering real low.
[03:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[03:21:13] Speaker C: You know, I. I think that would just just Be so much more.
Really? Just kind of.
Yeah. Just utilizing the background, right? Yeah, yeah. Just utilizing that space that he has now. Yeah. If you don't consider that, then you just look at it for what it is, you know, the size that it. As it is and go from there. But it did. It seemed like it got a little lost because it was so low on the table.
[03:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[03:21:37] Speaker C: And so you're kind of looking down at it, which is tough.
[03:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Any tree, if you have to get down, it's just like not. It's. It's not the same as if it's at a nice height.
[03:21:48] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And it's not even that he even had to make it taller. Right. If the table itself was taller, it would have been great. Right. Because then it's. It just be easier to see in general.
[03:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess. I think it would be really cool if there was an avant garde award and people just voted on which tree. Like, like don't. You don't have to enter your tree into the avant garde category. It's just you pick kind of like best in show, like which tree gets the avant garde award and people like throw it in there. Like this would have won for me for sure.
And I think, I think this tree would have won that category.
I don't know if that's the right name for the award, but like just, you know, like a experimental type category.
[03:22:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. Yeah.
[03:22:40] Speaker A: This would be cool in that I.
[03:22:43] Speaker D: Would like to point out because this kind of takes me back to when I first started doing bonsai in terms of. Of how he did something very different. Right. It's like everything looks the same.
Stand.
Boring. Boring. And then there's this. And the reason I. I think about it is because when I first started, a friend of mine let me borrow this book, this dvd, if you ever heard of what that is.
I. I watched it.
I. I didn't know much about.
[03:23:11] Speaker C: Anyway, I was around when DVDs came out.
[03:23:18] Speaker D: And. Well, at the time I knew even less about like bonsai professionals in Japan. I still don't know much, but so the whole this, this was like a.
[03:23:26] Speaker C: Like a.
[03:23:27] Speaker D: Like an hour movie or whatever you want to call it. And it was on that. On the guy, I believe his name is, is Shinzi Suzuki, I think.
[03:23:35] Speaker C: Oh yeah? Yeah.
[03:23:37] Speaker D: And dude, when I saw that, I really. He became one of like my top or like my favorite bonsai artist. Not only because his trees are pretty sick, but that. That if I remember correctly, that that whole little movie was about him entering a Tree into.
I forgot one of the big shows.
[03:23:56] Speaker C: Out there and yeah, I think I've seen this one. I've seen that video. Yeah, yeah.
[03:24:00] Speaker D: Where he does like a journey also, like he's trying. He. He goes hiking to see this big ass tree or whatever.
[03:24:05] Speaker A: I've seen that one too.
[03:24:06] Speaker D: Yeah. And it's like I remember a specific, specific like scene or whatever where some dude comes up and I don't. It was the subtitles, obviously. So I don't know if it's. If I'm like, exactly right. But some dude comes. I don't know who he was, and. And Suzuki like shows him the tree that he's. He's gonna show. And the guy's like, well, you know, if you. If you show this tree, you're not gonna win. And he was basically like, bro, I don't give a. I'm trying to show this tree because it means like. Yeah, yeah, it means like this journey of mine or you know, because it means me. So this kind of reminds me of the same thing. Like he kind of don't care about being normal. He's trying to show something and kind of deliver on what he's feeling in a way. You know what I mean? So I don't know, I kind of reminded me of that because that was a pretty cool video that I saw and I became a big fan of him because I was like, bro, this guy's legit. You know, I mean, like, he's doing it because. Because kind of like how I said earlier, when you're doing trees not realizing their size categories, you're just doing it him for. For the love of it. Right?
[03:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I think if you told that to Michael Hagedorn, he would be stoked because Shinji Suzuki was his teacher. So he's.
You hit it right on the nail. Right on the head.
And for Eric, there are snow monkeys up there. So.
[03:25:27] Speaker C: That's right.
[03:25:28] Speaker B: I've actually seen the snow monkeys. Yeah, yeah.
[03:25:30] Speaker C: Oh, okay. Okay.
[03:25:33] Speaker A: Awesome.
[03:25:38] Speaker C: Yeah, Great, Great book. Great book. Yeah, yeah.
[03:25:42] Speaker D: The pictures are amazing.
[03:25:45] Speaker C: Just. Just a little side Note on page 92 on this short juniper.
Rick collected that from his front yard.
Wow. And turned that into a bones.
Yeah, that was growing in his front yard.
[03:26:01] Speaker A: Dude.
Why. Why isn't stuff like that growing in my front yard?
[03:26:06] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[03:26:08] Speaker B: Because you already dug all of it up.
[03:26:14] Speaker C: Isn't that crazy? That's so crazy. Something like that, really.
[03:26:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[03:26:18] Speaker C: Medium sized tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[03:26:21] Speaker A: This is giving me like kind of like tosho vibes. Like needle juniper kind of eva j features on it.
[03:26:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:26:31] Speaker A: Which is so cool. It kind of has a tree collected in the yard.
[03:26:38] Speaker C: That's rad.
[03:26:39] Speaker A: That's rad. Yeah.
[03:26:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:26:40] Speaker A: Very cool. Oh, you know, one tree, one of my personal favorites, I guess I'd be curious to get your thoughts on it is Todd Schlafer's Ponderosa.
I don't know what page that one's on, but let's see.
[03:26:57] Speaker C: I'm sure we can find it here.
[03:27:01] Speaker A: Oh, it is page 47.
[03:27:12] Speaker C: So.
[03:27:12] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. This tree just so impressive to me. I, I, I love Yamadori. And this just screams Yamadori to me. It's just got such incredible, interesting movement and it's, it's a very powerful tree in person.
I think the one kind of knock on the display that I've heard is just that it's not displayed high enough. And I think that there was, there was confusion regarding the height of the tables, which is totally makes a lot of sense. But I, I just love this tree. I think it's so powerful and stunning. I really like the pot as well. I think it's Tom Benda, right?
Yeah, Tom Benda.
[03:27:56] Speaker C: Yes.
[03:27:59] Speaker A: I think some people liked the tree from, from some different angles, which, you know, I could be cool to play around with, but I just thought this was just such a beautiful Ponderosa stuff. I was curious if you guys liked it as well.
That's my cat.
[03:28:22] Speaker C: The cat's comedy. The cat has something to say.
[03:28:26] Speaker A: I had to kick her out earlier.
[03:28:27] Speaker C: What? Oh, I see.
I, I think for this tree. Cuz. Yeah. Seeing the tree in person. Right. And looking at it in the photo, I mean, that tree is a big tree. It's 38 inches. There's a lot going on there.
I would say this is one of those trees where when we were talking about the juniper earlier about there's a lot of canopy. This one kind of has that same thing. But I do feel that unlike the juniper, where the trunk was fairly okay and not super spectacular, this guy seems to have a very spectacular trunk that's kind of hidden by a little too much foliage.
And, and so this might be an example of where I'd say, I wish there was a little bit more negative space so we can really see all of that. And maybe that's why other people like the different front, because maybe they could see more of the trunk from a different, from a different part. Yeah, yeah.
[03:29:23] Speaker D: The trunk is pretty sick on that.
[03:29:25] Speaker C: Yeah. And I see the.
Go ahead, Go ahead. Sorry.
Well, I mean, you can see the, the bottom part that's really twisted. And then it kind of gets lost in there, at least in a photo. Right. It's. I know it looks different in person also.
It just seems like there's a lot going on there that could be really, really seen and I just can't see any of it. So it just kind of gets lost in that foliage.
[03:29:51] Speaker D: Well, could it be too that maybe he. It's there on purpose in terms of that part of the trunk kind of seems maybe a little more straight than literally the rest of the tree tree, which is just crazy and going everywhere.
[03:30:04] Speaker C: That's a good point. That's a good point. Is there something maybe not that interesting there? It seems like there's a lot of stuff happening there from, at least from the part that's exposed. You think it would connect.
[03:30:19] Speaker A: One question I'd have for Todd about this tree is is he planning to bring the tree closer to the, the center line? And I, I, of course there's a root right there which would probably pres. Prevent from doing that. But I guess like over time is he planning to slowly reduce the left viewer's left hand side of the root ball and bring it closer to the center of the pot?
I'd be curious if what his plans.
[03:30:49] Speaker D: Are there from a more not so professional point of view. I actually like the fact that it's kind of hanging because it almost feels like it's going to fall.
[03:30:57] Speaker A: Right.
[03:30:57] Speaker D: It's like it's going to tip over to the right because like it's just barely there. It's like so huge falling off of the pot.
And why does everything have to be in the middle?
[03:31:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it doesn't have to be in.
[03:31:13] Speaker C: The middle for sure.
[03:31:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just, I'd like to know what Todd's thoughts are. I want to ask him that.
Yeah, I do think Tom Benda's work is really, really high quality for being a modern potter.
And I also. One thing I love to do with the Amadori is to play the game of how was this tree oriented when they collected it.
So I try to figure that out before, like when I just am looking at a tree tree, which Todd gives us the answer here. He says it was laying flat, but often the live vein is going to be what's flat against the rock because that's the part that's being protected, whereas the deadwood part is being exposed to all the elements and getting beat up all the time. But I like to try and guess like what was going on. How Was this tree oriented when it was in the wild? I just think that's a fun game to play.
[03:32:13] Speaker C: Play.
[03:32:16] Speaker A: Any thoughts on this one, Eric?
[03:32:20] Speaker B: I mean, it definitely has a really nice sort of wild feeling to it.
From a. From a Ponderosa standpoint. I would like to see a little bit more time put into the. Into the needle kind of length now.
[03:32:38] Speaker C: It's.
[03:32:39] Speaker B: It's not easy to get Ponderosa needles to get shorter, and. And climate plays a role in that. But tidying up the needles for a show like the PBE I think is something that should be a goal, because the long needles give sort of a chaotic feeling to it, and the trunk is very sinuous and has a lot of character. So if you can use the foliage to kind of. Of bring a little bit more order back to the composition, that allows it to. To contrast with the. With the trunk.
[03:33:31] Speaker A: Very nice.
Awesome. All right, well. Well, do we want to pick one more and then wrap it up?
[03:33:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[03:33:43] Speaker A: Eric's asleep on us already.
[03:33:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[03:33:47] Speaker D: One eye.
[03:33:47] Speaker C: He's got one eye open.
[03:33:49] Speaker D: My boy over here dreaming about monkeys right now.
[03:33:56] Speaker C: I. I feel that we should at least talk about your tree, Jeremiah.
[03:34:00] Speaker A: Yes, sir.
[03:34:03] Speaker C: What page is that on? 90. Page 90.
Because I like kind of the story behind your intentions and how you wanted to display thing. This. I mean, earlier we talked about people collecting trees, making the pots and the stands. I know you didn't do that for this, but you kind of came out with this kind of a California theme, right?
You know, native tree, American pop maker, American stand maker, even movie references, like movie Star wars references. You know, I thought that was really cool, kind of kind of piecing that all together.
And for those of you out there that didn't see on the accent, there is a little Ewok in there, if you can kind of see its head.
[03:34:52] Speaker B: I think it was, like, the 10th time I'd walked past this display before I saw the Ewok in person.
[03:34:58] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[03:34:59] Speaker A: That's good. Yeah, that's good. I didn't want it. I didn't want. I just wanted a little Easter egg in there, you know?
[03:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, Ewoks are good at hiding, too, so.
[03:35:08] Speaker A: That's true.
[03:35:10] Speaker C: Very true.
[03:35:14] Speaker A: Nice.
Yeah, I love Star Wars.
So huge Star wars geek. And I thought it would all. I thought it would be funny just to have a Ewok with redwoods, because in the movie, they were in the redwoods.
What's crazy about this tree is it's so much fuller now, and, you know, just since the time of the Expo. Like, I pinched it. I pinch it, like, every three to four weeks. Weeks, and it's just got way denser. I think it looks much better now than it did at the pbe.
Um, and, yeah, like, I'm looking at this photo, and I just pinched it two days ago, actually, and I think it's. It's looking good.
[03:36:03] Speaker C: Okay.
[03:36:04] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[03:36:06] Speaker C: Unfortunately, telling me about that, you have.
[03:36:09] Speaker B: To keep pinching for the next four years before you can put it in again.
[03:36:13] Speaker C: Yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
[03:36:20] Speaker A: What's funny about this tree, too, is just that it was, like, right in between the large and the XL category, which caused some confusion, but the tree just kept growing, and so it gained, like, an extra inch or something, and, like, it was technically, like, large when I submitted it, and then it got bumped into the XL when it was actually shown.
[03:36:43] Speaker C: Oh, I see. I say.
[03:36:46] Speaker A: Funny.
Some of my critique of my own work is just that I think that the colors that I used in the display stands are too similar.
I should have used a different jita, and I think. I think that would have been good. I do. Like, I think Austin did a really good job with the standard hand.
Really interesting design with it. And then I would like now to make me another pot.
I don't think he was too stoked on the pot. Like, I think it's cool. It's cool moco shape, but I think he wanted to put it in something else, so hopefully I can convince him to make me another one.
[03:37:27] Speaker C: Yeah, there we go. There we go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
[03:37:30] Speaker D: I like seeing this.
This tree, especially with the before picks.
So it definitely, definitely deserved an award because just, like, how we talked about or how Eric said that, like, Jeff with these trees, you know, he was working at him for years, Right? So it's not like it's time for one day to the next that he. He got him to this level. Same thing with yours. I mean, I've seen the pictures, and it's pretty insane how.
How ramified it is and how full it is now, where the branches are, where the pads are, to literally a big old stuck. Just a big old chunk of wood with a couple branches.
[03:38:10] Speaker B: You know, I think I remember when you bought it from Shyman.
[03:38:14] Speaker C: I think I.
[03:38:17] Speaker B: And I remember thinking to myself, God, that thing's really big.
[03:38:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
Heavy, heavy trade.
Yeah.
Yeah.
[03:38:27] Speaker A: I think you and Peter were there.
I don't know if you remember it, Peter, but it was just at a bid show.
[03:38:36] Speaker C: I was there when you bought it.
[03:38:38] Speaker A: Well, you know, at the show.
[03:38:41] Speaker C: Oh, oh, oh, okay.
I See? I see.
[03:38:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[03:38:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
Nice. Nice.
[03:38:47] Speaker A: Awesome.
Awesome, guys. Well, we are at three hours and 48 minutes.
[03:38:56] Speaker C: Oh, Jesus.
[03:38:58] Speaker A: Feel like it went by really fast for me personally, but that was a long time. I wasn't expecting it to go that long.
[03:39:06] Speaker D: And Eric, bro, he looks like he's five years later.
[03:39:10] Speaker C: He's done. It's done. That's right.
I mean, yeah. So much more to talk about.
So many more incredible trees in the book. I wish we were able to get to all of them. Right.
There's great things about every tree in the show.
So, yeah, hopefully to another Great show in 27. I look very much forward to that.
[03:39:34] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[03:39:35] Speaker D: Hell yeah. I think a lot of people are looking forward to the next Expo, whether you're submitting or not.
Hopefully for that one, Eric won't leave early.
[03:39:53] Speaker C: There's going to be some kind of monkey incorporation into the display.
That's going to be stuck with Eric for a while though.
[03:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And I just wanted to say on a. On a serious note to Eric, Eric, Jonas and Andrew, just a massive thank you for everything that you guys do. I think this show is incredibly important and you guys put in so much hard work and the bonsai community just owes you a massive, massive thank you.
So we really appreciate all the hard work that you're putting in. Thank you so, so much.
Can't thank you enough.
[03:40:31] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you, Eric.
[03:40:33] Speaker B: Yep.
[03:40:33] Speaker D: Eric, you already know.
Appreciate you, bro.
[03:40:40] Speaker A: Awesome.
Well, Eric, any closing thoughts you got?
Or Peter or Caesar?
[03:40:48] Speaker B: I don't know if people made it this far then I just want to say the 24 Expo books almost sold out, actually.
[03:40:59] Speaker C: Oh, very nice.
[03:41:01] Speaker B: So we might. We might end up having to do a second printing, but the first printing, there's only like 10 left or something.
[03:41:07] Speaker C: Dang. Oh, very nice, Very nice.
[03:41:11] Speaker D: Yeah, good thing I got mine pretty early.
[03:41:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[03:41:18] Speaker A: For sure. All right, cool. All right, well, hey, thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. And until next time, guys. Thank you so much.
[03:41:29] Speaker D: Thank you, Jeremiah.
[03:41:31] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.
[03:41:35] Speaker D: I won't sleep here.
