Bonsai Journal Session 1 Episode #16

[00:00:00] Speaker A: To baby trees. Bonsai bandai. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Bansai time is the one thing you can't really make in bonsai, right? Banzai, the black pondo podcast. [00:00:19] Speaker A: So Bonsai's about is people having a good time and enjoying themselves. If it's not fun, it's not bonsai. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Bonsai. [00:00:25] Speaker A: Or bonsai. Bonsai, bonsai. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Bonsai. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Bonsai. That's my favorite subject. All right. Journal entry titled Larry White and the Valley of the Elders. So I got into bonsai, I want to say, about 2008. And at the time, I was really into researching bonsai online. And I was in all the bonsai forums and mostly just lurking and trying to learn as much as possible. And I remember I saw a post that I think John Kirby made about a guy named Peter T up in the San Jose area who just started teaching Bonsai and that he just recommended Peter T. As a good teacher. And I was looking for a bonsai teacher on the central coast, but I couldn't really find anyone that was interested in being a bonsai teacher for myself. And so I figured, hey, I'm gonna give this guy Peter T. A shot. And I will tell you what, that was the best decision. And I feel so lucky and fortunate to have stumbled across Peter because I think that was really, like, the best decision of my bonsai journey, was going to go and meet Peter and start learning from him. And so this was before Peter went to Japan. Peter was learning from Boone and started learning from Peter. It was fantastic. He's always been a great teacher. He's always been very detail oriented when it comes to Bonsai. And he is such a quick, quick learner. Like, he can just pick things up so fast. Things just make sense to Peter that don't make sense to the average person. He is so technical, and I really love working with him. So Peter was working with Boone at the time. Peter was learning from Boone before he went to Japan and studied at IGN Boneside nursery. And I remember that I was talking with Peter. We had started working together. And he told me that he was planning to go to Japan. And so I asked him who I should go study with while he was in Japan. And Peter recommended that I studied with his current teacher, who is Boone. So in 2009, the next year, I decided to go and take an intensive three day class with Boone. My first one, he lived up in Alameda, up in the Bay Area at the time. And I went there and I did a three day bonsai intensive. And I remember on my first bonsai intensive, the thing that really stood out to me and was like crystal clear. I remember thinking about it a whole lot on my drive home from the Bay Area to San Luis Obispo. I was thinking, or I really, it really struck home with me. I really realized that the best conifers are collected, generally speaking, at least within his yard. And there are some exceptions to this, but generally speaking, the best conifers are going to be collected, and the best deciduous or broadleaf evergreen trees are going to be slow grown or not necessarily slow grown, but grown over a very long amount of time from seed cutting or air layer or from just a very early, early age. And there are definitely exceptions to this, but I think generally, for the, for the most part, that is true. Like, I think that the best conifers in the world are probably collected and the best deciduous or broadleaf evergreen trees are generally not collected and they are grown from seed cutting in the air layer. Now, there are definitely exceptions to that. One that just comes to mind is there was this spruce that I for sure thought was collected that was in the national show. I pretty sure it was 2018. It was styled by Bjorn, I think. Steve. Steve, I'm sorry, I'm forgetting your last name. Steve O owned it. I could totally be wrong about that. I'm so sorry to the owner of that tree, but I know Bjorn styled this spruce and it really blew me away. Such a gorgeous, beautiful tree. But it was collected from someone's yard. And so I do think that when it comes to conifers, you can find or deciduous, I mean, you can find good material in the urban environment. But I think that like the, the ultra premium, like, best of the best material usually is not going to be grown. If it's a conifer, it's more likely collected. And then when it comes to deciduous broadleaf evergreen, it's going to be grown for a very long time from seed cutting our air layer. So that really hit home with me. And at the time, I decided to start some trees from seed cutting and air layer, some deciduous and broadleaf evergreen stuff. And then also I wanted to get into collecting. I think at the time, collecting appealed more to me because I could get some truly, I mean, in my mind, I could find world class trees and have them show ready in like four to ten years. So I was all about collecting after going to Boone's and Peter's and seeing their awesome Yamadori and just realizing that, you know, conifers are collected and you can go out and collect them in the mountains if you can get permission and find the right areas but I had no idea how to do all this. I just knew that I really wanted to get into collecting. Like, really, really wanted to get into collecting. I was so excited, so enthusiastic. I was like, I'm going to be such a good collector. But I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to collect or anything like that. I remember posting on the bonsai nut forums, and my post was something along the lines of, like, I would sacrifice my firstborn and cut off my arm or something like that, if someone would take me on a legitimate collecting trip up into the mountains. And of course, totally joking there. But that's how I felt kinda. I just really, really wanted to go collecting, had no idea how to start. And I do remember. So Eric Schrader, one of the organizers of the Pacific Bonsai Expo and owner of Bone Sci-Fi messaged me back then. He private messaged me, and he basically totally hooked me up and told me how to get permits in the White Mountains to collect Utah juniper, and still feel extremely fortunate and feel like I owe him a big time for giving me that information, teaching me that information. And that started my collecting journey with bonsai. So back then, I would drive, I think I had a little Mazda six, and I would drive up to the white mountains by myself and collect Utah junipers, stuff them in the back, and I would just go up there by myself. Didn't really know what I was doing exactly, but I collected a few little trees. Nothing like mind blowing, but some decent little trees. I've ended up selling all those Utah junipers since it wasn't a whole lot of them, but just started learning the collecting process. And at that time, there used to be a bonsai forum, and I can't remember the name of this forum right now. There was a bonsai forum, and the forum had a podcast. And on the podcast, the guy was based in San Jose. If anyone knows the name, please let me know. I can't remember, but he interviewed this guy named Larry White. And Larry White was a guy that was based in the greater San Jose area who was really into collecting bonsai. He had collected, I think, mostly Sierra Juniper, although he collected other trees as well, Oaks and boxwood and California junipers. But he had a decent amount of experience collecting Sierra juniper. And I know that he would go up into the mountains in a jeep with his buddy Doug, and they would four wheel it out on these dirt, rocky roads that only a few people could get back to. And I remember hearing stories of them camping under the stars and collecting Sierra junipers having campfire every night. They were into, like, cooking, and so they talked about building a pizza oven out of stones that they found along a river. And they had this awesome, awesome tasting pizza that they made in this rock stone oven under the stars while they were collecting Sierra junipers. And I just thought that was just the coolest thing. And, uh, just wanted so badly to go collecting Sierra junipers. Like, I would take that over anything almost. And so anyways, I. I decided to try and reach out to Larry white and just see if I could, I don't know, pick his brain or maybe go collecting with him. Um, and, uh, so I started messaging him. And at the same time, I was also trying to get permits to go collect Sierra junipers. And I was lucky enough that I figured it out, and I actually got some permits for a very small area where I could go collect Sierra Juniper up in the Sierra. And lucky enough, like Larry was, Larry messaged me back, I think we're emailing back and forth for a little while. And I told him, hey, like, I would love to go. I'd love to take you out and go collect Sierra Juniper. I have this spot that I got permits to. And we were talking about that trip, but then while we were talking about that trip, I forget what it was exactly. But for some reason, we couldn't go. I couldn't get the permits until the end of the year or something weird like that. And in the meantime, Larry was like, hey, you know, there's actually this area. It's way out in the desert, and. And I can actually get. Can get us onto that land and we could collect some. I think they're California junipers, but it's basically this area. It's way out in the desert. And there I remember these incredible ancient trees. I call this place the valley of the elders. So I was all gung ho about that. Had never collected a California juniper before, only the Utah junipers. And I was like, okay, let's go. So we started communicating back and forth through email, figuring out, okay, who's going to bring what? And we're just going to camp. We're going to take his truck and go out on these dirt roads. And I was all about it. So we drive out to Bakersfield. We meet up in Bakersfield. We had a sushi dinner. We talked about bonsai, which was great. And I got into his truck, and we got all loaded all our gear up into his truck, and we started driving out. And this was a already, really late. I remember being tired already when I got to Bakersfield, it was like 730 or so we ate. So we didn't hit the road again until got later. And by the time we started driving out into the desert. And interesting thing is, Larry is a very unique individual. And I feel like on the podcast, he was. He was somewhat professional. I would say, however, in person, I don't know if he just felt comfortable around me or what, but he was just not scared to be himself and absolutely love Larry White. But at the time, I was actually a little bit worried. So Larry is a very unique guy. He doesn't, he didn't have a cell phone back then. And he would navigate through this map book. So he had this map book which he would navigate through or navigate from, and it had all these areas in the desert, all these, like, back dirt roads, and he had all these notes written down. It was all duct taped together, and it had all this writing and this map book, it was kind of falling apart. And that's how he straight up navigated. So for many years, Larry's hobby was, he would call himself a desert rat. And his hobby was basically like driving around the desert and exploring, just finding cool things, looking at mines, old towns, and just anything interesting. It was really cool and different, something that I haven't experienced. And that was really cool to me and still is to this day. But he's just different, dude. He was really into exploring around the desert. And so he also is really into western movies. A lot of times he talks in movie quotes, which I think is awesome. Yeah, so Larry would talk in movie quotes, right? Like western movie quotes. He was really into western movies, and he listened to really different music and was just passionate about all these interesting things. Like the Salton Sea. He was very fascinated by the Salton Sea. And he would just tell me all these different facts about the Salton Sea and him exploring down there with his daughter, which I thought was really cool. But I was really tired that night. It was the first night that we really met, and I'm in this guy's truck that I had never met before. We're driving out into the desert. We're on these dirt roads, and we're, like, navigating under the starlight through this janky map book, which is just different. Right. And being tired. The combination of being tired, I think at a certain point, Larry was kind of like, oh, shoot, like, I'm not. His confidence was lowering slightly. I mean, like he was. Always knew he was going to get there, but we would go down one dirt road, and then we turn around, and that wouldn't be right. And it was just getting late. And I was, like, thinking about it, just, like, this thought in the back of my mind, like, man, I, like, gotten this guy's truck. I don't really know him. I'm looking back, there's, like, just a bunch of shovels and pry bars and camping gear. And I'm like, he's not gonna kill me, right? Also, Larry, super big, strong dude. This was me pre jiu jitsu, pre. I used to weigh, like, 30 more pounds, but not in a good way. And so, I don't know. He's just a big, strong, tough dude. And I was just kind of getting a little worried. Um, also just not confident and, like, that we would definitely find this spot. We were driving around for a long time. It was taking longer, I think, than we thought. I'm going to say it was, like, midnight. And we start driving up this hill, and I could see Larry was, like, getting excited, but I kind of was like, I don't know if this is it or not. And so we're driving up this hill, and eventually we get to the peak. I'm, like, just super tired. Start driving down into this valley. And as soon as we cross over the peak, you could start seeing all these gnarly, ancient, twisty junipers. Like, they were just massive trees. And we both were just so excited. And my anxiety about, like, not finding the place and, like, larry killing me just instantly went away. And I was like, all right. Like, we're good. Everything's gonna be good. And Larry and I got out of. Out of the truck, and we were just running around, looking at all these. These gnarly, ancient trees in the moonlight, super excited. And we. We found the valley of the elders. So ran away. Ran around. But it was really late. We were both really tired. We just camped out. I set up my tent, but he just went to sleep under the stars. And we woke up in, you know, right in the valley of the elders. And it was all good. So basically, there was just these big, gnarly, awesome trees. To this day, I don't actually know if they're California junipers or Utah junipers. And I don't really know exactly where we were, because we went out there, and it was super dark, and I wasn't trying to, like, be coming back to this area or anything like that. One of the problems with this area was that all the trees were massive. Like, you would need heavy machinery to collect them. And part of the deal that Larry had with the owner of the property was that we would not be using any type of heavy machinery. It was just like, shovels and what we could use, what we could use with our hands. So we weren't taking any big, massive trees home. I mean, not like, you know, heavy machinery type trees, but there were some just really cool trees. I don't know if they're California or Utah. They could be. Some of them could have been hybrid. What's interesting is we did collect a few trees from there, and I heard different things from different people. The foliage quality seemed finer than California junipers. And I heard from a lot of people, they thought they were Utah junipers, but they didn't also look like Utah junipers. So I really don't know if they're Utah or California. Not that it really matters to this day, though. Like, I remember I collected just a couple trees out there. I know I gave one to a friend named Greg, who's up in the Bay area as a gift for letting me stay at his house a bunch of times when I would go up and see boone for intensives. But Larry got a few nice trees. He got one that he called. I helped him collect this one. He called it big, sexy. And this tree was like, very big. I mean, relative to the other trees out there, it wasn't that big, but it was probably like four and a half feet tall and four and a half feet wide. And this tree was just a big, fat juniper, which had like, one massive live vein on the left hand side. And then just like a perfect blade of dead wood that came to almost like a sharp point. So it got like skinnier and skinnier as it went out. And it was 4ft wide or something like that. It did have some nice movement to it. It was a really cool tree. It was. It was big. So this tree, like, literally, we drove right up to the tree, we dug it out, took a while to dig out, and both of us had pick it up and push it into the back of his truck. So it was a definitely a large tree. But he, he got that one. And I remember he collected like a formal, upright tree. I guess I'm skipping the fact that I think that Larry is absolutely incredible, incredible person. And he really was like a teacher, mentor kind of guy for me. And he's just a very cool, very interesting guy. Still into boneside, but I think he sold a lot of his collection, which surprised me. And he had some really nice trees, some really, really great trees, but just a really interesting dude. So talking about Larry's personality, so he did custom glass work. He had a glass shop in the greater San Jose area. He was also into antique glass reproduction signs, which were absolutely gorgeous. Like, he would use gold leaf, and he would make these perfect antique reproduction signs. He was just, like, an all around artist, so he could draw. He could paint his whole. Like, his daughter could paint really badass pictures, too. Larry also was really into. He was into bonsai, which is great. And he built this miniature western town at his shop. He called it the town of machine. He had, like, a full on. What. What do you call this? Like a. A lookout. So it was like this wooden post. I'm doing a horrible job explaining this. But he had this, like, fort lookout thing that was, like, way up in the air. And he would cook people steaks, and then they'd go up there and they'd eat thick steaks up in this lookout fort thing, which I just think is hilarious and awesome. And he built this. It was like a three, four miniature size. So they were pretty big. Like, you could go into this town. There was the saloon and all these different buildings, and it was all western themed. And thinking about it now, I was just talking to Peter T. About Larry White because we're both friends with him. And Peter was like, yeah, there's this one time, the first time I met Larry White, he was telling me about collecting California junipers in. In some location. So we went out to go scout for some, and we didn't find any California junipers, but we did find this cow skeleton, right? And Larry's like, oh, I'd really like that for my town. And Peter was like, all right, like, throw it in the back of my car. Let's. Because they. They took Peter's car that time, and you can just throw it in the back of my car, this cow skeleton. And Larry was like, that was the day that I knew that. That we would be buds, when you let me throw my cow skeleton in the back of your car and take it home. So Peter and Larry, I know they're good friends as well, and just talking a little bit about Larry's, like, interesting and cool personality. I just absolutely love the guy. So I guess back to the valley of the elders. So we collected a few trees. I found trees with pretty good roots, and I would never collect anything that didn't have very good roots. But what impressed me about Larry was he collected a few trees, and this was big, sexy was one of those trees. And really, like, he didn't get that many roots. And I guess I'm somewhat hesitant to almost even talk about this, because, like, I don't want people to go out there and collect trees without a lot of roots. But Larry had done this many times, and he was very successful, like, one of the most successful people in collecting trees without that many roots and getting them to live. So I guess just touching on that a little bit. So, like, personally, I only wanted trees that had a lot of roots because I did not have very much experience, and I wanted to, like, put them in full sun, kind of my strategy is to put them in full sun right away, or, you know, just a limited amount of shade. And you can only do that if they have a really good root system. So I collected a few trees. That's kind of my strategy. Larry would do the same with trees that had a lot of roots, but with trees that didn't have a lot of roots. He had this very interesting mist house that he kept them in. And I remember it had a lattice top, and then it had, like, white plastic that surrounded everything. And then he had this misting system, or maybe it was a fogging system, where he had all the boxes, like, all the pumice that he had his trees growing in, that was all covered with wood, but high enough so that air and air could. And he air could penetrate the soil, and then, like, he could water them as needed. But essentially, like, he was keeping the mist water, the water that came out of the misters or the foggers, off of the soil and off the roots, so that the root system didn't stay too damp, but it did miss the foliage. And what was interesting about this is he had a very high success rate in getting these trees to live. However, the negative part was that it took a lot longer. When I collect a tree and I get it into full sun or almost full sun, I can, and I, like, start feeding it right away. And basically, like, they recover very quickly. Like, you start getting new growth very, very quickly, and within one year, you could repot or style the tree. Generally speaking, if I collect something with that way, it would be, like, two or three years before you would. You could work on it. So I definitely think, like, it's one option for trees that don't have a lot of roots, but I definitely do not recommend that. I don't like the idea of people going out and collecting trees without roots. I don't know if I should even be talking about this, but I don't know. I am. I have also heard of a guy in the Bay Area as well, who collects trees, and then or there's like a few people that do this, but they put a black bag over the trees, and they just essentially keep a very high level of humidity on the tree, on the foliage of the juniper to get them to survive. Now, I don't know the details at all with that way of doing it, and I, like, I definitely would not recommend it, but just talking about, like, some of the methods that I've seen personally, I mean, I will not collect a tree unless it has quite a few feeder roots, a good amount of roots. I could get a root ball. That's also why I like collecting up in the, up in the Sierra, where you're collecting on rock and you're basically getting a pocket of roots that's growing in some duff or in, like, a big crack of granite, and you can extract the entire root ball or biggest portion of it. You can get a lot more feeder roots that way as opposed to collecting, say, for example, like a Utah juniper or a California juniper, which are basically growing in dirt. And sometimes it can be hard to get a lot of roots that are close to the base of the tree. Of course, there's different techniques that you can use. Some of those trees layer themselves. California junipers definitely layer themselves naturally, and you want to go out after it rains when you're collecting California junipers. But I don't really think California junipers in general survive the collection process as much as Sierra junipers do. I think that you have a much higher success. You can be a much more successful collector of trees on rock that grow in rock pockets than you can trees that grow in, like, a desert type environment. In terms of success, rate of having them survive after you collect them, that's my thoughts. Someone could probably definitely prove me wrong, but that, that's kind of what I'm thinking about that. So anyways, yeah, I guess that is kind of my story, my main story, I guess, with Larry, we ended up becoming good friends, and there was probably, like, a good six years where we would probably go collecting, like, three times a year for two or three days, two or three nights. And mostly it was up in the Sierra. It ended up being up in the Sierra. And in the beginning, he would teach me how to collect. He really inspired me to get in shape, because back then, like, I was probably, like, I weighed like, 215. I'm probably, like, 175 now. And it was not like muscle. And I remember he could just. He's quite a bit older than me. Not quite a bit. I'm sorry, Larry, I don't know how old you are. Probably not listening to this, but just in case you are, I'm going to say he was like in his fifties, roughly right at the time that we were collecting, I'm gonna guess. And I was in my late twenties or early thirties, and he could outwork me without a question. I mean, he would be running up the hills. He always wanted to go up the hills. That was his strategy. And I would just be so tired after these trips. And I think part of this, like, really inspired me. Hey, I want to be able to get out there and, like, actually collect trees. And I mean, my thought, my philosophy is the more miles that you put in, once you found a good location, the better the trees that you're going to have. So I need to get my ass in shape. And I really did after that. But it took a long time, took a while. Like, I really like, part of what inspires me to get in shape and to be in shape and stay in shape is so that I can collect. I mean, definitely, I think health is wealth in general, and I want to live a healthy lifestyle. But it's nice. There's motivation for sure, like, in wanting to collect trees and be a good collector. I think you should be in shape to be a really good collector because it's tough. It's like a crossfit workout sometimes. I would say, like, you're carrying a bunch of heavy gear and you are hiking around mountains, not on a trail, going up and down, trying to find your way. It's like a treasure hunt with an element of crossfit mixed in there. Or it can be. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's really hard. Like the hardest physical thing I've ever done in my entire life was just carrying one giant tree on my back, probably like a quarter mile. But it was just like I had to, like, I was psyching myself out, psyching myself up. Like, I had to, like, talk to myself. I could barely, like, lift it. I could barely get it on the pack. Every step was hard. Couldn't find my way back perfectly. It was just insane. And by the time I got back to my car, I almost wanted to cry. It was just so. It was just such a hardcore experience. And I almost fell off of like, like a 60 foot cliff. But anyways, so, yeah, so anyways, we went out together. We collected for like six years, two to three times a year. And we had some incredible times. We would camp every time and Larry liked to cook. So a common meal that we had was chuli verde tacos or burritos with avocado, and he would make that. And we would just shoot the shit about bonsai over a campfire. We'd usually. We'd make dessert sometimes. Larry made really good cowboy coffee. He used, like, this percolator thing, which I don't know. I've never made coffee with a percolator before. But he made this really strong espresso roast in the mornings, and it would just get me pumped to go collecting every morning. And, yeah, we would just have a lot of fun just getting up into the mountains. This was all, like, pre kids for me. And we would just collect. Collect a lot of trees together. I know that he collected some really big ones. We collected this one together. We used a deer cart to get it down. So usually I'll tie the trees. We would tie the trees on the back of a metal frame hunting pack with a ledge on the back. This tree was too big to do that. So we use this deer cart, which is, like, used for hunting as well. But essentially, it's. It's, like, almost like a stretcher kind of thing that goes down in the middle portion, and there's two off road wheels on there. So you kind of, like, wheel it along when you can wheel it. But we would pick it up when we had to cross over something, or the terrain was just too rocky or unstable and massive, massive tree. And I think there's a guy in the bay area named Cholo that bought that tree and a bunch of other trees from Larry. So I know Larry closed up his. He sold his business off, I believe, and retired, which is awesome for him. And I'm not exactly sure where he is living these days. I know he was up in the Sierra for a while, and then he was, like, out in the desert somewhere, but just a truly phenomenal person. Incredible, incredible guy. Haven't caught up with him for a long time. I hope I can soon. Was just thinking about him the other day. Peter and I were talking about just stories and adventures with Larry. Such a fun dude. I love when people are just passionate about things. One quote that Larry would always say is, if you're gonna do something, you're gonna invest your time into something, you might as well do it to the extreme. And that was kind of, like, his motto and something that I feel like he lives by. And I always enjoyed that. He was so passionate about the things that he got into, whether that was building a western town, working on, or collecting bonsai or I. Antique glass reproduction signs. It was just really cool to see him get so into those things be so passionate. And I love hanging out with passionate people. Like, doesn't matter what they're into, really. If they're like super passionate and they geek out about things, I am very interested in learning about what they're interested in about. So anyways, it was a unique friendship and unfortunately just kind of like, fell out of contact with him. And after that, after Larry, for a while, I was collecting with another friend, Matt Walker, for several years, and that was a whole nother set of stories. But wish Larry all the best, hope he's doing good, and I hope that I can reach out to him soon. I haven't seen him for a long time, but just such a cool dude and some really fun adventures. Great trips up into the mountains to collect trees. [00:39:09] Speaker B: First thing I wanted to talk about is a question that I've got, which is basically just why did you go with the name the Black Pondo podcast? So, Black Pondo, do you know what that means? Black condo stands for a ponderosa pine trunk, which has been grafted over with japanese black pine foliage. And I think that combo is just the coolest combo. Right? It's like a hybrid effusion of western, western bonsai and japanese bonsai. And I think that is something that is beautiful. So ponderosa pine are my favorite pine bones, pine species for bonsai. Absolutely love ponderosa pine. I love the rugged trunks. I love the twist, the curve, the crazy movement. I feel like you just get the best movement. Deadwood on Ponderosa pine. And I think my ultimate favorite bonsai, what I would look for in a ponderosa, like the perfect ponderosa pine, it's going to be both. An alpha male bonsai, thick, thick bark, thick base, rugged, awesome deadwood, great twist. But it's also going to have an element of elegance. And I think it's hard to find those two things. I mean, that's also almost also like a, like a hybrid type thing, right? It's easy to find bonsai that are rugged, rough, thick, alpha, and it's easy to find elegant, thin, more feminine type trees. It's hard to find one that has both of those things combined. But when you do see something like that, I think it's just truly phenomenal and a real standout. So, yes, I love black pine on ponderosa. I also love ponderosa with its own native needles. They are quite large. I think a lot of people don't necessarily absolutely love ponderosa because of the needle length. However, I think it's good and we have techniques where we can reduce them. I do think it would be awesome if someone out there would experiment with grafting dwarf ponderosa onto our native ponderosa trunks. There's a place called conifer Kingdom online, and they have several different varieties of dwarf ponderosa that you can buy. If anyone does that, please let me know about it. I absolutely would love to hear how. [00:41:58] Speaker A: It goes for you. [00:41:59] Speaker B: Got that idea from Juan Andrade when I was at ITN in 2015. Shout out to Juan the Juan and only. Anyways, so black pine. You would have to graft black pine or some other variety onto a Ponderosa trunk in order for it to survive long term within California. Or not all of California, but where I live at least, or like Socal for sure. Nor cal kind of depends on where you are. If you get enough of a dormant period, then Ponderosa should do well. At least that is the theory, where if you graft it over with black pine, then the pine trunk takes on the foliage characteristic of not necessarily needing a dormant period and those chill hours during winter. And it should do well in southern California or throughout other parts of California. Personally, I love the look of japanese black pine grafted onto most Ponderosa trunks. I think you could also go with red pine. That would be cool. But anyways, getting back to the. Answering the naming of the podcast. So the Black Pondo podcast, right? I love black pine. I love Ponderosa. I think that the, the hybrid, the fusion between the two of them is really cool. It's like an east meets west kind of thing, right? Personally, I'm kind of. My ethnic background is east meets west. I am half asian, half caucasian, and I like thinking about mixing the two aesthetics. So the traditional japanese aesthetic as well as the western aesthetic. And I'll get into that more here in a sec. But also black pondo, I like the idea of, like, the black sheep of the family, the dark horse, and black pondo kind of, like, reminded me of that for some reason. I don't know why exactly. So I thought that that was kind of cool. I thought that the name just sounded kind of cool. I would say is that I don't necessarily didn't want to pick a name where everyone would know exactly what it is or even know that it's a bonsai podcast. Like, right off the back. Like, I like the idea of, like, the hardcores. I like the idea of making this podcast for the hardcores. I don't necessarily want to cater to, like, new individuals within bonsai, which I think other people absolutely should. And there should be resources for. For new people into bonsai. And that's not. I'm not trying to say that, like, I don't want to have information for new people within bonsai at all. I just think that the reason I would like to have a podcast is because I really want to make it about what I am truly interested in. Where my. Where does my passion lie? I want to interview the people that. That truly make me very curious about things and find out information from them as opposed to, you know, maybe doing shows about like, beginner type topics or just like, I don't know, other topics. Hope that makes sense. Basically, I. Basically, I'm just. With this podcast, I'm catering it towards whatever genuinely lights my passion on fire and gets me excited about bonsai. I think if I do that, it will be more authentic, and hopefully other people will like that as well. But that's kind of just the direction that I'm going to go with. So. Didn't necessarily want the name to be something that everyone would know. I think the Black Pondo podcast sounded kind of cool. Love black Pine and Ponderosa. I guess I called it the Black Pondo podcast. Kind of silly, but in California, I feel like people use the before giving freeways, which I think is really funny. So, for example, like, if I gave someone directions, I would say, oh, yeah, take the 101 down to the 405, whereas people in other parts of the country, they may not say that. And so, yeah, kind of a California specific thing. This podcast is going to be based out of California. I'm recording it from San Luis Obispo county right now. And yes, I don't know California. California isms funny things. So I love the idea of a fusion or a hybrid, like a japanese black pine grafted onto ponderosa. That's very east meets west to me. Right. It's like a fusion or a hybrid. For some reason, in my mind, I have american bonsai kind of divided into like three categories. Think about it a lot like this. I don't know if other people do, but I just wanted to rant and rave about it a little bit. So the three categories are traditional japanese aesthetic, american or western aesthetic, and then a hybrid of the two. So, first off, talking about bonsai that I would categorize as more traditional japanese. [00:47:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:52] Speaker B: So what I'm talking about there is the bonsai that you would find within a japanese professionals nursery in Japan or maybe at the kokufu. I'm talking about bonsai containers that you would see in the kokufu. I'm talking about the traditional species and varieties of trees that you would see, in the kokufu. So that's kind of like the traditional japanese category, right? Then we have our american or western category, and in that category, that includes our native varieties, our american or western potters, american styles or western styles based off how our trees are growing in the native environment. Then you kind of have a hybrid of the two, so you can mix those two different aesthetics. And I think that that's kind of what we do in american bonsai right now. So I think most people are kind of mixing the two, right. And some people lean further into the traditional model, and then some people lean further into the american or western type aesthetic. So let's say, for example, like, you are going to design a composition for the Pacific bonsai expo, what? You know, tree stand, pot, accent, companion plan. Are you going to go with. And are you going to go with 50 50 hybrid, or are you going to go. Are you going to lean 100% traditional? Are you going to lean 100% american or western? I feel like most people go with a hybrid of the two. I think it's fun to think about what percentage is more japanese and traditional and what is more american or western. So, for example, let's say you had an itoagawa juniper in a chinese teak pot. You had that tree on a David middle stand, and you had a pyrocia accent. So I would consider that quite traditional japanese, whereas the stand maker is american. However, David Niddle stands look quite a bit more traditional. Beautiful, incredible stands, by the way, but more traditional. So I would say that, like, I would consider that something like 90% traditional and, like, 10% more american modern. Whereas, let's say if you went with, like, an Itogawa foliage grafted onto Rocky mountain juniper trunk in a now tokatake pot with an Austin Heitzman stand, and let's say maybe you went with a grass that grows natively near Rocky Mountain juniper. This is kind of a weird. A weird composition. But if you went with that, would that maybe be, like, 60% american, 40% more traditional? I don't know. I'm not saying that, like, there's a perfect percentage. How do you quantify something like that exactly and precisely? I don't know if you can. I don't think you really can say it's like, 60 40, but you could kind of make an estimate there, right. And is that valuable or useful? I don't really know, but, like, I think about it all the time. I don't know. Do you? Do you think about that? I'm not really sure I think about in a garden, for example, like, if you. If, let's say, money wasn't a factor, money was not a limiting factor. You had all the money in the world, and you were going to make the perfect bonsai garden for yourself, would you create a garden that was a hybrid of traditional japanese and american bonsai? Or would you possibly create different sections within the garden and try and keep those sections more traditional? So maybe you have one section of your garden that's traditional japanese, one section that is more like american western, and then another section that is a hybrid of the two. I like to think about that. In some ways, I feel like separating the different aesthetics is almost easier in some ways than creating a really good hybrid that works really nicely. Like, if you had all California native plants in one section of your garden, and you kept the original native foliage, and then you used native accent plants as landscaping plants or trees in the. In the garden, I think that could look really nice together, right? Whereas if you had another section and it was all traditional, and when I say traditional, I'm saying, like, modern japanese professional type bonsai. So you had your shimpaku, junipers, maybe korean hornbeams, chinese quince, and you had more traditional tokoname or chinese antique pots in that section. If you had those separated out, or if you combine them together, which one would look better? So I guess a big point that I want to make here is that in some capacity, we are all creating a hybrid of american bonsai or western bonsai, as well as Japanese. What we've learned from Japan, and we're all using different percentages of what we like better. Now, if that is important or not, I don't really know. In fact, maybe it's really not important, and maybe it's really just about making the coolest trees that appeal to our, or to what we like, to what we prefer. And that's really what's most important. That is what's most important. So characterizing and dividing these things up into these groups, maybe it does not matter at all. But it is. It's definitely something that I like to think about when we're creating compositions or designing a garden, or thinking about what pot to put your tree into. I like to think about, am I going more traditional, or am I going more of a hybrid? Or am I going with a modern american Japanese? Or, excuse me, modern american aesthetic gets me into a whole nother section, which is like, what even is a modern american bonsai aesthetic? I think we're still figuring that out. But certain individuals within the United States are doing a very good job in figuring that out. All of this is a lot of great fun and just something fun to think about and go from there. One thing I do think about when I am pondering putting these things into categories is it kind of relates to food. For me, for example, like, okay, with food, you could have mexican food. You can have japanese food. I have seen where they blend the two together and they go, it's like japanese mexican fusion. And that's where you get your, like, black sesame ahi tuna tacos in a wonton taco wrapper or something crazy like that. And I think it's the same question, like, does it make sense to combine those things or just keep them separate? I think it's almost harder to combine those things, but it could be worth all that extra effort. Like, it absolutely could be worth all that extra effort if the end result is something that is beautiful and unique. So I guess I'm curious. I guess one thing that I think is important to think about is, like, where do you lie within all of that? Like, do you prefer the traditional japanese aesthetic? The american aesthetic? Is there another aesthetic that you prefer and you like better? Am I missing something big? Probably am. But ultimately, where do you lie? Do you like to blend the two? If you do, do you like to lean more on one side than the other? What do you think works well when we're blending the two? Aesthetics. I don't even know if I say aesthetics. Right. If that's the right way to say that, I apologize if I'm saying that wrong. Someone's getting angry at me right now. Yeah. Talking about american bonsai. Right. So, like, I guess one thing that I'm curious about is, like, what is the goal with bonsai? What are we trying to make our trees look like? And I think ultimately, the answer to that question is, it's different for everybody. And you're just trying to make the coolest, badass trees. Coolest, most badass tree. You can make something that appeals to you. A lot of people say that with bonsai, we're trying to recreate what we see in the natural environment in miniature. And I would agree, definitely. I think that that is true. We are trying to do that in many ways. A lot of things that we do with our trees are to make them look like dwarf or miniaturized versions of what we see in the natural environment. But I also just think that there is an element of fiction when it comes to bonsai, and you can't deny that we are essentially playing God with bonsai, to some degree, like, we get to design, we get to pick exactly how we want every little detail, how we want our trees to be, what we want them to look like, what kind of container it's going to be in. We get to pick all of that, right? I think that we would be lying to ourselves if we didn't admit that there was just an element of fiction when it comes to Bonsai. Now, this makes me think about if I were writing a Sci-Fi book. I'm a huge Sci-Fi fan, by the way. If I were writing a Sci-Fi book, I think the best Sci-Fi books, they have a very interesting story, right? But if they get too far away from, like, what could actually happen in real life? Like, if they get too far away from the science, then they're less believable and maybe not as good. Whereas, like, the best Sci-Fi books or movies, I feel like the best Sci-Fi books or movies follow along with something that is close, somewhat close to reality and could actually happen and is close to science. Right. So I kind of feel like that's the same with bonsai. Like in Bonsai, yes, we are creating what we see in the natural environment in a miniature version, but there's definitely an element of fiction where we get to play around and do whatever we want. Ultimately, the goal is just make cool trees. Make what you think looks good, make what appeals to you. For me, not everything has to be exactly how it would be within the natural environment. And I do also think that some trees just don't look that cool in the natural environment. Like, we are looking at the rarities, the oddities, the, like, 1% of 1%, the twisted, contorted ponderosa pine, right. That's growing all crazy in the rock. Whereas a lot of ponderosas just grow ramrod straight, aren't that interesting, grow kind of like a Christmas tree. And we're not doing that within bonsai. We get to dictate exactly how we want to make these trees. And therefore, we would be denying ourselves if there wasn't. If we were saying that there's not actually an element of fiction within both sides.