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from the blog
A Limber Pine Goes On A Corian Slab
I collected this Limber Pine with Steve Varland and Dan Wiederrecht about a decade ago. It looked younger than the delicious, half-deadwood trees on the slopes nearby. Then a couple years ago bark started to peel in the front and—delight of delights—the whole front had died, leaving a swath of shari. Last week we potted […]
The Nebari Of The Kokufu
The Kokufu show is a goldmine. You can walk through it or flip through a show book and realize you’re just looking at the stands. Or the branch setting. Or the pots. In this year’s Kokufu I took some closeups of the nebari. Here’s a handful of them. Japanese Maple with a wide, fused nebari. […]
Japan 2026: Last Notes
A few final stories from my Japan trip. The first hour in Obuse was bittersweet. You might recognize this tree from a photo in Post-dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. Walking home after a long day I’d pat its trunk or raise my fist passing under it, and say some version of, you […]