What’s Happening in Oakland, CA This Weekend?

The Pacific Bonsai Expo!

This week our Shore Pine display for the Expo—co-created by architect Erich Raudebaugh—reached final tweak stage: adjusting the tree, stand, and accent, building wooden boxes to go on John Eads truck, loading up trees for Andrew Robson’s sales table, and wondering how likely all the moving parts would align in Oakland at the same time.

Masaki and Carmen putting the final touches on our live-plant box. The non-plant box is to the right.

What is this wonky thing for? I will share its mystery soon in a post-Expo blog…

Leaving the truck loading details to far more skilled people (Carmen Leskoviansky, John, and Andrew), I skipped onto an Amtrak on Wednesday and fled south. I stepped off it an hour ago (Thursday morning), with the news the John / Andrew caravan is on time having passed the California border. I’ve been wandering the Berkeley campus all morning, for no other reason than I was a wee tot last time I was here. I was born in nearby Davis, where at age three I choked on a large pebble in a sandbox and nearly died. My family fled that year to Connecticut where, I assume they were told, there were no sandboxes.

None of that riveting personal history is as important as the Pacific Bonsai Expo, the show Jonas Dupuich (of Bonsai Tonight fame) and Eric Schrader (of Bonsaify fame) have put together. It’s something we’ve looked forward to all year, and now it’s here. 

Come find my table in the vendor area! This little tabletop banner marks the spot. I’ll be signing two stocking-stuffers: Bonsai Heresy: 56 Myths Exposed Using Science and Tradition, and Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk, and selling some offbeat merch. 

The Pacific Bonsai Expo is intended to perpetuate as a biennial west coast show, so if you can’t make it this year, hope to see you at the next one.