How Limitation Can Spark: Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert
Keith Jarrett arrived in Koln, Germany to discover the grand piano he’d requested for his concert wasn’t there. By mistake, a baby grand sat on stage at the opera house, in a condition a lot worse than just out of tune. The pedals didn’t work. And it had poor bass and a tinny upper register. […]
Bonsai Integration
A couple weeks ago I posted about a Yellow Cedar, and got a few comments which said it wasn’t integrated. Which is a great critique. Because it isn’t. And I teach integration. Let’s use this Cedar as a sacrificial example, and compare it to others that are well-integrated. And then I’ll explain why I’ve not […]
An Important Distinction: ‘Decandling’ and ‘Breaking’ Pine Shoots
This is an edited post from 2016 on a topic I get asked a lot—deciding whether to break or decandle a pine. For starters, let’s define decandling and breaking— Breaking (or pinching) means taking part of the shoot off, usually with fingers, as the shoot is extending in early to mid-spring, and before the needles […]
A Yellow Cedar Gets Potted And Reset
This collected Yellow Cedar, Callitropsis nootkatensis, came from Vancouver Island, BC. We designed it six years ago, and in the following photo essay we transfer it from a box to a pot, and adjust the branches. Patch and Masaki removed the Yellow Cedar from the box and began exploring the root mass. We hoped it […]
A Brief Tutorial in Pinching Japanese Maples
This 20-year old Japanese Maple has never been pinched. Freely grown, a maple will have a coarse shoot structure, but this early period of no pinching develops the trunk and branches and roots. Pinching a maple when young stunts development. This Japanese Maple might be pinched this year. The branching is past tertiary and has […]
Repotting Situations, With Notes
This week, an assortment of puzzlers from this spring’s repots, with comments. A Japanese Beech with an unfortunate root system. Chunks of roots have died, identified by being black, unlike the living ones, which are light brown. Spraying with water helps see which is which. Then cut away the black areas until you see healthy […]
Suggested Books For Bonsai Enthusiasts
For those who can’t get enough words about trees, here are a selection of books you might enjoy. These books cover a wide arc of tree storytelling, from their lives in nature to how we interact with them. They are not about bonsai, but rather might illuminate why bonsai captivate us. Tree: A Life Story— […]
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 […]