A much needed moment of zen! More botanical portraits from Math Guy:
Pictures of bonsai taken at the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul this Fall.
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Send me more photos, jackals!
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
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rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
rikyrah
I miss Ozark🥺🥺
sab
Those bonzai are amazing.
In my yard (we just moved here this summer) the plan was we are old so no yardwork and hire a lawn service. Which we did. But the gardener in me cannot neglect the yard. So I bought daffodil bulbs. Now I need to plant them.
Moved inside to room with growlights the gifted mums and the not winter plants ( 2 meyer lemon, 1 boughanvilea. I dont even know how to spell the last plant but I love it. Reminds me of my childhood in Florida.)
The mums need dark cool not grow lights, so they will be moved soon.
Resident cats are interested. I have put up chickenwire so they cannot curiously nibble toxic plants.
I am not so good at retiring.
terben
In my more cynical moments, (and they come more frequently as I age) I think of bonsai as the floral equivalent of footbinding.
sab
@terben: Plantfood and water as needed, for years. Have you seen how plants outside grow in pavement cracks? Plant life is hard. If it isn’t then they eat you in the Fall.
Joey Maloney
I don’t have a photo of the actual plant but I ordered one of these for my niece on her birthday, in memory of a trip we took to Hawaii together some years ago. Hawaiian umbrella tree.
Don
Something most people don’t know about is a national treasure–the National Arboretum. They have a bonsai collection that is incredible. There are bonsai that have been loving cared for by multiple generations of gardeners, hundreds of years old. Imagine, every day spending hours tending a plant. Most people don’t know that bonsai are categorized by how many hands it takes to lift the shallow pots. Some require eight hands. They are enormous, with almost no roots. This is true love.
kalakal
Bonsai are really quite incredible, thanks for the pictures. Weather has been lovely here for the last week, the humidity has dropped. Garden is a complete wreck after Milton, lost 7 trees and so much debris everywhere
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning! I do too. I miss all the old timers from when I first started commenting here that we know passed on: Stuck, Schlemezial, MaryG, eg, greennotgreen, Steep, Ozark; and lots of people who just disappeared like Cornerstone, BellaQ, Mem, Imm. I can catch up to a few of them in other spaces, but the joint is far less like the friendly confines it used to be.
Gvg
@sab: I need to overwinter a few plants and my current felines like to eat greenery. I am planning on buying some garage sale bird cages for the plants. Big ones on Craigslist can be quite cheap and look nicer than my attempts with hardware cloth.
I am saving my stock plants of double impatiens so I can get an early start next spring. It’s always hard to find them, and now I have several colors, I want to keep them. For about 10 years they were out of fashion too. If I have to hang the plants high enough the cats can’t get them, I will have trouble too.
satby
Me too, as I’m frequently reminded by surprised customers stopping by the booth I help out at and supply bespoke soap to.
I still need to clear out a bed and move my potted roses to it, plus plant the (g_d help me) approximately 60 new bulbs of daffs, crocus, and some spider lillies; and decide on a place for a new rhododendron. We haven’t had a frost yet, and my tomatoes are still flowering and putting out tiny fruit, so I’m debating about bringing the most robust one indoors to keep it going. Edit: As gvg points out, somewhere cat proof.
Gvg
@kalakal: Sorry for the wreckage. It’s such a chore. The special hire waste crews came by Thursday and took about half my Helene debris. They are working the neighborhood in a double trailer with a claw and I live on a corner so they got the debris on one road. Rules about size and limits and bags have been lifted. You just get the stuff in piles to the edge of your property. People try to cut and stack but not everyone has the equipment. Poorer areas and rental areas that usually don’t have yard trash because landlords service them, are less cut up than nicer neighborhoods. The emergency pick up hires have the equipment so it doesn’t matter. I was there when they got mine, and realized that my nice shade trees were more of a problem. I should have put the piles more in the open, so they could drop down to pick up more easily. Will try to remember if there is a next time. May need to trim some of my trees.
satby
And apologies for neglecting to say first how beautiful your pictures of the bonsai are, Math Guy! My favorite is the Japanese maple.
J.
Love bonsai! And I am in awe of people who have the patience and skill to take care of them.
Gloria DryGarden
Esp #2.
we have a small bonsai area at Denver botanic gardens, plus two acquaintances do bonsai and sometimes show pictures. Such balance, and harmony. The way the artist/ pruner shows you, what they want you to see. It’s like very fine precise choreography, only for miniature trees.
Jeffg166
It doesn’t rain a lot in Philadelphia in September and October but this year it’s been exceptionally dry. Everything is dying from lack of water.
JPL
@rikyrah: Same! His pictures of ice flowers were so beautiful. I think he would really enjoy the pictures of the bonsai trees.
Ken
@terben: “Bonsai, the ancient Japanese art of plant torture.” — Harrison Chase, the villain of the Doctor Who episode “The Seeds of Doom”
I have an inadvertent bonsai, a jasmine plant that I’ve had for nearly thirty years. Every winter it gets “leggy” as it reaches for sun, so every spring I cut it back. The main stem is about an inch across and full of twists and knots. What I don’t have is the proper shape for the rest of the plant.
Kristine
Thank you for the lovely photos, Math Guy. Marveling at the proportions of some of the pots in relation to the trees.
Central Planning
We walked around the Montreal Botanical Gardens this summer and saw their Bonsai exhibit. Some of the trees there were over 100 years old, and one was 275 years old.
That blows my mind – the attention to detail and care, and to have the realization that what you are working on will span generations after you’re gone. That makes me appreciate it even more.
RaflW
We won’t be there to see it go in (we get back there next Sun or Mon) but our expansive rain garden & native beds project starts getting installed tomorrow. We’re getting rid of probably 400 sqft of unnecessary lawn, making our lakeshore more healthy, and controlling the runoff problems we’ve been having on our slope.
It’s exciting! In a couple years when it’s looking established, I want to offer a photo story to our Lake District news and maybe even tours of the property. The mostly Chicago area people who weekend at the lake all seem to just love vast expanses of lawn, but that’s bad for water quality!
We can demonstrate that you can have a fire pit, a nice space for lawn games, and still have shore buffers and native plantings that look good.
Miki
Math Guy: Love these pics!
When I saw your first picture before reading the caption I thought “Wow. This really reminds me of the bonsai at … Como Park Conservatory.” Heh.
I love that place.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
prostratedragon
Something for a sunny (or at least Sunday) morning: “The Ecstasy of Love,” H. Leslie Adams.
Math Guy
Thank you, Anne Laurie, for posting these and thank you fellow BJ readers for the acknowledgments. Glad I could brighten up the morning.
sab
satby:
I am going to text prior owner today. Unbelievably, I had the new kitties name reversed, so I was calling the sister by the brother’s name and vice versa. She must have thought I was nuts when I said Echo was huge. She isn’t, but Solomon is, largest cat I have ever seen, and so gentle.
They are both comfortable here. Echo ( sister) sleeps on a pillow next to mine every night, with the pitbull asleep at the foot of the same bed. Sometimes Dobby the Formerly Demon Cat sleeps beside her. Solomon still prefers the basement, but he comes up to yowl at me if he feels neglected. Mostly that means he wants more canned tuna.
We had a contractor (grown up best friend of my oldest stepson) here yesterday making a bid on some handiman stuff, and five cats hid under the beds in the upstairs guest room. One of them was Solly up from the basement. So he is comfortable with the other cats.
Solly likes my husband. Husband is miffed that he has never even seen all of Echo, only two eyes under a bed. He probably won’t see all of her until grown-men-screaming-at-tv season (football) ends.
My next project is to get cat photos to send to Anne Laurie.
Mousebumples
Good morning, everyone! Thanks for sharing the great photos, Math Guy.
We’re out and about this am before settling in for the Packer game around noon.
satby
@sab: nice work getting everyone acclimated so quickly. Maybe Dobby just needed a friend like Echo.
frosty
@Don: I knew about the Arboretum but not the bonsai. It’s in day trip distance, I’ll put it on the list.
frosty
@Jeffg166: We’re very dry to the west of you. It’s been two weeks since we had rain and the 10-day forecast is dry. Naturally, I finally had a lawn care company out for the first time in 20 years to aerate and overseed. It hasn’t rained since. I went out and bought two sprinklers this week. I’ve never watered my lawn before!!
sab
@satby: Dobby had a friend who died in 2021. Starscream was hyperthyroid and took his medicine like the good boy he pretended to be, then spit it out when I wasn’t looking. So he died. I still miss him. I found his pills all over the house much later.
JAM
Thanks for the bonsai pics, Math Guy.
@frosty: I need to water my lawn out back so I can start digging it up for a new bed, otherwise I will just make a dust bowl.