Well, clearly, intentions do not guarantee results... I certainly did not intend to leave you all hanging for the year, yet, here we are. I apologize for the silence; this blog was started as a way to keep our little community engaged, and I hope it served at least a small purpose in its short time. 

If there is an interest in its continuation, please voice it, and the club may be able to present the month's topic in a little more detail here, and allow for more work time at actual meetings. We'll see how our members wish to move forward, post COVID, with all the changes that brought.

For now, I look forward to seeing people and their trees (both having survived!) at the July meeting. As a reminder, Cornell is requiring all visitors, like us, to wear masks regardless of vaccine status, so please come prepared. 

Till then, tend on, my fellow artists; tend on!
This is Lydia Shea, signing off.

P.S.:  You might find this interesting; I did! I took these photos of a birch tree up in the Adirondacks last October. As you can see, it suffered some sort of wound... perhaps lightning, perhaps something else; either way, a big wound. I found it super interesting how this tree was going about healing, though. It's sending out roots from the top edge, but it looks like some eventually made contact with the bottom edge, and healed back in! Then they thickened, put on bark, and look like twigs laid across the gap. Really interesting! I'd never seen something like this before... thought I'd share :)

Welcome back to this broadcast of Quarantine Bonsai News with your host, Lydia Shea!

I apologize for neglecting my postings; my beloved Bonsai Assistant, feline Dauntless, passed away on the 4th, and while I could not have asked for a better send off for my twig-nibbling companion, what with all the fireworks, it did rip rather big holes in my sails, which I've been slowly working to mend. 

I hope that I was not alone in having a bonsai companion that also posed as a mild danger to the overall design, given a habit of rubbing past, nibbling on, and pawing at mini tree creations.  Purring and excessive cuteness apparently make the danger worth-while, our sources indicate.

But the world keeps turning, even with pandemics and personal losses; so here we are, smack in the middle of the growing season. And it's getting hot! Please keep an eye on your pots; they can get extremely hot in midday sun. We recommend placing trees somewhere where they can get midday shade and watering them heavily in the morning to keep them cool as long as possible. Be aware you may need to water again in the evening as the soil may get too dry over the course of a hot day, especially if the pots are shallow, like in the photos below. If you have any questions, please check out our Bonsai Info page or contact our officers.

While we are not sure how Ithaca and the surrounding area may be effected by the return of students to Cornell soon, we can be sure that, if fertilized once every two weeks or so, that our bonsai will keep growing. Please keep an eye on any wiring! It doesn't take all that long for it to start to grow into and damage the bark. Conifers have a better chance of healing over scarring with their shaggy bark, but more delicate species like maple never lose their unsightly wire scarring if it happens! Please check out our Bonsai Info page for wiring and removal of wiring information.

As always, stay safe, be well, and tend those trees! If nothing else, they are a great excuse to get some sunshine these days.

This has been Quarantine Bonsai News with Lydia Shea. 

Welcome back to Quarantine Bonsai News with your host, Lydia Shea! 

It's here, at last! The long awaited Member Virtual Show. We requested photos from those who were willing to share, and I am pleased to say that we have trees in every stage of development. Hopefully this will encourage and remind all of us that a tree can be beautiful before it gets an official bonsai pot. 

So, without further adieu: The Virtual Show! 

Welcome back to Quarantine Bonsai News; I'm your host, Lydia Shea.

Hopefully this broadcast finds most of you with your first mow of the lawn completed; since, as per New York usual, the grass will only explode in growth from here to September. This really is an astonishing feat, considering we have to douse our bonsai in fertilizer to achieve similar growth rates. Please note; do not actually douse your bonsai, this was a humorous exaggeration. Once a week or every two weeks is plenty, and make sure it is at the right dilution. Any questions about how your should be fertilizing your bonsai, please contact us!

Everyone's trees should be outside, preferably in an area where they can get some mid-day shade, to get the good sunshine they need. We also recommend that their human spend at least ten minutes in said sunshine for similar, if slightly less chlorophyll producing, benefits to physical and mental health. This may not be an issue if you find one of your trees already in need of a trim; I spent an hour the other evening pruning. Now, keep in mind that most young trees, recently repotted trees, or early design stage trees, need to just be allowed to grow to produce maximum trunk thickening, root system recovery, and budding, etc. Those trees can be pruned back to shape in winter dormancy. If, however, you find your tree to be like my Chinese Elm, it absolutely needs thinning out before the two to five new shoots in every trunk-meets-branch crotch cause bulbous growth. Mine are a forest planting that I do not really want more height on and instead wish to cultivate foliage density; so I pruned each branch back to 2-3 leaves, cleaned out all unwanted advantageous shoots off the trunk, and it finally looks like little trees again instead of a bush. Any questions about your own trees, again, feel free to contact us.

With our plants outside, do keep an eye on them for any pest issues, but also be aware that pest controlling insects and small spiders may take up residence on your tree, and are very beneficial. If your tree starts to look poorly, please do some research and/or contact us right away so we can act quickly to hopefully cure the issue before it's too late.

On another note, we would like to again extend our gratitude to all types of essential workers, and to those exercising the social distancing mandates. Hang in there, everyone. Stay safe and be well.

This has been Quarantine Bonsai News! Tune in next time for the latest great curve ball this year is pitching us! My guess is frog plague... but if they deal with the mosquitoes, then hey, we're good!

Lydia Shea, signing off!

Welcome back to Quarantine Bonsai News! I'm your host, Lydia Shea.

As I write, yet more snow drifts from the heavens. Yes, we must continue to shuffle trees from cover to rare sunshine and back as temps swing between 60 and 30. Keep up the diligent work! Sometime in the next few months we should get some sun for more than a day...

In other news, our first club zoom meeting kept the traditional etiquette rules, and politely held to the two primary subjects for conversation; the weather, and everybody's health. Hopefully our next zoom meeting on Tuesday, May 19th, at 7pm, will not only be better attended, but will also expand a little more into bonsai show & tell and/or question session. I'm sure we all would appreciate being able to see other's trees now that they aren't winter bare. 

Our club, though mixed in bonsai experience, now has more members with trees that are transitioning from early stages to more ramification and refinement phases. We would like to provide more info about this process so members can make the most of the early growing season. In our President, Brian's, words about it:  One of the big challenges in building bonsai, after the trunk and primary branches have reached the desired length and thickness (i.e., transitioned from the development phase to the refinement phase), is stimulating interior growth. Trees tend to rapidly put on new foliage at the tips of branches. Weak or dormant buds & other interior growth sometimes don’t thrive if the tips remain too strong. That is why we sometimes prune back to interior buds in late winter and very early spring. However, in mid- to late- spring other options emerge for many species: we manipulate the hormonal distribution by pinching or trimming strong foliage tips. Having opened up the interior to light and air flow is one prerequisite for success at stimulating interior growth, but suppressing terminal & apical dominance is another. In most trees, by mid-spring the hormone auxin has accumulated in the growing tips, preferentially spurring growth there. Many species respond well to pinching or trimming these tips before the growth gets too far. Examples are: removal of the central stems in newly opened Japanese maple buds; pinching strong candles of single-flush pine; pinching or trimming strong tips of several other elongating species such as yew, spruce, and fir; decandling the strong first flush of double-flush pines. Removal of the auxin in the tips prior to a tree having invested too much energy in those tips allows another hormone, cytokinin, to become dominant in the branch. Cytokinin then redirects growth energy to interior locations. For many deciduous species, the new growth at tips should be partially trimmed back only after it has “hardened off” in late spring, by then having “repaid” the energy deficit incurred by its own formation.

For more information about this pruning process, please check out our bonsai into page or get in touch with us (info on our contact page), or consult a recently (last 5-10 years) published bonsai book by an artist of repute.

Thank you for tuning in to Quarantine Bonsai News! We'll be back with more news right after we ship all our wasp spray to Washington State for the murder hornets...

Welcome to Quarantine Bonsai News; I'm your host, Lydia Shea!

After the dreaded 5th Winter, proceeded by Fool's Spring, and likely followed by Mud Season, we might actually be able to look forward to some sunlight here in the Finger Lakes! Our Trees are definitely pushing buds of all kinds, and the Cherry Blossom Season has hit Ithaca. We're looking forward to the growing season after all the shaping we did in dormancy and the repotting necessary for some trees. Once everything is fully leafed out we would like to remind members to begin their fertilizing regimen. Any questions, please check out our Bonsai Info page or contact John, Brian, or Peter for more information.

I hope members with additionally allotted bonsai time due to the quarantine will expand on their knowledge base with online research (especially in Bonsai Mirai's video archives, which are fantastic), and I will be posting every other week, roughly, to keep you up to date with seasonal care items. Our goal is to keep our society engaged and excited about some small part of this time of crisis, based on the info we gathered in the digital survey we conducted; thank you to everyone who chose to participate!

In other news, now is the time, if you are looking for new material, to call places like Cayuga Landscape and ask if they have any damaged trees or bushes they would be willing to discount. Sometimes trees deemed damaged or unsightly for perfect landscaping make great bonsai due to added character, like natural scarring or unusual lines of growth. I got a dwarf blueberry three years ago and it has the tiniest little white flowers blooming right now. Someday it will make a great shohin to go with a larger tree in formal display.

Well, that's all for now, folks! Stay safe! Wash your hands, wear your masks, don't litter your gloves, tend your trees, and we'll get through this! 

One more note of import; pets make zoom meetings better by 254.7%

This has been Quarantine Bonsai News with Lydia Shea. Have a great day!