I borrowed this Vine maple photo from Crataegus Bonsai's portfolio. If you'd like to see and read the story of this remarkably strange and wonderful bonsai, here's your link.
I never miss Michael Hagedorn’s posts on Crataegus Bonsai. He’s always got something useful to say and he’s a natural story teller. For evidence you can check out his eminently readable book, Post-Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. There’s our last post too (Michael’s Spring Watering Tips).
Back in 2009 Michael put up two posts that were prompted by a heat wave out west. One is a very timely tip on spring watering and the other is a heat story from his time as a bonsai apprentice in Japan.
Here’s part of Michael’s apprentice heat story:
“Yesterday’s ‘HEAT’ post made me remember a story from Japan…
“My first year as an apprentice in Japan was a record setting heat wave. Temperatures reached into the low 100’s for weeks on end, and the humidity was wilting to those watering the trees…
“They covered the heat wave on the news at night. One week a young carpenter fell off a roof dead of heat exhaustion, and the following day my teacher, Shinji Suzuki, handed out sombrero type hats and white shirts and forbade us to die. We added to this towels soaked in water and wrapped them around our necks. Both Tachi, my sempai, and I made it through all right and so did our hundreds of trees. But we got little work done during the hot surges. Watering was nearly nonstop.
“One of the secondary effects of the extraordinary heat wave of 2004 was that we got 4 times the number of typhoons that summer and fall….”
For a the rest of this story and a wealth of tips on watering and everything else bonsai, visit Crataegus Bonsai.
A set up like this will come in handy if you live out west. Back here in the northeast, there are often long wet stretches were we barely have to uncoil ours. This image is from our Masters' Series Juniper book (due back in print in the late summer or early fall).
You can visit Stone Lantern for this watering wand and the rest of our watering products.