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SYSK Selects: How Bonsai Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to a Saturday Selects episode. Charles W.
0:05
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant here, and this is my week to pick,
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Speaker 1: and I'm going with how Bonsai Works. We love those
0:11
Speaker 1: little trees, we love the karate Kid, all those things
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Speaker 1: wrapped up make bonsai. May sixteen, two thousand sixteen is
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Speaker 1: when we first recorded this, and I think Josh and
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Speaker 1: I both promised to get into bondsai since then. Speaking
0:24
Speaker 1: for myself, I have not, but you never know. I
0:28
Speaker 1: did get tiny scissors from my nose here, so maybe
0:30
Speaker 1: I'll use those. Check it out right now, Welcome to
0:35
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, a production of my Heart Radios
0:38
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:46
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I've decided to
0:50
Speaker 1: talk about speed right now. Oh yeah, how's it going. Well?
0:57
Speaker 1: You know there are some weirdos that listened to us
0:58
Speaker 1: on double Speed. Well they just are like, hurry up
1:01
Speaker 1: and get to the point, you idiot. Yeah, because you know,
1:04
Speaker 1: busy lives. They can't listen to forty minutes of content straight.
1:08
Speaker 1: It always it's funny to somebody tweets to us or
1:11
Speaker 1: takes the time to write an email say like, I
1:14
Speaker 1: love your your podcast, but I'm really displeased with the
1:18
Speaker 1: tangents you go on. You seem to talk about a
1:20
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that's unrelated. Can you stop doing that?
1:23
Speaker 1: And um, I always think I don't think Sevy should
1:26
Speaker 1: notice for you, buddy, if you're if you're being driven
1:29
Speaker 1: crazy by that, then well yeah, like we would welcome
1:33
Speaker 1: you to stay. But the tangents are They're part of
1:36
Speaker 1: the fabric of the show at this point, there's the glue.
1:38
Speaker 1: Like it or not. I think the whole thing would
1:41
Speaker 1: be decidedly less enjoyable if we were just like vomiting. Yeah,
1:47
Speaker 1: just business like you know. Yeah, or maybe after eight
1:50
Speaker 1: fifty shows we should just completely change how we do it. Yeah,
1:53
Speaker 1: there you go. That's a great idea. Hey, before we
1:56
Speaker 1: get started, though, we do want to thank Sam for
2:00
Speaker 1: gypsums m lord. Oh yeah, yeah, thank you. Sam. We
2:04
Speaker 1: mentioned the unique Liqueur Chicago brand Liqueur on our PR
2:11
Speaker 1: show Live in Chicago because you tried it like before
2:14
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah, well, I've tried it a few times
2:17
Speaker 1: and it's, uh, it's you know, it's as John Hodgman said,
2:21
Speaker 1: it tastes like a pencil shavings and Heartbreak as his descriptor.
2:26
Speaker 1: But Sam heard is talking about Crown Brown Royal. It
2:30
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute. They talked about my lord
2:32
Speaker 1: and I didn't send him anything. Yeah, attention all of
2:35
Speaker 1: their distillers in America, you can get in on this too. Yeah.
2:40
Speaker 1: If the makers of Plymouth Gin or Leopold's Gin, or
2:44
Speaker 1: Knob Creek or Peppy Van Winkle St. George's, they're a
2:48
Speaker 1: great distillery out of San Francisco. Yeah, Peppy van Winkle. Wow,
2:51
Speaker 1: we that's the stuff that gets like hijacked and sold
2:55
Speaker 1: for like twenty dollars on the internet. Yeah. So I'm
2:58
Speaker 1: just throwing it out there. I'm picking it back up,
3:01
Speaker 1: bringing it back here, throwing it again. We're happy to
3:04
Speaker 1: drink your booze and talk about it at nauseam. Uh
3:08
Speaker 1: you know what else we're happy to talk about, big boy?
3:10
Speaker 1: What's that bonza? Yes, which you I don't know if
3:14
Speaker 1: I was saying it wrong, but right before we press record,
3:16
Speaker 1: you said it's not bonsai, it's bonsai, and I was like,
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Speaker 1: what's it's not bonsai? Z? Right? That means heads up?
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Speaker 1: Right right? Right? Bonsai? Or right? Uh? Is? It basically
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Speaker 1: means plant in tiny container. Yeah, those are the cute
3:35
Speaker 1: toy trees that Mr Miya made a plastic it depends
3:41
Speaker 1: target has some definitely have plastic ones. Yeah, if you
3:44
Speaker 1: search bonsa, it's one of the things that comes up immediately.
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Speaker 1: It's fake trees. I think it's called like nearly real
3:52
Speaker 1: for nearly natural something like that. And uh, it does
3:55
Speaker 1: not look nearly natural. It's like near beer. Do you
3:58
Speaker 1: ever heard people called non alcoholic beer near beer. I
4:02
Speaker 1: think it's kind of funny. I used to Um, I
4:05
Speaker 1: probably shuldn't tell this story. So with bonds I, um, chuck,
4:10
Speaker 1: we're talking, like you said, the little toy trees. And yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: there's plenty of fake bonds I out there, but they're
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Speaker 1: just kind of it's the same thing as fake flowers.
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Speaker 1: You know. Well it sort of flies in the face
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Speaker 1: of what's special about bonsai, which is that it's a
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Speaker 1: living work of art. Right it does. And a lot
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Speaker 1: of people are like, well, that's just a weird, freakish
4:27
Speaker 1: tree that you've been abusing for the last several decades.
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Speaker 1: Some people actually do criticize bonsai because it is Yeah,
4:33
Speaker 1: it's it's like docking a dog's tail or. Um, it's
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Speaker 1: nothing like, but depending on how you feel about plants,
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Speaker 1: it's it's the same thing. You're taking something that's natural
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Speaker 1: and literally bending it to your will. So there's an
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Speaker 1: anti pruning movement going on around the world. Maybe I
4:50
Speaker 1: don't know if I would go that far to say it,
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Speaker 1: but um, if you are invested in bonds I, if
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Speaker 1: you do appreciate bonds eye part of the whole point
4:57
Speaker 1: of bonds eye as you are taking your creating a
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Speaker 1: tableau that is a a living depiction of nature rather
5:08
Speaker 1: than a painting, you're creating a living version of basically
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Speaker 1: a painting. It's well sculpture, living sculpture. Yeah, yeah, that's
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Speaker 1: even better, Like you can make it out of sculpie clay.
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Speaker 1: You could, but then you've you've totally missed the point
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Speaker 1: of bonding side Well, they'd been fun too, but but
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Speaker 1: it's something different, right, absolutely, So, um, we're going to
5:28
Speaker 1: talk about how did how do bonds? I? I have
5:30
Speaker 1: to say, um is that a verb as well? It is?
5:34
Speaker 1: Now okay, we're gonna Jerry's is cracking up this episode.
5:38
Speaker 1: She's she's reading, Uh, what is the guy from Crack's name?
5:45
Speaker 1: Alfredy Newman's like kind of Oh yeah, he had like
5:47
Speaker 1: this blond yeah counterpart. Yeah, is that still around because
5:53
Speaker 1: they're sort of a different thing than they totally. Yeah. Yeah.
5:56
Speaker 1: There's this great story behind Cracked, Like Cracked was a
6:00
Speaker 1: round for you know, decades, and it just got left
6:03
Speaker 1: to languish. And I guess some fan came along and
6:06
Speaker 1: was like, hey, I noticed, like you're basically just waiting
6:08
Speaker 1: around for Crack to die. Can I have a stab
6:12
Speaker 1: at it? A crack at it? I specifically didn't say that,
6:15
Speaker 1: but yes, and um they're like whatever, kid, go ahead.
6:20
Speaker 1: And the guy basically resurrected crack Cracked in his basement,
6:24
Speaker 1: brought it back from the dead, and now it's like huge,
6:27
Speaker 1: sold for boatload of money. Oh yeah, good for them.
6:31
Speaker 1: I hope it went to that dude who resurrected it.
6:34
Speaker 1: That's great. Um, I don't remember how we got onto Cracked.
6:39
Speaker 1: Jerry was laughing. Oh she was reading Cracked. That's right. Um.
6:42
Speaker 1: So back to Bonds. I like I said, we're gonna
6:44
Speaker 1: talk about how two bonds I which like they said
6:47
Speaker 1: as a verb. Now, um, but let's talk about the
6:50
Speaker 1: history of it first. Yeah, Like, uh, like many things
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Speaker 1: in the world, and especially many things that you might
6:56
Speaker 1: associate with Japan. It started earlier in China before it
7:00
Speaker 1: made its way to Japan. And in China it was
7:02
Speaker 1: called well in Japan, did you already say what the
7:05
Speaker 1: what it literally means? I think you did. Yeah, it
7:07
Speaker 1: means plant in a tray, plant in a tray. In
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Speaker 1: China it was punsai, which means tray plant. Not too
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Speaker 1: far off. And if you go all the way back
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Speaker 1: to the Tang dynasty, um, they there is evidence, you know,
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Speaker 1: in tomb paintings that they have these little little prune
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Speaker 1: trees in shallow pots. Yeah, it's just like part of
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Speaker 1: the painting in the tomb. It's not like featured, it's
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Speaker 1: just part of it, kind of depicting regular life. They're like, okay, well,
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Speaker 1: at least by seven oh six um CE that there
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Speaker 1: were people doing bonzai in China. Ponies, right, Uh, it
7:45
Speaker 1: may go back even further than that. There's a legend
7:48
Speaker 1: that an emperor round about two oh six BC wanted
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Speaker 1: his entire empire China recreated a miniature in his backyard,
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Speaker 1: and um, they think they suspect that's possible that that
8:01
Speaker 1: may have given rise to pontai. That makes sense. You're
8:05
Speaker 1: like we gotta make tiny trees now because the emperor wants. Yeah. Yeah,
8:11
Speaker 1: but then either through trade or through gifts, exchanges of
8:15
Speaker 1: state departments and stuff like that. Right. Um, Japan does
8:20
Speaker 1: what it always did, and it got its handed on
8:23
Speaker 1: something and then took it to the nth degree and
8:25
Speaker 1: perfected and made it awesome. That's what Japan does. That's
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Speaker 1: what they do. Uh. There's an ancient Japanese scroll that
8:32
Speaker 1: I found, not literally in my backyard and you're adding
8:37
Speaker 1: u that I found on the internet. Uh. And it
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Speaker 1: says this is around the Kamakura period, which was totty
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Speaker 1: three um. And it says to appreciate and find pleasure
8:49
Speaker 1: and curiously curved potted trees is to love deformity, which
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Speaker 1: I thought was interesting. And the article I read said it,
8:56
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know whether it's positive or negative.
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Speaker 1: I think it means positive. Maybe the writer was passive aggressive.
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Speaker 1: I thought it was a pretty interesting quote though. Oh
9:05
Speaker 1: yeah for sure, because I mean, again, you're training trees
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Speaker 1: to to be little freaks of nature basically. Yeah. And um,
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Speaker 1: like a lot of other works of art at the time, Um,
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Speaker 1: it starts out with like monks and Buddhists, and then
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Speaker 1: eventually it becomes like part of the rich elite and
9:24
Speaker 1: then eventually works its way to the to the common folk. Right.
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Speaker 1: So by the I think the thirteenth fifteen, sixteenth century,
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Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was, it would become like
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Speaker 1: a pretty well established hobby in Japan. Um, I don't
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Speaker 1: I got the impression that wasn't necessarily thought of as
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Speaker 1: an art form until the West saw it for the
9:47
Speaker 1: first time. So in the seventeenth century, Japan was getting
9:50
Speaker 1: really tired of Westerners trying to convert them to Christianity
9:54
Speaker 1: and um basically exploiting them in unfair trade practices. So
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Speaker 1: they said, you know what Westerners, get out, We are
10:01
Speaker 1: isolating ourselves, were closing ourselves off the trade with the
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Speaker 1: West except for a few Dutch and Spaniards, and then
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Speaker 1: the Chinese did everybody else go away? And they stayed
10:10
Speaker 1: like that for a couple hundred years. And um, I
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Speaker 1: believe it was Millard Fillmore who sent Matthew Perry Chandler
10:18
Speaker 1: being over there with the squadron of navy freighters and
10:22
Speaker 1: huge cannons and guns, saying you're gonna trade with us.
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Speaker 1: He said, could you guys be any cooler. You have
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Speaker 1: all kinds of cool stuff. That's my chandler. So Japan
10:34
Speaker 1: opened up basically at the barrel of America's guns. Yeah,
10:37
Speaker 1: we should do a show on that. We've talked about
10:39
Speaker 1: it enough. It's really interesting the isolationist period, like what
10:43
Speaker 1: was what went on there? And then uh, a lot
10:47
Speaker 1: of bonds, a lot of goldfish tending. Remember Mr Burns
10:51
Speaker 1: was famous quote those sandal wearing goldfish tenders. I don't
10:57
Speaker 1: remember that. That's good though. But as far as coming
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Speaker 1: to the West, there are a couple of big fairs
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Speaker 1: where it kind of exploded, the Paris World Exhibition of
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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, in the London Exhibition of nineteen o nine,
11:11
Speaker 1: where you know, of course people in the West just
11:14
Speaker 1: probably flipped for it. Yeah, because it's so cool. Yeah,
11:17
Speaker 1: it is like, oh man, researching this, I I just
11:21
Speaker 1: every time I would come across a new term for
11:24
Speaker 1: like a style or something, I go look it up
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Speaker 1: and I end up spending half an hour just looking
11:28
Speaker 1: at Bond's eye pictures. You know, it's really engrossing. Yeah.
11:31
Speaker 1: I was gonna be like, all right, I'm doing this.
11:34
Speaker 1: I definitely, but I'm gonna wait for what old age,
11:38
Speaker 1: So like three or four years from now. Yeah, I
11:41
Speaker 1: think I'm going to get into it. Yeah, I think
11:44
Speaker 1: it's just for me. I've got too much going on
11:46
Speaker 1: right now to do. But it's going to be a
11:48
Speaker 1: great retirement past time for me. I could just I
11:53
Speaker 1: could see myself really like spending days and days. I
11:56
Speaker 1: can see it's caring for these little guys because I like,
11:59
Speaker 1: oh yeah, and I like, uh like tiny things and miniatures. Oh,
12:03
Speaker 1: you're gonna love Bond's eye. Yeah, like the little tiny
12:07
Speaker 1: Tabasco bottles that you get in room service and stuff
12:09
Speaker 1: like that. Plus you're crazy for it your doll houses
12:12
Speaker 1: that you've built on my doll houses. Yeah, I just
12:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think you read the doll Heinrich
12:19
Speaker 1: Gibson play. Yeah, sure, great. Um, all right, well, I
12:24
Speaker 1: guess we should talk about some of those styles and huh,
12:26
Speaker 1: well you want to take a break first, Yeah, let's
12:28
Speaker 1: do that. Okay, Okay, Josh, you mentioned styles, and I
12:53
Speaker 1: did the same thing you did, Buddy. I went and
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Speaker 1: looked at pictures and I put little marks next to
12:58
Speaker 1: my favorite ones, like your art to what I'm going
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Speaker 1: to try and emulate in the future. I'm very curious
13:03
Speaker 1: if if we're going to do the same one. Okay,
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Speaker 1: you start so upright choken and it's the most formal
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Speaker 1: traditional style where it is basically emulates a strong, healthy,
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Speaker 1: upright growing tree. Yeah. I love that we take this
13:20
Speaker 1: like ancient, amazing art form and the most formal style
13:22
Speaker 1: we go right, Yeah, but I agree, didn't delight me. Uh.
13:28
Speaker 1: And again, what you're doing is emulating nature, but you're
13:31
Speaker 1: doing it in miniature and part of bonsai um is
13:36
Speaker 1: using like tricks of the eye, forced perspective, that kind
13:39
Speaker 1: of stuff. And um, the upright the choken style UM
13:43
Speaker 1: does that by tapering the trunk so it's much wider
13:47
Speaker 1: at the bottom than it is that that's the top,
13:49
Speaker 1: to kind of give you the idea that you're looking
13:51
Speaker 1: up towards a very tall tree. Yeah, and we'll sprinkle
13:54
Speaker 1: in bits of the uh sort of philosophical art behind it.
13:58
Speaker 1: But the idea is you you sort of imagine a
14:03
Speaker 1: scene in your head and then you try and make
14:05
Speaker 1: it look like that. Maybe it's something from your past,
14:07
Speaker 1: maybe it's a great tree you saw one time on
14:10
Speaker 1: a vacation, but just something that makes you feel good. Um.
14:13
Speaker 1: You're usually not like, you know, let me just make
14:16
Speaker 1: some crazy, weird looking thing because you know I'm drunk, right,
14:20
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make the I'm gonna make that tree that
14:22
Speaker 1: was next to the place where my friend got hit
14:25
Speaker 1: and killed on his bike. No, it's all about harmony. Yes,
14:29
Speaker 1: that would be the opposite of Bond's eye. Yes, that's right.
14:32
Speaker 1: Uh So moving on to another style, which I did
14:35
Speaker 1: not put a check martin next to. But it's okay,
14:37
Speaker 1: um a yogi. I like this one. It's okay. It's
14:40
Speaker 1: a little like the choke on. Um it's the informal upright, Okay,
14:46
Speaker 1: so a little more style maybe. Yeah. So the choke
14:49
Speaker 1: on is very formal, very straight. Um, the mayogi is
14:53
Speaker 1: it's overall the shape is upright, but it can like
14:57
Speaker 1: bend and twist to get to that point. See what
15:00
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's neat. Yeah, I think it's neat. I
15:03
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind doing a moyogi at some point in the future,
15:05
Speaker 1: but it definitely won't be the first one I try.
15:07
Speaker 1: All right, it's it's down the list of it. Uh
15:10
Speaker 1: the slanting shakan or or fukanagashi. Fukagashi. Yeah, nice, it's
15:18
Speaker 1: that good. Um, these are pretty cool. I have to
15:20
Speaker 1: say that has the leaning trunk at a forty five
15:22
Speaker 1: degree angle and the branches follow the angle of the trunk. Yeah,
15:28
Speaker 1: they're they're parallel to it, right, yes, basically parallel essentially,
15:32
Speaker 1: so they're neat looking. Yeah, and that trunk is slanted, uh.
15:36
Speaker 1: In in reference to the the pot, the lip the
15:42
Speaker 1: lip of the pot, right, um? Right, yes, And we
15:47
Speaker 1: should say we haven't said it, so we're talking mostly
15:49
Speaker 1: about the trees and that's what gets the most attention.
15:52
Speaker 1: But um, classically and at its heart, bonsai is a
15:56
Speaker 1: it's a balance, it's a harmony between the plant and
15:58
Speaker 1: the pot. Like when you're talking about it bonsai, the
16:02
Speaker 1: pot is included in that, it's very part of the
16:05
Speaker 1: sculpture itself. Almost Yeah, agreed. Uh. And also with that
16:10
Speaker 1: slanting style. Um. Supposedly, even though I saw many examples
16:14
Speaker 1: to the contrary, the first branch is supposed to go
16:18
Speaker 1: opposite of the angle of the trunk for to provide balance. Right,
16:23
Speaker 1: I think that's in the shotgun style, it goes the opposite. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, alright, alright, chuck,
16:31
Speaker 1: next cascade pretty neat and you just lit up like
16:35
Speaker 1: a Christmas tree, it's yours. So the semi casscade, the
16:39
Speaker 1: han Ken guy is mine. That's the one I'm going
16:42
Speaker 1: to try first. All right, well, go ahead and describe
16:44
Speaker 1: it then. So basically, and you need a deeper pot.
16:46
Speaker 1: So most pots for um uh bonsai are shallow. Um
16:51
Speaker 1: this you need like a pretty deep pot forward because
16:54
Speaker 1: the plant is basically mostly overhanging. It's outside and hanging
17:00
Speaker 1: down from the pot. That's a full on cascade. And
17:03
Speaker 1: these are meant to really emulate like a tree that's
17:06
Speaker 1: just barely hanging on and like a rocky outcrop on
17:09
Speaker 1: a mountain. Interesting. And so the cascade is full on,
17:13
Speaker 1: like basically the whole plant has been below the lip
17:17
Speaker 1: of the pot. The semi cascade is where right where
17:23
Speaker 1: the there's a substantial amount of the plant is still
17:26
Speaker 1: in the pot, but it's growing over and down the
17:30
Speaker 1: side something that's right or really off to the side,
17:33
Speaker 1: wind swept. This semi cascade, I think is another term
17:37
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, now I'm trying to apply psychology to
17:39
Speaker 1: why that's your favorite. It's just just the look of it.
17:42
Speaker 1: Just aesthetically speaking, I think it's it's great. Next up,
17:46
Speaker 1: we have the literati or the bungen or bungeniing bunging guy. Yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: I think that's way better. Probably bujingi one of those.
18:02
Speaker 1: So I think I would ask my wife, sure, you know,
18:05
Speaker 1: we should just have you me in here with like
18:06
Speaker 1: a ruler smacking knuckles. Nope. Um. This is the one
18:12
Speaker 1: that's really uh, focuses on perspective. So the idea here
18:16
Speaker 1: here is that you're you're looking uh from below to
18:21
Speaker 1: a tree that is above, like if you're at the
18:23
Speaker 1: base of a mountain looking up. Okay, then you tailor
18:26
Speaker 1: the tree to make it look as if And we
18:28
Speaker 1: should also mention that you should look at eye level
18:31
Speaker 1: is traditionally where you're when you talk about perspective. You know,
18:35
Speaker 1: if you're standing four ft above it, right, that's different.
18:38
Speaker 1: You should look at bonsai eye level. Yeah, that's why
18:40
Speaker 1: they're so frequently displayed at eye level. That's right. And
18:43
Speaker 1: there's also it is probably worth mentioning here that there's
18:47
Speaker 1: a definite front and a definite back to a bond's eye.
18:51
Speaker 1: We'll get into that. Uh. This one is one of
18:55
Speaker 1: my favorites. Broom. Yes, we're at the broom. So this
18:57
Speaker 1: is this the one that you marked the hokey duchy yes, um,
19:01
Speaker 1: and you might look it up people and say, huh interesting.
19:05
Speaker 1: Not the most flashy tree. But there's something about it. Man.
19:09
Speaker 1: It has this like really full kind of half dome
19:14
Speaker 1: with a just a single trunk jutting up. Yeah, it's
19:17
Speaker 1: just beautiful to me. It's like it takes the shape
19:19
Speaker 1: of like an idealized like maple or oak tree. Yeah
19:23
Speaker 1: you know, it reminded me of a like a grand oak. Yeah.
19:26
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I wouldn't call you flashy. You've never been
19:29
Speaker 1: known to where like I d bracelets or pinky rings
19:31
Speaker 1: or I don't know what either one of those things are.
19:33
Speaker 1: You know what a pinky ring is? Nope, yes you do.
19:37
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. A pinky ring,
19:39
Speaker 1: a man's pinky ring. I don't know what a man is. Okay,
19:43
Speaker 1: well I'll tell you later. Uh So next up is
19:48
Speaker 1: my absolute favorite by far, the landscape. It's when you
19:54
Speaker 1: create your little miniature scene. It's like a shadow box,
19:59
Speaker 1: which I used to love doing those when I was
20:01
Speaker 1: a kid. My my oldest sister was into this, um
20:04
Speaker 1: years and years ago. Yeah, she would make more like
20:06
Speaker 1: English gardens kind of in miniature. I love that with
20:10
Speaker 1: like you know, with like those gazing balls, she would
20:12
Speaker 1: make like, well tiny one of those is the focal
20:14
Speaker 1: point of the place. And yeah, so this is when
20:17
Speaker 1: you have your little nature scene. You've got moss, you've
20:18
Speaker 1: got little rocks, you may even have a water feature.
20:21
Speaker 1: And it's just uh, I just ever, I don't know, man, ever,
20:24
Speaker 1: since I was a kid. I love little things like that.
20:26
Speaker 1: So is that the first one you're gonna try? Well,
20:29
Speaker 1: I think I'd probably have to work up to that. Okay, Um,
20:32
Speaker 1: you're not gonna just do water features right out of
20:35
Speaker 1: the game, you know, but I might have built my
20:37
Speaker 1: own fountain once. It's not that hard. You need to
20:39
Speaker 1: pump nice um. And this actually China is still into
20:44
Speaker 1: um yeah, into bonsai. But this is the stuff that
20:47
Speaker 1: they practice called pinging. Yeah, very landscape oriented. Yeah. I
20:51
Speaker 1: might even put a little like a camping scene, a
20:53
Speaker 1: little fire ring. Oh, that'd be great with some little
20:56
Speaker 1: little guys with their acoustic guitars. Right, and then Jason
20:59
Speaker 1: Vorhees is standing off to the side just watching them.
21:02
Speaker 1: Maybe um, root over or root on rock. This is
21:07
Speaker 1: the one I thought was going to be your favorite. Yeah,
21:10
Speaker 1: so what's the deal here? Um. You you could definitely
21:12
Speaker 1: combine this one with something like cascade or wind sweat. Yeah.
21:17
Speaker 1: It's where you train the roots of the um the
21:22
Speaker 1: tree to grow around or on top of a rock.
21:25
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, so it looks like it is really
21:27
Speaker 1: clinging to a mountain side. Yeah. And what they're trying
21:31
Speaker 1: to do in a lot of these cases is give
21:33
Speaker 1: the appearance of like an old tree something has been
21:37
Speaker 1: around for many years, um, When in fact it may
21:41
Speaker 1: be a tree that's like a year old, but it
21:42
Speaker 1: looks like some ancient oak or something. Yeah. And we'll
21:44
Speaker 1: talk about some of the techniques for doing that later,
21:46
Speaker 1: but that is largely the It seems like the initial
21:50
Speaker 1: point if you're you're trying to make it look like
21:53
Speaker 1: an old tree, or you're creating a tree that you
21:55
Speaker 1: intend to live for a few hundred years and get old,
21:59
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And the oldest one they have in
22:01
Speaker 1: DC like four years old. That's not even close. Yeah, Yeah,
22:06
Speaker 1: I mean that one's cool. You want to talk about that.
22:08
Speaker 1: So there's a white pine at the National Banzai and
22:11
Speaker 1: Penji Museum in d C. And it's almost four hundred
22:15
Speaker 1: years old. But also notably it survived a pretty big event,
22:21
Speaker 1: the bombing of Urashima, and then it was given as
22:25
Speaker 1: a gift from Japan to UM the US. Why I
22:30
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess they were like, you're don't ever
22:32
Speaker 1: do that again. Just take this thing to remind you,
22:35
Speaker 1: I think twice. So there are many many older ones,
22:38
Speaker 1: and that that was what you're saying. Yeah, there's one
22:40
Speaker 1: in uh Museum in Spain. It's a ficus. It's like
22:43
Speaker 1: a thousand years old. There's another one that's like a thousand.
22:47
Speaker 1: There's a couple that are eight hundred years old. And
22:49
Speaker 1: the ideas that many times these are passed within your family, correct, Yeah, yeah,
22:53
Speaker 1: very frequently, they'll be handed down as heirlooms, right, UM.
22:57
Speaker 1: Now some of the disparity between ages where they're like
23:00
Speaker 1: that one doesn't really count. It may have been like
23:03
Speaker 1: a thousand year old ficus that somebody found out in
23:05
Speaker 1: the wild and collected and has been bond eying for
23:08
Speaker 1: twenty years. So this one, I have the impression um
23:12
Speaker 1: has been bonds eyed and in the same family for
23:14
Speaker 1: like six or seven generations, so it's been like tended to.
23:18
Speaker 1: So it may have been kind of old when it
23:20
Speaker 1: was when it was collected, um, but it's been bonds
23:24
Speaker 1: eyed for hundreds of years. Amazing. All right. To finish
23:27
Speaker 1: up the last category, which I think is pretty cool,
23:31
Speaker 1: multiform or ikada or SoCon or cabudachi, and that is
23:38
Speaker 1: when you have the illusion that you have more than
23:40
Speaker 1: one tree, but it's really just one tree. Yeah, that's
23:43
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. So it looks like, you know, it's
23:46
Speaker 1: generally jutting out from the bottom obviously of the root
23:49
Speaker 1: structure up and it looks like a couple of trees. Yeah,
23:51
Speaker 1: but it's a single tree. Some people cheat and put
23:54
Speaker 1: several trees in there. But well you can do that, right,
23:57
Speaker 1: a little your own little forest, I guess. So it
24:00
Speaker 1: isn't that then, really the landscape the psychi maybe? I think,
24:04
Speaker 1: you know, what, are the bonsai police gonna come knocking
24:07
Speaker 1: on your door? You don't want to mess with those guys,
24:09
Speaker 1: No you don't, they'll ignore you. All right, Let's talk
24:15
Speaker 1: a little bit about what kind of plants you can use,
24:18
Speaker 1: because I did not know this. I thought there was
24:22
Speaker 1: a special kind of tree that everybody used to make
24:26
Speaker 1: a bonsai. Yeah, but in fact it's it could be
24:30
Speaker 1: a tree that out in the wild is tall. I
24:34
Speaker 1: had no idea. I thought they were little miniature trees.
24:36
Speaker 1: It just grew up to be like a foot tall. Yeah, no,
24:38
Speaker 1: a lot. Apparently that's like a common misconception. I saw
24:41
Speaker 1: that during research a couple of times. Um. The whole
24:44
Speaker 1: key is you are dwarfing a tree, and you're doing
24:50
Speaker 1: that by um keeping it in a small container and
24:53
Speaker 1: keeping its roots trimmed backed so that it comes to
24:55
Speaker 1: basically go against its natural processes and just stay small
25:00
Speaker 1: and miniature. Um. But yeah, basically any plant can be
25:06
Speaker 1: bonds eyed. Crazy it is. And Um, what I didn't
25:10
Speaker 1: realize is that most bonds eye is meant to be outdoors.
25:14
Speaker 1: I thought it was strictly indoor. Yeah, and there are
25:16
Speaker 1: indoor varieties, like you can take indoor plants or plants
25:19
Speaker 1: that do well indoors and make them bonds eye, and
25:22
Speaker 1: it's becoming more of a thing. But for the most part,
25:24
Speaker 1: if you're doing especially something with like a pine or
25:27
Speaker 1: a deciduous tree or a juniper, those are outdoor plants
25:31
Speaker 1: and your your bonds eye is meant to stay outdoors,
25:33
Speaker 1: except you know, if you bring it in and use
25:35
Speaker 1: it as a centerpiece or something once in a while. Yeah,
25:38
Speaker 1: And for those trees. Um, it makes a point in
25:40
Speaker 1: here that they have a natural yearly cycle that will
25:44
Speaker 1: be disrupted if you keep it indoors. So um, you
25:48
Speaker 1: may have to overwinter it to a certain degree, but
25:51
Speaker 1: you're also going to want to take these out in
25:53
Speaker 1: the winter some r um. But it also says that
25:56
Speaker 1: it's not like a grown tree that's covered mulch and
25:59
Speaker 1: like super rooted, So you can't just leave it out
26:02
Speaker 1: all winter, no, and if you do, you would want
26:04
Speaker 1: to leave it in like a cold frame or a
26:06
Speaker 1: greenhouse or something like that where it's gonna survive, or
26:09
Speaker 1: you could also protect it with a bunch of mulch
26:12
Speaker 1: too you leave it outside. But yeah, there's it does
26:16
Speaker 1: follow a lot of its natural processes, right, So if
26:19
Speaker 1: you're doing like a fruiting tree or a flowering tree, like,
26:23
Speaker 1: as as long as it's healthy and happy, uh, it's
26:26
Speaker 1: going to bear fruit. There's gonna be flowers. Um. Pretty cool. Yeah,
26:30
Speaker 1: it's very cool. But you are simulating nature and that
26:33
Speaker 1: it's the roots are being kept shallow and trimmed, So
26:36
Speaker 1: you have to take that into consideration by protecting it
26:39
Speaker 1: from cold and from making sure it has a lot
26:41
Speaker 1: of water. Too. Yeah. Well we'll get into the specifics
26:45
Speaker 1: of care here in a minute. Um, But as you said,
26:47
Speaker 1: you can pretty much use any tree. Ideally, what you
26:50
Speaker 1: want to use is something some sort of tree or
26:52
Speaker 1: shrub that have small leaves or needles and that can
26:56
Speaker 1: get super dense. So you just have sort of more, um,
27:01
Speaker 1: more material to work with for your art form. Right.
27:04
Speaker 1: How's that? I think it's wonderful. And it all starts
27:08
Speaker 1: with roots, right, Yes, So when you're looking for a specimen,
27:13
Speaker 1: you can just go to like your local nursery. Some
27:15
Speaker 1: people grow stuff from seed. You can also take cuttings
27:18
Speaker 1: um and grow them in like rooting hormone or something like. Man,
27:21
Speaker 1: if you start from seed, that's like, that's meat, that's dedication.
27:25
Speaker 1: And I will also say that if you start with
27:28
Speaker 1: a kit that has a bonds I already sort of
27:31
Speaker 1: shaped for you, that's fine. I'm not gonna knock it
27:34
Speaker 1: too much because you might not have time and you
27:36
Speaker 1: might still want to take care with it. That's good point.
27:38
Speaker 1: But I would recommend like to get your full experience
27:41
Speaker 1: and maybe start with a cutting that you kind of
27:44
Speaker 1: grow as your own little baby, right, Or you can
27:47
Speaker 1: go to like a nursery or something like that and
27:49
Speaker 1: just say I would like to buy this plant and
27:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn it into a Bond's eye. That
27:54
Speaker 1: definitely counts as well. So, UM, a really good one
27:57
Speaker 1: to start with that I found is juniper. Most junipers
28:02
Speaker 1: they grow as groundcovers, so they stay fairly low to
28:05
Speaker 1: the ground normally, so they do well being miniaturized. They're
28:11
Speaker 1: also pretty hardy plants from what I understand, and um,
28:15
Speaker 1: they grow really well in any temperate climate, relatively temperate climate.
28:20
Speaker 1: So you go to a nursery and you you want
28:23
Speaker 1: to kind of go already with the style in mind
28:27
Speaker 1: that you're going to go with, whether it's broom or
28:29
Speaker 1: whether it's wind swept or semi cascade or whatever, because
28:33
Speaker 1: then you'll you'll be able to kind of narrow down
28:36
Speaker 1: the plant that you want to buy because it's already
28:39
Speaker 1: gonna you're almost seeing it in there, like you know
28:42
Speaker 1: how sculptors say that they like look at a piece
28:44
Speaker 1: of marble and they're just chipping away from what was
28:46
Speaker 1: already in there all along. It's very similar with bondsai
28:49
Speaker 1: as well. You go in, you find the plant that
28:52
Speaker 1: kind of suits your needs a little bit and then yeah,
28:55
Speaker 1: you dig down and you want to find the first
28:58
Speaker 1: roots that come off of this, off of the trunk,
29:02
Speaker 1: and that's where that's what's called the crown. Right, That's right.
29:05
Speaker 1: And as long as those are pretty healthy looking and intact,
29:10
Speaker 1: it's probably a pretty good bet that you can turn
29:12
Speaker 1: that thing into a bonsai. That's right. And you should
29:14
Speaker 1: remember too that Um, the more you want to alter
29:18
Speaker 1: the tree, the probably younger and smaller it should be
29:21
Speaker 1: to begin with. Um, because you can only do so much.
29:25
Speaker 1: You know, you can't take a tree that's like stick
29:27
Speaker 1: straight and be like, all right now, I want it
29:29
Speaker 1: to cascade all the way back down. I yeah, you
29:33
Speaker 1: might be able to, but it would take decades to
29:35
Speaker 1: get it to grow like that. I would say you
29:37
Speaker 1: have to be a bonsai master. Yeah, you would in
29:39
Speaker 1: order to do that again like Mr Miyagi. But these
29:42
Speaker 1: exposed roots, UM, it's going to give the appearance if
29:47
Speaker 1: you want to have that age look like it's an
29:49
Speaker 1: ancient tree. Maybe ancient trees usually have these great, big
29:53
Speaker 1: roots that you see sort of on top of the ground.
29:55
Speaker 1: So that's a neat thing you can do with your
29:57
Speaker 1: bondsaye um. Plus, Also, what's great when you dig down
30:01
Speaker 1: to the those top roots that form the crown, where
30:03
Speaker 1: the trunk ends and the roots, the real roots begin,
30:06
Speaker 1: there's gonna be plenty of fewer roots above that, and
30:08
Speaker 1: you're actually gonna want to trim those away. But it
30:11
Speaker 1: gives what was once a pretty short plant suddenly has
30:15
Speaker 1: a trunk now, and you're like, oh, okay, wow, I
30:17
Speaker 1: see where this is coming from. Its starting to take
30:20
Speaker 1: shape just right out of the gate. Yeah, and what
30:22
Speaker 1: you're doing, what I mean, we'll talk about pruning in
30:24
Speaker 1: a bit, but how you're shaping this is with wire,
30:27
Speaker 1: either with like aluminum or copper wiring that you can
30:30
Speaker 1: leave on to bend the tree to your will up
30:34
Speaker 1: to like a year. But you want to be careful
30:36
Speaker 1: and not make it too tight because it can actually
30:38
Speaker 1: cut into the tree, which you don't want at all,
30:41
Speaker 1: and um, so you keep it on your wiring. And
30:44
Speaker 1: the idea is that, again with harmony, you don't want
30:48
Speaker 1: branches a mess of branches obscuring one another. You want
30:51
Speaker 1: each branch to have have sort of its own personality exactly. Yeah,
30:55
Speaker 1: So you want to talk about how to how to
30:57
Speaker 1: start a bonds eye let? Okay, so you go in
31:01
Speaker 1: you find your you find your plan and by the way, um,
31:04
Speaker 1: well we're going to kind of give you a step
31:06
Speaker 1: by step. But I found a really good website called
31:09
Speaker 1: Bondsay for Beginners dot com um and they have a
31:13
Speaker 1: really really good, really well written even though there's lots
31:19
Speaker 1: of misspelled words, but just it's really understandable. Is for
31:22
Speaker 1: the number four, that's like f O R E no
31:27
Speaker 1: bonds eye four beginners. Wow, yeah, I don't remember if
31:31
Speaker 1: it is the number four. I don't think it is. Okay,
31:33
Speaker 1: just look it up and if it's somebody from New
31:35
Speaker 1: Zealand writing, you found the right one. Um. But they
31:39
Speaker 1: they they basically have a great step by step of
31:42
Speaker 1: how to do it all. Right, So you want to
31:44
Speaker 1: buy a tree. A good time of the year to
31:45
Speaker 1: do this is to go in the spring when the
31:49
Speaker 1: the growing cycle begins, uh, and go to your nursery
31:53
Speaker 1: and uh. Like you said, you you're looking for whatever
31:57
Speaker 1: tree that fits your mind's eye of what you've eventually want.
32:01
Speaker 1: And it saysn't here to start with your scene and
32:03
Speaker 1: work towards that. I think I would be more inclined
32:05
Speaker 1: to sort of preform a little bit, you know, over
32:08
Speaker 1: the years okay, which I'm sure is fine. You're gonna
32:12
Speaker 1: be the bad boy of the bonds by world, aren't
32:14
Speaker 1: You Never know what I'm gonna do next exhibitions wearing
32:17
Speaker 1: like a motorcycle jacket possibly. Uh So the price is
32:21
Speaker 1: gonna vary depending on what kind of tree you're getting. Um.
32:25
Speaker 1: And of course I looked up the kits there. You
32:26
Speaker 1: know they can be fifty to a couple hundred bucks
32:29
Speaker 1: depending on the kind of tree and like how finished
32:31
Speaker 1: looking it is, right or I mean like it can
32:34
Speaker 1: you can go spend ten to twenty on like a say,
32:38
Speaker 1: like a juniper. And then and there are plenty of
32:42
Speaker 1: bonds eye tools that you can buy. The Internet will
32:44
Speaker 1: be happy to take your money for that. But you
32:46
Speaker 1: can also make do with other stuff like florists. Wire.
32:49
Speaker 1: You can get the copper wire you need from probably
32:53
Speaker 1: a hardware store piers. There's yeah, plyers. Uh. Scissors, scissors
32:58
Speaker 1: smaller the better, sure, um because little first grade scissors. Um.
33:04
Speaker 1: And then you're also gonna want like a root rake um,
33:07
Speaker 1: which you can just bend a fork and bam you've
33:10
Speaker 1: got a root rake boom, So you've got your plant
33:13
Speaker 1: or where you're saying it's a juniper. You're gonna dig down.
33:16
Speaker 1: You're going to um, you're gonna basically take it out,
33:20
Speaker 1: put it on the table in front of you. You
33:21
Speaker 1: want to spray bottle of water and take a shot
33:24
Speaker 1: of saki. Right, get started traditionally exactly you go and
33:30
Speaker 1: then you you get started. Um. So you take the
33:33
Speaker 1: dirt off of the top layer all the way down
33:35
Speaker 1: to the crown. And again there's a bunch of feet
33:37
Speaker 1: of roots which you want to trim from the trunk itself.
33:40
Speaker 1: And then you you take a look at the roots
33:42
Speaker 1: like you you scraped the dirt away, and you really
33:45
Speaker 1: look at the roots structure, and you say, I gotta
33:48
Speaker 1: get rid of a lot of this. Yeah, and you
33:49
Speaker 1: should already have your your pot at this point, by
33:52
Speaker 1: the way, because this is the first step, is the
33:56
Speaker 1: uh potting, right. And I've seen people, usually especially beginners,
34:01
Speaker 1: make the mistake when they're first creating a bond's eye
34:03
Speaker 1: that um, they go real small with the pot. You're
34:07
Speaker 1: gonna go through a couple of pots in the first
34:09
Speaker 1: few years. Um, So they say, don't be afraid to
34:12
Speaker 1: use a big pot. As a matter of fact, you
34:13
Speaker 1: should probably use a bigger pot. Than you think you
34:15
Speaker 1: should for its first pots. Eventually, three or four years
34:19
Speaker 1: down the road, you're going to finally come to that
34:21
Speaker 1: that one pot that this thing stays in for the
34:24
Speaker 1: rest of its life, and you're gonna repot it every
34:26
Speaker 1: couple of years, but you're gonna repot it in the
34:29
Speaker 1: same pot. Yeah, you're gonna be a flea market and
34:31
Speaker 1: it's gonna just there's gonna be a golden light shine
34:33
Speaker 1: around this one pot. And you're gonna say that things
34:37
Speaker 1: twenty dollars and James Brown is gonna be like, dude,
34:40
Speaker 1: you see the lie, and then you'll talk him down
34:42
Speaker 1: to fourteen dollars and then up to seventeen, and then
34:45
Speaker 1: you'll meet at the middle of fifteen. Nice and then
34:47
Speaker 1: you've got your pot. That'll be a great day. Uh.
34:52
Speaker 1: All right, So you're at the roots, I think. Yeah,
34:54
Speaker 1: so when you trim the roots away. I was really
34:57
Speaker 1: surprised by this. You want to trim about two thirds
34:59
Speaker 1: of the roots present on your plant when you buy it. Yeah,
35:02
Speaker 1: it even says in here that seems extreme, But don't fret, no, um,
35:06
Speaker 1: and the roots you really want to go after, the
35:08
Speaker 1: bigger ones, the more established ones. You want to leave
35:12
Speaker 1: some at the top at that crown. But um, especially
35:15
Speaker 1: if you're dealing with a tree and it has a
35:17
Speaker 1: tap root, that root that goes like straight down, that's
35:20
Speaker 1: actually not as much for watering as it is for stability,
35:24
Speaker 1: and you don't need it in your tiny, little shallow pot.
35:26
Speaker 1: So you want to get rid of roots like that. Yep,
35:29
Speaker 1: you've got your pot. Um. You want to put a
35:31
Speaker 1: little thin layer of gravel for drainage. Um. Yeah, and
35:35
Speaker 1: that's another big thing. Your pot has to have drainage holes,
35:38
Speaker 1: good ones. Yeah. Well you're the lawn watering expert. You
35:43
Speaker 1: don't want a quarter quarter into of water over it
35:47
Speaker 1: to standing. All right, So you've got your pot, you've
35:50
Speaker 1: got your gravel down there. Um, you've trimmed your roots,
35:55
Speaker 1: and you need your soil mixture. Yeah, this is a
35:58
Speaker 1: big one. It's a big one. And there are different
36:01
Speaker 1: um schools of thought on what kind of soil It
36:03
Speaker 1: says in here, um equal parts uh, sand, pete, and loam. Yeah,
36:08
Speaker 1: that's I guess that's like a general generic go to
36:12
Speaker 1: bonds eyes. But you want soil specific to your tree,
36:15
Speaker 1: Like if you have a juniper, that's gonna probably be
36:18
Speaker 1: different soil than what like olive tree needs. And so
36:22
Speaker 1: you just need to find out about the plant that
36:24
Speaker 1: your bonds eyeing and find out what kind of soil
36:25
Speaker 1: it likes, how much water it needs, what kind of
36:28
Speaker 1: nutrients it takes, um, and what kind of sunlight it needs.
36:31
Speaker 1: Especially that's right, it's a big one. So you stick
36:34
Speaker 1: that sucker in there. You've got your trimmed roots, and
36:37
Speaker 1: you want to spread them out really evenly. Um, you know,
36:40
Speaker 1: towards the edges of the pot. Yeah, of the container right, um,
36:44
Speaker 1: through like just all throughout the container. You want the
36:47
Speaker 1: roots going down. Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned
36:49
Speaker 1: you should run a wire up through the drainage hole
36:51
Speaker 1: to support the tree. Initially, Yeah, this is a big one, um.
36:55
Speaker 1: And this this wire, this is it's going to support
36:58
Speaker 1: the tree. But also if you're gonna in the tree,
37:00
Speaker 1: so you're doing a cascade or a semi cascade or
37:02
Speaker 1: anything like that, exactly, you're gonna use that wire, um too.
37:08
Speaker 1: You're gonna go train it around the trunk and then
37:11
Speaker 1: bend the wire. It's gonna bend the poor plant with it,
37:15
Speaker 1: and you're gonna leave it on there for like a
37:16
Speaker 1: month or so at least, but you want to keep
37:19
Speaker 1: a really close eye on it because the tree will
37:22
Speaker 1: start to grow around it and it will be forever scarred.
37:25
Speaker 1: And as far as Bond's eye is concerned, you're just
37:28
Speaker 1: ruined your plants. So you want to keep a close
37:30
Speaker 1: eye on it. Um, you want to make it tight,
37:33
Speaker 1: but you want to make it tight enough so that
37:35
Speaker 1: when you bend it, it's going to bend the tree
37:37
Speaker 1: with it, but not so tight that it bites into
37:40
Speaker 1: or damages the tree. And um, yeah, you want to
37:43
Speaker 1: keep a really close eye on it to make sure
37:45
Speaker 1: the tree doesn't grow. And then when it's done after
37:48
Speaker 1: a month, maybe longer this article says up to a year,
37:50
Speaker 1: but I didn't see that anywhere else. Um, you want
37:54
Speaker 1: to clip clip it away like you're not gonna unwind
37:57
Speaker 1: it or else you're probably gonna break your bonds up.
37:59
Speaker 1: And hope cle your tree won't go and pop back
38:02
Speaker 1: into place, and if it does, you just have to
38:04
Speaker 1: redo it again. Patients, my friend, Patients, that's right, they
38:07
Speaker 1: say in the article Patients is the best tool that
38:10
Speaker 1: you can have in your arsenal. Um, So you get
38:13
Speaker 1: the wire sticking up through the drainage hole. Now, that's right.
38:16
Speaker 1: And um, you for as far as the soil you
38:18
Speaker 1: want it to be, you want to tap it and
38:20
Speaker 1: kind of you know, shake the pot around to remove
38:23
Speaker 1: the air pockets firm and around the base of the tree.
38:25
Speaker 1: But you don't want it so packed in that. You know,
38:29
Speaker 1: the water's got to go through and drain all the
38:31
Speaker 1: way through and out. Right. Well, you want well draining soil.
38:34
Speaker 1: One thing I saw was three parts potting soil to
38:36
Speaker 1: one part like miniature gravel basically, so the soil is
38:40
Speaker 1: gonna drain. Well, Apparently you do want it kind of
38:44
Speaker 1: packed because that that tree does not have stability with
38:48
Speaker 1: its roots, so it's going to rely on the dirt
38:50
Speaker 1: more than it normally would. Yeah, especially around the trunk right. Um.
38:54
Speaker 1: And then but yeah, you want to shake it to
38:56
Speaker 1: get the air pockets out for sure, that's right. Um.
38:59
Speaker 1: A lot of people also puts additional gravel on top
39:02
Speaker 1: to keep the dirt in place when it's water like that. Yeah,
39:06
Speaker 1: and it looks nice to agreed. Uh. So you don't
39:09
Speaker 1: want to do that and then go throw it out
39:11
Speaker 1: in the full sun all day long in July. What
39:14
Speaker 1: you want to do is start it in a shady
39:16
Speaker 1: spot for about a week and let it get used
39:19
Speaker 1: to be in shorter rooted and in a weird new container,
39:22
Speaker 1: and let it accept the fact that it's. Um, I know,
39:24
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be small. This is gonna hurt. I'm gonna
39:27
Speaker 1: be small. I'm never gonna be a big big daddy.
39:30
Speaker 1: And once it gets over that and accepts its fate, um,
39:33
Speaker 1: and it says, you know what, I actually like this
39:36
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna be a beautiful work of art and
39:37
Speaker 1: get lots of care and attention. Now you can move
39:40
Speaker 1: me into the sun a little bit at a time,
39:41
Speaker 1: a couple of hours at a time, Yeah, sir or ma'am,
39:44
Speaker 1: thank you master, and um since yes sin say and
39:49
Speaker 1: then uh yeah, a couple of hours in the morning,
39:52
Speaker 1: and then before you know it, you can have that
39:55
Speaker 1: that bad boy out there, like weathering all kinds of weather,
39:59
Speaker 1: weathering about normal weather like it normally would. Yeah. Um,
40:03
Speaker 1: And your plants gonna tell you whether it's happy or
40:06
Speaker 1: not happy. I think with buns I in particular, you're
40:09
Speaker 1: gonna notice like every little change in your plant because
40:12
Speaker 1: you're really concentrating on it and focusing on it, and
40:15
Speaker 1: all the rest of your plants are gonna hate you. Yeah,
40:17
Speaker 1: they're gonna be like, remember me, your spider plant is
40:20
Speaker 1: gonna be like growing around your throat, just closing off
40:24
Speaker 1: your airway. So watch out for your spider plant. Um.
40:28
Speaker 1: And I should say one more thing took When you
40:31
Speaker 1: first pot your plant, um, you the first watering. You
40:35
Speaker 1: should basically take it in like a tray or a
40:37
Speaker 1: pan or a bucket of water and submerge it to
40:41
Speaker 1: the soil level and just let it sit there. Yeah,
40:45
Speaker 1: this is what I've seen. Don't like plunk it in there.
40:47
Speaker 1: Slowly submerge it in there, and that water is going
40:50
Speaker 1: to make sure that every route gets into water and um,
40:54
Speaker 1: it's going to fill in any air pockets that are
40:56
Speaker 1: in there. So it's really going to basically solidify your
41:00
Speaker 1: um soil. Pack it in and just get it ready.
41:03
Speaker 1: Very nice, pretty neat, right, super neat. Should we take
41:07
Speaker 1: a break. All right, We're gonna come back and talk
41:09
Speaker 1: a little bit more about bonds I care and shaping,
41:12
Speaker 1: which is where the money is. So check you got
41:37
Speaker 1: your bonds eye yep you are. You've moved it back
41:40
Speaker 1: onto the sunlight. It's basically accepted its fate as a
41:43
Speaker 1: smaller version of itself. You've named it right right now? Yeah?
41:50
Speaker 1: Uh Alan, okay, mine's Roy, So Allan and Roy. The
41:55
Speaker 1: bonds eye twins are hanging out outside um when you
42:00
Speaker 1: first pot it. You can also prepare the limbs to um,
42:04
Speaker 1: where you're basically trimming the limbs back, one going. So
42:08
Speaker 1: remember there's one in the front. There's a front and
42:10
Speaker 1: the back to it right, yeah, which you should establish
42:13
Speaker 1: and stick to right typically with bonds I. In traditional
42:17
Speaker 1: bonds I, the first the first um limb is about
42:21
Speaker 1: a third of the way up from the dirt, uh,
42:24
Speaker 1: and it's going to jut out to the right. Second
42:26
Speaker 1: one is going to jut out the opposite direction, but
42:29
Speaker 1: it's not going to be even with the other one.
42:31
Speaker 1: It's gonna be another about third of the way up.
42:34
Speaker 1: You don't you don't ever, you rarely want um limbs
42:37
Speaker 1: even with one another. It's called a bar that's unsightly exactly. Um.
42:42
Speaker 1: So the next one huts out the opposite direction, and
42:44
Speaker 1: then the third one is about another third the way up,
42:46
Speaker 1: and that juts out towards the back, so it gives
42:48
Speaker 1: the impression of distance of perspective and bowing and growing
42:53
Speaker 1: out the back. Ye. Balance and harmony. UM. And you
42:57
Speaker 1: do this by you can take that wire, different lighter wire,
43:02
Speaker 1: depending on the size of the limb, and bend them
43:04
Speaker 1: in the ways that you want. But more often than not,
43:07
Speaker 1: you're going to be creating these illusions or this this
43:10
Speaker 1: pattern by trimming your bond's eye. And like you said,
43:13
Speaker 1: this is where the money is. This is where when
43:15
Speaker 1: you think of bonds eye, this is what I think
43:16
Speaker 1: of a little Japanese people like trimming the limbs off
43:20
Speaker 1: of tiny plants. Yeah, and it's UM again. You're you're
43:25
Speaker 1: striving to make it look like something larger that you
43:27
Speaker 1: would find in nature. Sure, you could get super weird
43:31
Speaker 1: and avant garde with your form and your shape, but
43:34
Speaker 1: in general, traditionally, UM, you want it to take a
43:39
Speaker 1: form that you would find out in the wild somewhere,
43:41
Speaker 1: just on a smaller scale. But that that is the
43:45
Speaker 1: that's the um effect of wind, of sun, of weird weather,
43:52
Speaker 1: of poor soil, of just the weirder looking the tree
43:55
Speaker 1: out in nature. Basically, the harder the heart of the
43:58
Speaker 1: life it's had, and you're trying to recreate that, you're nurturing.
44:02
Speaker 1: Pretty kind of counterintuitive, but if you just stop and
44:05
Speaker 1: think about what you're looking at in nature that you're
44:08
Speaker 1: trying to emulate. You'll probably figure out different ways to
44:11
Speaker 1: do it. And if you haven't figured it out, somebody's
44:14
Speaker 1: probably been doing it for a thousand years already. And
44:16
Speaker 1: you can go get yourself a book or look on
44:18
Speaker 1: the internet to find a technique. Yeah. So, like you said,
44:21
Speaker 1: with the wind, like the wind the real tree and
44:24
Speaker 1: real life that's on the mountaintop, the wind is trying
44:27
Speaker 1: to kill it and it's leaning out over the edge
44:30
Speaker 1: of the cliff like, oh man, my days are numbered. Um,
44:33
Speaker 1: But you nurture that in your own bonds eye and
44:36
Speaker 1: you emulate that, and it's, um, I don't know. I
44:39
Speaker 1: like the idea of it for some reason. It's like
44:41
Speaker 1: a tribute almost. It's Yeah, it's an homage to that
44:43
Speaker 1: tree that's hanging on by a route. Yeah. When it
44:48
Speaker 1: comes to light, Um, you want to rotate it around.
44:51
Speaker 1: You don't want it getting the same it's the same
44:53
Speaker 1: side exposure to sunlight every single day. You want to
44:57
Speaker 1: you want to rotate it around. You want to keep
44:58
Speaker 1: an eye out for bugs and and sex. Yeah, for sure.
45:01
Speaker 1: And again you're paying attention to your bonds ay more
45:03
Speaker 1: than your other plants, so you're gonna notice, like if
45:05
Speaker 1: it suddenly has an insect infestation. Yeah, a little larva
45:09
Speaker 1: uh what they called spittlebugs black or red dots of mites.
45:13
Speaker 1: Uh says you can brush these away. Um. I imagine
45:17
Speaker 1: you could smash them with a framing hammer if you wanted.
45:20
Speaker 1: After you brush them off. Um, but a bit in
45:25
Speaker 1: the Japanese bondsi tradition, you're you're probably brushing them away
45:28
Speaker 1: a little paintbrush, right like you go and go hit
45:31
Speaker 1: the spider plant. Hey, spiders are okay man, they eat
45:35
Speaker 1: the little bugs for you. The spider plant, I mean
45:39
Speaker 1: the spider plant said yeah, yeah, well you gotta watch
45:41
Speaker 1: out for that thing is trying to kill you and
45:43
Speaker 1: your whole family exactly. So that's where you need to
45:45
Speaker 1: funnel your spittlebugs. Watering is another big one too. You
45:50
Speaker 1: depending on how hot it is outside, you may end
45:53
Speaker 1: up needing to water your bonds eye like two times
45:55
Speaker 1: a day, which means if you're into bond's eye, you
45:58
Speaker 1: probably don't leave your house very much. You most likely
46:01
Speaker 1: want to bonds or water your bonds eye every day,
46:04
Speaker 1: depending on again the plant, but most bonds I needs
46:07
Speaker 1: watering every single day and twice on hot days. Yeah,
46:11
Speaker 1: and what you don't want is, um, you know, as
46:13
Speaker 1: you're paying attention to it, you don't want a soggy,
46:16
Speaker 1: boggy base soil is that's a really bad sign. That
46:20
Speaker 1: means you probably didn't put down enough gravel on the bottom,
46:23
Speaker 1: or your soil mix doesn't have enough gravel or whatever
46:26
Speaker 1: mixed in to make it drain quickly. That's right. Because
46:29
Speaker 1: it's tough to over water a well draining potted plant
46:32
Speaker 1: of any type, including bonds eye, you're probably gonna be
46:36
Speaker 1: doing more pruning early on in the life of the
46:39
Speaker 1: bonds I. And once it has that general shape that
46:42
Speaker 1: you like, that's when you're doing uh, you know, just
46:45
Speaker 1: the the subtle changes that probably mean a lot to you. Um.
46:49
Speaker 1: But other friends that come over at you know, happy hour,
46:53
Speaker 1: they'll just say, hey, nice tree, there's yeah, you gotta ice,
47:00
Speaker 1: and they don't realize that makers broken. They didn't realize
47:03
Speaker 1: all the subtle little you know, you might clip away one,
47:07
Speaker 1: you know, a half of an inch of a branch.
47:10
Speaker 1: To you that that makes it just perfect that other
47:13
Speaker 1: people would probably not even notice. That's why it's your
47:17
Speaker 1: bonds eye, that's right. Josh, That's why I was thinking
47:19
Speaker 1: about it, Like like giving the gift of a bond's
47:22
Speaker 1: eye to somebody that you've tended to for years and
47:24
Speaker 1: years and years. That's that's a significant gift. Yeah, it's
47:27
Speaker 1: like and here's my my daughter. Yeah, you know, right,
47:31
Speaker 1: well not really, but you know what I mean. You
47:34
Speaker 1: can marry this plant. You love it so much, why
47:37
Speaker 1: don't you marry it. You're also going to keep up
47:39
Speaker 1: with the fertilizer. Again, like this is so this is
47:42
Speaker 1: almost such a generic overview in some places that I
47:45
Speaker 1: feel bad even saying it. But just go find out
47:48
Speaker 1: what the plant that you're raising needs normally and do that.
47:52
Speaker 1: Do that. But again you have to bear in mind
47:55
Speaker 1: that it's slightly different because you're you're keeping it in miniature.
47:59
Speaker 1: It doesn't have its normal roots system. It needs more
48:02
Speaker 1: water than usual, and um, it's probably because you're watering
48:06
Speaker 1: it so much. The nutrients in the soil are gonna
48:09
Speaker 1: leach out much more quickly. So you need to fertilize
48:12
Speaker 1: it more than you would just if you were growing
48:14
Speaker 1: it normally in a container. Right, So, since you're fertilizing
48:17
Speaker 1: something more, usually the rule of thumb as you want
48:20
Speaker 1: to you want to fertilize something weakly weekly, so w
48:24
Speaker 1: E A k L Y weekly um and and that
48:28
Speaker 1: way you're constantly replenishing the nutrients in the soil. But
48:32
Speaker 1: you're not gonna like burn or scorch the roots with
48:34
Speaker 1: like a chemical burn over feeding it. Yeah, and again
48:37
Speaker 1: you pointed out earlier, but I think it bears in
48:39
Speaker 1: mind repeating. The key is repotting and trimming those roots
48:44
Speaker 1: every couple of years. And like you said, once you
48:46
Speaker 1: find the pot at the flea market that you fell
48:48
Speaker 1: in love with, you can keep it in that pot forever.
48:50
Speaker 1: As long as it's you know, the one you want
48:52
Speaker 1: to stay with them. You can do what you want,
48:54
Speaker 1: but um or give it as a gift, or give
48:57
Speaker 1: it as a gift. But as you as you keep
49:00
Speaker 1: trim in these roots back, it's gonna stay that size.
49:02
Speaker 1: If you forget about it. If you're a hoarder and
49:05
Speaker 1: you and you and you're drunk and you pass out
49:08
Speaker 1: for ten years, you're gonna wake up with a twelve
49:11
Speaker 1: ft oak tree in your living room. That's the story
49:13
Speaker 1: of Peppie van Winkle, Is that? Yeah? I guess that
49:18
Speaker 1: is true, isn't it? Because yeah, you're basically once it
49:21
Speaker 1: becomes established to the shape you want it, you're just
49:25
Speaker 1: basically pruning it back here they're keeping it trimmed, and
49:28
Speaker 1: then when you repotted every couple of years, like the
49:30
Speaker 1: whole point is to keep the root system in check. Huh.
49:33
Speaker 1: So if you didn't do that, yeah, it would just
49:35
Speaker 1: probably it would die, is what it would do because
49:38
Speaker 1: no water, there would be so many roots in a
49:41
Speaker 1: pot that doesn't fit them. I probably look cool'd be
49:44
Speaker 1: growing over it maybe, And that's some that's basic stuff
49:48
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about. But there is a lot
49:50
Speaker 1: of advanced things you can do too, and one of
49:52
Speaker 1: those is like again training it to grow over rocks.
49:55
Speaker 1: So like when you potted the bonds eye, you would
49:58
Speaker 1: want a bonds eye with really long roots um so
50:01
Speaker 1: that you could when you when you're potting it, you
50:03
Speaker 1: would actually place it on a rock and then why
50:05
Speaker 1: are the roots in place to let them start to
50:08
Speaker 1: establish in the pots? Just things like that. There's something
50:10
Speaker 1: called um gin, which is basically this is really neil.
50:14
Speaker 1: But you saw it. Did you see a lot of
50:16
Speaker 1: bonds I that had like dead wood exposed? Okay, So
50:19
Speaker 1: gin is where at the top of the trunk or
50:22
Speaker 1: at the ends of limbs, deadwood is exposed to just
50:25
Speaker 1: really play up how old this thing is supposed to
50:29
Speaker 1: be or actually is. Um there's something called shari, which
50:32
Speaker 1: is deadwood on the trunk below, and then there's something
50:35
Speaker 1: called sabamiki, and that's like you actually get in there
50:39
Speaker 1: and peel away the the bark, drill into the trunk
50:45
Speaker 1: and carve holes into it, carved like a gap into
50:48
Speaker 1: it to create the illusion that it was scarred from
50:52
Speaker 1: like a lightning strike. And you you've got to be
50:54
Speaker 1: really careful doing that because you can very easily kill
50:56
Speaker 1: your bonds eye. But if you do it right, it'll
51:00
Speaker 1: row back and scar around it and you'll have a
51:02
Speaker 1: pretty interesting looking tree. So that's not recommended for beginners.
51:05
Speaker 1: I would not think so. I think you'd kill a
51:08
Speaker 1: lot of plants doing that that way. So and and again,
51:10
Speaker 1: people have been trying this stuff for a couple of
51:14
Speaker 1: thousand years now, so there's a lot of different stuff
51:17
Speaker 1: you can do in a lot of different resources out there. Nice, Yeah,
51:20
Speaker 1: go to your local japan town and say teach me. Yeah,
51:24
Speaker 1: And you know what, if the movie uh Karate Kid
51:29
Speaker 1: Lost in Translation is true, then if you're a pretty
51:33
Speaker 1: American girl, you can wander into any Japanese ceremony and
51:37
Speaker 1: they will just accept you with open arms. Yeah that's
51:40
Speaker 1: what they're known for. Yeah yeah, probably so right, Uh
51:43
Speaker 1: to a certain degree, sure, and you're not a jerk?
51:46
Speaker 1: Well yeah, like what does she walk into? Was hers
51:48
Speaker 1: origami or was that bonsa? I don't know, I don't remember.
51:52
Speaker 1: Was it a wedding? No, Scarlett Johansson walks out. There
51:55
Speaker 1: were these Japanese women doing some either bonsai or origami
51:58
Speaker 1: or something. They were like, well, you know, come on
52:01
Speaker 1: in and let me show you our ancient ways. Yeah,
52:03
Speaker 1: I don't remember that part. Yeah that was neat. I
52:07
Speaker 1: like that movie a lot too, But wasn't isn't the
52:11
Speaker 1: legend around it that Bill Murray's actually playing himself like
52:15
Speaker 1: it's based on an experience Sofia Coppola had, Yeah, I
52:17
Speaker 1: bet it's not too far off, and so like, uh
52:21
Speaker 1: Giovanni Ribisi is um Spike Jones, Barly Joe Hansen is
52:25
Speaker 1: um Sofia Coppola, um uh Anna Faris is Cameron Diaz
52:31
Speaker 1: one dude is justin Timberlake, and so like this actually
52:34
Speaker 1: supposedly happened, but then it's everyone says, well, who's Bill
52:37
Speaker 1: Murray playing? Allegedly Bill Murray is playing himself. That makes sense.
52:41
Speaker 1: I mean we'll never know what he whispers at the
52:43
Speaker 1: end either, which I love. That was a great movie.
52:45
Speaker 1: I forgot about that one. Make it Santry time. She's
52:49
Speaker 1: a part of my D percent club. Sofia Coppla, what
52:52
Speaker 1: is that? The directors who have made nothing but great movies.
52:57
Speaker 1: I think I've only seen that in The Virgin Suicide.
53:00
Speaker 1: It's a great movie. What else does she made? She
53:02
Speaker 1: did Um the Blame Ring recently. I never thought really good. Really,
53:07
Speaker 1: don't be turned off by the title, Yeah, because I
53:09
Speaker 1: have been UM. And she did the one with Stephen Dorff. Oh,
53:15
Speaker 1: I can't remember where he's the actor, just sort of
53:17
Speaker 1: hold up in the Chateau Mormont before with his daughter
53:20
Speaker 1: now before Sunrise, before Tomorrow. Nope. And she did the
53:25
Speaker 1: one the let the meat Cake, Uh, Marie Antoinette movie
53:30
Speaker 1: with Kirsten Dunns. It was fantastic. I never saw that
53:33
Speaker 1: one either. Yeah, they're all great. I think she's a
53:35
Speaker 1: top notch. I'll take him out. Uh. If you want
53:39
Speaker 1: to know more about Bonsai or Sofia Coppola. You can
53:41
Speaker 1: type those words in the search part house to works
53:43
Speaker 1: dot com. And since I said that it's time for
53:45
Speaker 1: listening to maut, Yes, I'm gonna call this uh tornado
53:52
Speaker 1: miss already. That thing just came out today, man, And
53:56
Speaker 1: you know what, I hope everyone's all right because there
53:59
Speaker 1: are tornadoes like kind of all over the place. That yeah,
54:01
Speaker 1: I heard Oklahoma's Kansas. Hey, guys, love the show. You
54:05
Speaker 1: mentioned tornado miss episode that I bet you would get
54:08
Speaker 1: an email from a civil engineer, and here I am.
54:11
Speaker 1: I just wanted to share an interesting fact about designing
54:13
Speaker 1: wind resistant buildings. I remember the day of the two
54:16
Speaker 1: thousand eight downtown Atlanta tornado you mentioned because it was
54:18
Speaker 1: actually the last day of classes at Georgia Tech before
54:21
Speaker 1: I went out, before I went home to Florida for
54:23
Speaker 1: spring break. Ironically, I just learned in one of my
54:26
Speaker 1: classes that one reason most skyscrapers are not the same
54:29
Speaker 1: basic shape from top to bottom is to alleviate pressure
54:32
Speaker 1: from wind. In the same class of professor had mentioned
54:34
Speaker 1: that one of the absolute worst structural designs where skyscraper
54:38
Speaker 1: is a perfect cylinder, which is what our Peachtree plazas
54:42
Speaker 1: that had the windows up for so long it's a cylinder.
54:46
Speaker 1: The wind whips all around and ends up hitting the
54:48
Speaker 1: entire face of the building as a giant wall of
54:50
Speaker 1: forts rather than hitting the building at different places over time.
54:53
Speaker 1: Not ideal for a class tube of the building. Anyway,
54:56
Speaker 1: I thought you guys would find that interesting. You are
54:58
Speaker 1: the best thing to come out of Athens in my
55:01
Speaker 1: Georgia tech opinion. Oh wow, I see where that was going.
55:05
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work. And that is from Scooter Shelbon.
55:07
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Scooter, Scooter Selban. I don't know about
55:12
Speaker 1: the best thing to come out of Athens. Uh, just
55:15
Speaker 1: a couple of bands and beers and coffees and football
55:20
Speaker 1: players as scooters take all right, Thank you, Scooter. If
55:24
Speaker 1: you want to give us high praise like Scooter did,
55:28
Speaker 1: we're always down with that. You can tweet to us
55:30
Speaker 1: at s y esk podcast. You can post cool stuff
55:33
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55:35
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55:39
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55:41
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55:43
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55:45
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55:50
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