Bye Bye Bonsai Belongings

 An ongoing part of my refining my focus on everything was to decide where I wanted to go with my bonsai.  While I really like many things in the bonsai world, to actually DO them just does not work for me.  Stress vs fun.

 I did a KonMari on all bonsai related items I had:  pots, stands, books, decor, tools.  All of it.  As I sorted I thought heavily on what I do enjoy about doing bonsai.

 I just don’t care about showing trees.  And I don’t like being pushed to do so.  I love reality; not artificial (hard to maintain) perfection.  Since I am not going to show almost all of my stands  and other show ‘needs’ are leaving.  With this realization I found the name for my bonsai garden - Atsumatta Wabi Sabi.  “Gathered Imperfect Beauty”. 

 Gathered.  I’m not going to buy bonsai or pre-bonsai trees.  Yamadori is stock collected from the wild, or in my case YARDadori… collected from my yard (which is pretty wild).  Gifts will be accepted too as long as it isn’t a white elephant.  In that case, “Thank you so much but no thank you”. 

 I adore the small size bonsai and really shallow pots are the ‘gold standard’.  However, they do not adore me.  Too much maintenance.  My focus will be medium size bonsai so all of my small pots are leaving.

 Out of a tall stack of books, only 3 are staying.

I ended up with enough to cover two 8 foot tables.

 My plan for all this surplus is to offer it to a couple guys (bonsai buddies) who do this stuff professionally.  I hope to work a swap with them.  One afternoon this spring helping me get a few trees styled in exchange for all the stuff.  Or I’ll put it up for sale… take one, take all… for $TBD. 

 

One small portion.