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