Text Box: P.O. box 9591 Mobile, Alabama 36691 Text Box: Azalea City Bonsai Society Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Phone: 251-344-5873 Fax : 251-342-6431 Email: ACBSBONSAI@AOL.COM Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Today I am 21,980 Days Old Text Box: As I write this another half day has come and gone so just mark me up for 21,981. It’s wonderful to be able to do most of our thinking on a yearly basis when in actuality everything happens on a daily basis. Ask the New Orleans folk if a day makes a difference. Bonsai exist on a daily basis. Oh how I wish it were not so. Those days this summer when the rain came each day just as the bonsai pots began to dry, bringing their daily care where a sweet memory when September brought temps in the 90’s, wind and humidity in the 20’s and 30’s. One slip up of watering on each day would bring death to any bonsai. I lost some of my weak bonsai. If... the September and October daily temps had been anywhere near normal I might could have saved them with a good repotting for next year. I might could have saved them if I had had nothing to do each day but care for my bonsai. Nothing to do each day but care for my bonsai,,, did anyone, anywhere at anytime ever own enough of their own lives to be able to make that statement ? We live, we learn and we adapt and if we adapt correctly we don’t live the same mistakes over and over again. Today is probably the first day of the next 365 day bonsai year for ACBS bonsai artist. Why today , Nov. 16th? Because the temps will be close to freezing tonight and probably go below freezing tomorrow night. This amount of cold will signal the shut down of this years growth. Real work can begin on most bonsai. It’s the ability to start pruning back branches, wiring and repotting, repotting some species depending on lots of different factors that starts a new cycle of development. It’s truly day to day, day after day with the art of bonsai. If you think in years….you loose the days. Joe B. Day