Text Box: The Azalea City Bonsai Society will hold the Christmas Dinner Meeting on the first Tuesday of December, December 6th. The dinner will be at our regular meeting place, Mobile Botanical Gardens. We will open the doors a bit early to set up 6: P.M. We would like to be ready to eat by 7:30. ACBS will furnish the table wares, drinks and main meats. ACBS members are ask to bring a covered dish. Please decide if you want to bring a vegetable, sweet or salad. We will have a sign up sheet at the November meeting to allow everyone to list the type of covered dish they will bring. We would like everyone to bring a special raffle item to this Text Box: meeting . It give the night a bit more Christmas spirit and also helps fund the event. This is a “Family “ night of food, fun and time to catch up on all that conversation that we don’t have time for on a normal meeting night. We extend this invitation to all past members of ACBS and all our sister bonsai clubs to come and enjoy our Christmas Dinner meeting. Christmas dinner always proves the cooking ability of bonsai artist and families . It is the best covered dish dinner you can attend anywhere, anytime. Text Box: We will have a very full year of programs, shows, educational events, and a great auction. The Christmas Dinner is the chance to have a full night of just great food, drink and time to talk to everyone about anything. If for any reason you find yourself coming to the dinner and you don’t know what to bring, bring a vegetable or a salad….not a sweet. Our positive trend to great health has made a few great sweets all we need. Joe Day Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Page # Text Box: Reaching the Bonsai youth Text Box: The Christmas Dinner Meeting December 6th Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: Text Box: The Delta School in Baldwin County is located near Hwy 225 north of Spanish Fort and educates the elementary school children of three rural communities. Early this summer my sister and I got into a conversation about a project for her advanced class that would involve bonsai. The first thing I thought of was to simply bring some trees over Text Box: “The future of everything belongs with the youth” Text Box: Volume 24 Issue 10 Text Box: Text Box: The Delta School in Baldwin County is located near Highway 225 north of Spanish Fort and educates the elementary school children of three rural communities. Early this summer my sister and I got into a conversation about a project for her advanced class that would involve bonsai. The first thought was to simply bring some bonsai over for a show and tell. Cheryl was happy with my offer, as the summer progressed we talked more about the visit. The show and tell was changed into a year long project with the intention of having it carry over from year to year. Our first meeting with the kids went very well. I had located and purchased four good used pots and six nice nursery Procumbus Junipers. When the class saw these trees and some of my own trees that I brought over, it resulted in complete attention , questions, questions and more questions. There were two one-hour sessions. The first class was made up of third and fourth graders with one student from the second grade. The second class was fifth and sixth grade students. There were about thirty kids in all. These kids were chosen for their advanced learning skills. My sister is a special education teacher who has the talent to lead these kids. What we decided to do is to assign each grade a tree and pot, help them develop a bonsai from this raw material. The two extra Juniper remain with me to act as a control. I will monitor the two Juniper that I have and relay tips and information about what may need to be done or what to watch out for any problems over the next several months. After the first session Cherly and I located the trees in a good position outside her classroom window. Our Plan now is to have a session in January and repot the trees into larger pots or into larger nursery containers. We will trim back the branches if needed. In the Spring we plan to work the trees into a future style with trimming and wire. If this project goes well, we intend to let each tree progress with it’s grade. The incoming class will take over the tree from the leaving class. Don Corley