Text Box: Southern Bonsaist Text Box: Our last average frost date is February 20th. I already have Elm bonsai showing new leaves. It has been a warm winter and nothing in the news shows that it won’t continue. We can always have a freeze up to the first of April . What to do? Trim your bonsai now. You can save the tropicals to April but all else can be trimmed now. If you have a large collection you must start to repot bonsai now. If we have a freeze you will just have to put them in a safe place. Last years bugs live in the leaves and litter in your bonsai area just waiting for winter to pass. Clean you bonsai area now. Text Box: Best if you can power wash the benches then mop them with a couple cups of bleach to a 5 gallon bucket of water. Clean up all jin and Shari now. I have so much and on so many large bonsai I have to use the power washer to get a good start. Wire now to get the most change with your trees. Don’t wire tight. Our spring growth will make wire dig in quickly. I always have a lot of carving work to do. The best carving tool I have ever found is a Roto-Zip spiral cut out tool. will h Text Box: If you get the kit with the flexible shaft it will hold all your caving head bits. It’s very smooth, has speed control and great handles for control. The noise level is low. It’s strong enough for any carving project. The beat advice anyone can give your about bonsai is “correct all your major problems during the first few years”. Making the hard cuts first lets them heal before the tree is ready for it’s first public show. Joe Day Text Box: Our past displays at the Festival of Flowers have always been a major hit with the public. This garden display will be very a very high quality display. We will ask for a lot of assistance from our ACBS membership. As I have said before the bonsai experience includes a lot of things. Creating shows is hard work but it’s a fun and exciting way to spend some time. We will also Text Box: Mobile’s premier spring flower show The Festival of Flowers show will be held on the grounds of the Providence Hospital March 22 to 26. ACBS will construct a garden and show large bonsai in the main tent. Fred Morales will present the details to the membership of ACBS at the February ACBS meeting. This show is seen by over 100,000 people each year. Text Box: as members of ACBS to he on hand during the run of the show to talk with the public about bonsai. With a bit of luck we might just find some great new members for ACBS. The work to put this show together will slightly overlap the Day of Bonsai event so we will have some ACBS members completing one event while other are doing the beginning work on another event. Fred Morales and Joe Kuhn will head up this event so let them know how you can help. Joe Day Text Box: Page # Text Box: ACBS needs you Text Box: Now! Text Box: The Festival of Flowers show 2006 Text Box: but that’s just not possible. If it’s all going to happen and look great we will need to do lots of individual call and talking to ACBS members. Making ACBS events come together the correct way is more difficult than running a good size company, trust me, after 25 years of this, I know this to be the absolute truth. Text Box: We will need show bonsai for all our events except summer social so get started making your best look their best. It’s now nice the bonsai is put together not how long it’s been worked on that matters when you show to the public. Joe Day Text Box: We will have contact information sheet to hand out at the next regular meeting of ACBS. We need good, telephone, Fax, cell phone and e-mail numbers. We have lots of ACBS events coming up very quickly. This can only happen if we get lots of help from the membership. Wish we could cover everything at the monthly meeting Text Box: