Bonsai

Uh-huh.

Bonsai trees, is that Chinese? Yes.

think it's japanese yeah you're right on that

yeah i think it is but i was gonna say we're doing majang next week with my friend jamie

Yeah.

Then last week or last season was... uh ron's research yeah with the teletype machine oh he he looked into some pretty important stuff things were solved collated it yeah uh and then meta analysis we had planned to do are you stronger than ron this year we got a grip strength thing uh but it recently realized we weren't and so we wanted a season pretty much pretty much Recently, I bought a bonsai tree and Ron has become my sensei.

Oh, yeah.

Because Captain Ron is also a bonsai enthusiast.

Dozens.

A couple dozen.

A couple dozen bonsai trees.

In training.

As you can tell, I'm thinking through these issues for myself and trying to decide what side of this issue I come down on.

But here's another one that occurs to me, and that's, believe it or not, bonsai trees.

Bonsai trees are not natural.

They don't just grow that way because nature makes them grow that way.

They are the result of sometimes hundreds of years of careful tending and trimming and the art of the bonsai creator.

Water and all these principles we talked about with containers still applies to hanging baskets as well.

Now, another unique container we touched on a little bit is bonsai.

Bonsai is taking the method of, we talked about keeping Japanese maples in a smaller pot, in the same pot and trimming those roots to the extreme.

You know, there's entire videos all about Japanese maples for bonsai and all that information.

We've done a lot of podcasts on that.

We included a handful of people that we sanctioned as people that they should watch on YouTube and pay attention to.

So I include their blogs or, you know, lessons or whatever, like yours, like Bonsai Tonight, I include those, that, Eric's.

And then I have a list of books.

I have Join a Club.

community.

You can't

count the number of things he's done for Bonsai in Northern California.

You just

It's a trip.

And I want to come back to that, but I want to go back to what you were saying right now about watching your dad with the bonsai trees.

Mm-hmm.

Take me back there.

Yeah, definitely.

And sometimes trees can, if they're on display, can talk about social conflict, like Cosmic Bonsai, Laurent does with his display work, or... perhaps more simply can be put together with learning from the person that's developed the tree, its story of where it came from, the circumstances that got into your hand, and what you've been planning for it.

We all have an origin story and so do our trees.

And we sometimes have to help the tree translate that story out to the viewer.

Post graduation, Sam will join Latham & Watkins in their Los Angeles office as an associate.

In his free time, Sam enjoys bonsai cultivating, long distance running strength training, and spending time with his cat, also named Bonsai.

I love that.

Sam, thank you for joining me today.

Welcome back to the Bonsai Builders Podcast.

I'm your host, Addison Galambos.

I'll be the first to admit that I definitely have some massive luxuries in my bonsai practice.

bottle's value by five cents.

So take that information as you may.

I think your stickers are probably what encouraged me to make my own stickers for the Bonsai Builder podcast, too, because that was the first time I'd seen that in the bonsai space.

Kind of gave me some ideas.

Sure.