Vonsgardens

My apologies to Atilla Soos who has worked diligently to fix the situation.

I was at Boon's last weekend for a BIB workshop weekend, my first. This is an opportunity for members and Boon to interact, work on trees and to try and figure out the very best course of action for a trees development. The major topic of conversation was the apparent attempt to discredit the work of a member,Janet Roth, who had submitted a tree for consideration in the North America vs Europe photo contest. As the author of the article most likely has never owned or even touched a tree of this quality, nor has he participated in an environment as is present at Boon's during these workshops, he has no idea how the creative process works.

Boon provides an environment where, as long as you apply the craft of bonsai correctly, creativity and novel approaches are encouraged. Plus, the quality of the trees owned and worked on by club members is unbelievable. I saw ten or twelve Black pines over the weekend that would stop most shows in the US and a couple with the right politics would have been fair for the best competitions in Japan (or Europe...). Boon stresses collaboration on tree development, an extension of his adoption of the Japanese approach to Bonsai. In Boon's yard the provenance of a tree is as important as anything else- an example as to why 5 of us worked 4 hours to repot a Mas Imazumi tree that had been a pond tree for a number of years.

What the AOB has done is to allow Mr. Eristic (Will Heath) to place a slight glimmer of doubt about a superb tree in the Judges minds. My concern about this was edited out by their moderators, and Atilla has ensured me that Mr. Heath doesn't get to edit his own threads, and I will take him at his word. However, the brute force approach to editing leaves a bad taste. Kind of like eating chopsticks and mushrooms.

I settled for a private apology to Janet Roth and Boon, and Michael Hagedorn who have been placed rather cagily in an uncomfortable position by indirect damning. I will drop this when there is a public apology from AOB's editorial staff to Janet, Boon and Michael. If those who write articles, OK when Mr. heath, can ever produce trees as beautiful as Janet Roth's, then I will take them seriously. Discrediting the good work of others is very similar to plagarism- a question of character- this damns all who facilitate it.

Simncerely,
John

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"Wiring is simple; However, it is not easy to do it right" Boon