FredL

I've found several of the replies to Ron's question quite interesting, but I'm left with one of my own. Granting the point that demonstration artists will sometimes (or often) "overwork" the trees they use for demonstration, is there some way other than the much maligned ingrediant of experience to get across to relative newcomers the time scale that most bonsai practitioners are working in? Other than ridiculing newcomers as being naive or passe when they bring up the question of how old a tree is, I don't ever remember much effort at all being made at any of the several shows, or even the classes I've taken, at communicating the sort of time frame that our trees should be viewed in, or how to properly major and minor operations on our trees. I remember on another site some very helpful comments by a guy named Vince Hanna that really helped me to view the time dimension differently and begin to have a basic concept of the time frame I should be thinking in. Styling techniques are very important, but there's more to Bonsai than that. Alot more!

Fred