Today I finally found someone else around here that grows/creates/is into bonsai. My sister told me about a guy just down the road from her with a "bonsai for sale" sign in his yard.
HUGE disappointment. Most of his trees looked like mallsai, with those ugly white pebbles on the soil. He probably had a few hundred trees but not one of them had much potential that I could see. He said he had been growing bonsai for 30 YEARS! Maybe he was stretching the truth, but he still had aquired hundreds of trees without ever learning what to look for.
I decided that he had never heard of the internet, and maybe he had never even heard of books.
I realized at that moment just how lucky us newbies are now-a-days. I might not make beautiful trees from the stock I have right now, but I feel like I have a huge advantage over this guy with my one year of experience, almost entirely because of internet sites like this one.
Hip Hip Hoorah for bonsaiTALK and the like!