Well, it's June and that means my favorite time of year for bonsai work. It's time to decandle Japanese Black Pine Pinus thunbergii (黒松 kuromatsu), flower prune and trim Satsuki Azaleas, and lots of other work on junipers, maples, tropicals, etc.

This year I started a little early on a trip to California. This was my 8th Bonsai Intensive with Boon Manakitivipart. We spent the 3 full days working on some of the best trees in the country. Students were from Kentucky, California, Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, and Canada. Boon is such a talent that people are quite literally traveling across North America to study with him.

Here, Henry and Boon study a Japanese Black Pine in development.

This is one of the Japanese Black Pine bonsai that I worked on. This picture shows the tree before work started.

Some trees were just too large to bring into the workshop. This Japanese Black Pine has a great history.