April Bonsai

So, here's a couple of decent pictures of 2 of my bonsai's. Junipers ftw!

Moving Bonsai trees to Utah

When we moved to Utah, only 3 of the 15+ lived. The only survivors, 3 Junipers. Anyway, that kind of made me lose some interest. Plus, we moved to a new house and had baby #3. But, now I've skipped the pot bonsai trees for now and have planted the 3 that survived in the ground. They have survived this last winter and are looking great and very full compared to those first pictures from California. Last night, I picked up about $35 dollars worth of 5 trees, a Buffalo Juniper, 2 Hino Crimson Azalea's, a red japanese maple and a green japanese maple. I just planted them in my bonsai garden after work today. I counted how many trees I have and I am now up to 25. The 5 I bought, the 3 survivors from socal, probably another 5 or so that we got from the Arbor Day Foundation last year and a bunch of little maple tree seedlings I dug up from my mother-in-law's ginormous maple tree. I'll put individual pics and descriptions later. For now, here's my collection.

Kaizen Bonsai-#1

So, I've been into bonsai trees as a hobby off and on for about 4 years now I guess. It started back when we lived in Glendora, California and I met a few guys at work who got me interested, mostly John LaCasella and Tony (can't remember his last name right now). I soon joined Kofu Kai Bonsai Club and attended the monthly meetings in Anaheim. By the time we moved to Glendora, I had purchased or given about 15-20 trees. Here is are a few pictures of what my collection looked like, before moving to Utah. I decent collection I guess and I had a lot of fun buying the $5 Juniper shrubs from Home Depot or Lowe's and turning them into my own little trees.

So, why the name of the blog KaizenBonsai? Well, HechtBonsai was taken...and I love the Japanese, their cars and bonsai and their culture of quality in manufacturing, the process improvement techniques and methods, hence one of the reasons why I ended up as a Quality Engineer. Bonsai is obvious, this is a blog about bonsai trees. Kaizen simply translated means, process improvement, small change make big improvement, continuous improvement, so it works well with my skills in the art of bonsai too, I'm constantly improving. Cheezy I know.

Bonsai trees are basically any miniature tree, its not one specific kind of tree. More bonsai lessons in later blogs. For now, check out my first attempts at "designing" my own trees.