It’s good to win one

On making your own luck with trees.

It’s been 10 weeks since I turned this supermarket houseplant into the beginnings of a bonsai. Most trees would need longer than that to bounce back from the stress of styling, but most trees aren’t portulacaria afra. Here’s how the elephant bush looked when I bought it.

And here’s after the styling.

You can see how well it’s recovered by the dense canopy of button-like leaves—all new growth under high intensity LEDs.

I was nervous the first two weeks. The trunk began to shrivel, leaves deflated and dropped, and the branches took on a spindly appearance. I held back on water; it’s easy to overwater a tree after repotting. Fine feeder roots take time to mesh with new soil after being ripped from the old. Water uptake slows.

The tree kept going, so I kept my faith in it. Now I see roots escaping the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot.

This is why I consider p afra an ideal tree for beginners. It’s practically bulletproof, and when in bonsai, especially just when starting out, it’s good to win one.

There’s a heart wrenching 12 seconds of acting on the American version of the comedy series The Office that always get me. Kevin, the lovable oaf played by Brian Baumgartner, is doing a confessional interview with the “documentary crew” baked into the show’s premise. Basking in an office parking lot related victory, Kevin’s commentary turns somber.

“After [my ex girlfriend] left…” He stumbles for a second. His eyes sink back into his head and his face quivers more than he wishes it would. “Things…did not go well for a while,” he continues, resolute now, aware that he’s through the worst of what was hurting him, that he is here and that is behind him. “And it was hard to see…” Kevin ejects the words as if describing how a hurricane took his house. We already know what he wants to say. Then he breaks, almost. His pulls inward and averts his gaze to hide the seeds of tears in his softening eyes. He looks back up, takes a beat, a little less sure now. He gulps. Another beat. Then all at once, his eyes squint and his lips curl into a smile. “It’s just nice to win one.” Milliseconds later, he looks relieved and uncertain all at once.

The unsaid specifics of what Kevin went through don’t really matter. We know how he feels. We can read it in his body language, the way he gasps for air. Marvelous work for a character who’s usually the dim witted butt of the joke.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get emotional on you. I just like the line and the creative work that went into it. But the beauty of what Kevin says is that it’s true. It is nice to win one, especially when it doesn’t seem like you’re winning anything else. Some other bonsai projects aren’t working out. My spruce and citrus are dying, my figs have mites, and newly repotted plants are suddenly struggling after weeks of deceptive good health.

When you’re starting out in bonsai, you’re bound to kill a few trees. With a resilient p afra by your side, you’re more likely to see success and level-up your skills. The cost of adding another tree to your collection is marginal, so why not stack the deck in your favor?

There’s a therapeutic technique where you name good things in your life that you’re grateful for, to pull your attention from the far more satisfying complaints about what’s going wrong. I can’t stand the maneuver, it’s too treacly and earnest for my taste. Maybe because idle kvetching is one of the ways I make sense of the world, more a thought exercise than an expression of grievance.

What I do like is making my own luck, and I’m feeling good about this tree’s trajectory.

I pruned the new flush of foliage back to a single pair of leaves. The canopy looks sparse and airy again. Now that the tree is well established in its new pot, I expect it will be ready for another cutback in four to six weeks. I can already see the beginnings of foliage pads. Empty spaces are getting filled in. The trunk is noticeably thicker.

Good things are happening in my collection, too. My tea plant has come back to life after three months of the silent treatment following a repot. Most of my conifers are thriving; their vigorous growth has revealed new possibilities for advancement.

It’s easier to remember these things when you keep a reminder close at hand.

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Tree reading

North Jersey neighbors are at war with a guy who chopped down 32 trees on another person’s property. Reparations may cost him $1.5 million. Don’t miss the part about his job. [New York Post]

The soybean is everything! [The Cleaver and the Butterfly]