Muranaka Bonsai Nursery

Bonsai club meeting

George — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:26:00 +0000

Yesterday was our bonsai club meeting for the Santa Maria Bonsai Club. We normally meet from 9:00am – 12:00pm. We got there early as usual and no one was there except for one person. We waited for about 10 minutes before more of our club members arrived. After a while we had a good turnout. I helped out with some junipers, oaks and someone needed help on their pine. We had a new person show up that wanted to join. We also had someone watching us through the door, so I invited them in to watch. They were very interested in what we were doing. They were a couple that were looking at the homes at Trilogy(we meet in the art studio at Trilogy). They live in Los Angeles and were visiting. They took a card and said they would like to visit our bonsai nursery next time they were in the area. After the club meeting, four of our members followed me to the nursery to purchase various plants, and wire. After the hectic Sunday morning, my wife and I went to Cambria for our Anniversary dinner. We have been married for a wonderful 27 years. Today was back to our normal watering schedule at the nursery. I also shipped out some trees and made arrangements to go prune some landscape trees in San Luis Obispo. We are almost done with pruning. After the landscape pruning, I need to catch up on the pruning at our nursery. I also need to catch up on the weeding. In my spare time I need to prep the trees for the Redwood Empire Bonsai Show at the end of the month in Santa Rosa. Than I go to Union City in the middle of October, followed by the GSBF show in Santa Clara. In between all these shows, I would like to shop at a couple of wholesale nurseries to fill in the empty spots at the nursery. I also need to purchase some bonsai pots. I am almost out of forest pots. Why the sudden interest in forest groupings? Oh well I need to get back to work……………

Fantastic turnout for the Obon!

George — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 08:03:00 +0000

We had a fantastic turnout for the Obon festival. Both in terms of bonsai club members participating and a large turnout for the festival. I want to thank all the people who came to visit our display. I think our display was fantastic this year because of the high participation level. I had a customer call me Saturday morning and he wanted to visit the nursery. I told him we would be at the Obon most of the day. He came from Santa Barbara to see the display and enjoy all of what the Obon had to offer. We did our demo on a field grown San Jose juniper that I dug out of the field on Friday. It turned out beautifully. So much so that I may have to keep the tree and work on the finer detailing of the tree and display the tree at the next Obon. Thanks again for all those who participated and also for all the people who came and visited. Today is our Bonsai club meeting. I need another vacation.

San Luis Obispo Obon Festival

George — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 08:26:00 +0000

The Santa Maria Bonsai Club will be doing a display of bonsai at the SLO Obon festival. It will be today 8-7-2010 from 2:00pm – 8:00pm. We will also be doing a bonsai demonstration although I will not know what time the demo will be until I get there. There will also be Japanese food, taiko drummers, judo demonstrations and Japanese arts, crafts, and books for sale. The best thing is the food. If you have never been there, it is highly recommended. It is at the Veterans Memorial building in SLO. If you are going Northbound on the 101, you would take the same exit as the one for Cal Poly. I believe the exit is Grande. Instead of going left toward Cal Poly, you would make a right hand turn onto Grande. Go about two blocks and you will see signs to your right. I hope to see you there. Come by and say hi.

Pruning landscape pines

George — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:44:00 +0000

We have had a steady stream of customers at the bonsai nursery. In between the customers, we are pruning landscape pine trees. It is amazing to see the changes to the trees when we arrive at the persons house. They see the tree on an almost daily basis. We only see the tree once a year. Almost all of the trees that we prune are getting to a nice size. Today we pruned a tree that was about 9 feet tall. The height of the tree is usually not a problem. The problem arises when people plant the trees on a slope or on a mound. Then the 9 ft tree becomes an 11ft tree because of the odd angle of the ladder. There are only a handful of pines that we prune that are on a flat surface. There are many challenges. Sometimes we climb the tree, and sometime we build scaffolding with two ladders and a board. Tomorrow I have a customer wanting to visit the nursery and later in the afternoon, we hope to tackle another large landscape pine.

Getting back in the groove.

George — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:40:00 +0000

Saturday was a busy day at the nursery. I sold a bunch of bonsai trees and a couple of landscape trees. I went to church on Sunday and when we got back home my wife and I thought we would do a little wine tasting at one of our favorite boutique wineries.(They were having a sale to make room for the bottling of their new wines.) As we were getting ready to leave, I noticed that I forgot to close the gate from the day before. Just as I was going to leave, a customer pulled up. I helped them select a few trees. The customer was excited to see all the choices that he had. We left for the winery at around four o’clock. The winery is about a 25 minute drive.
We had a great time at the winery. We were the only people there, which was nice because we got to catch up with what is going on at the winery. After a few minutes, a large group of people walked in to do some wine tasting. We made our purchases and drove home. Next week looks like a busy week at the nursery. We will be contacting people to catch up on pruning. Tomorrow is watering day, Yippeeee! (Can you feel the sarcasm?)…………….

Unloading and going home!

George — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:27:00 +0000

On Wednesday, I helped my daughter and her husband move into their apartment. It is a three story walk up with no elevator. It was very humid outside with thunderstorms threatening all day. It was about mid 80′s when we started unloading. In the beginning we took up heavy stuff and made the trek up the stairs. After about the third time up, we were sweating like crazy and my daughter and husband started to get dizzy, so I continued. I made about 3 more trips up the stairs and they felt better and started to help out again. It took us about an hour and when we got to the last items we were dead tired. Then we went back to my brother in-laws house to pick-up a bed that he offered to them. He also offered a very nice leather couch, but I could not see us taking it up 3 flights of very narrow stairs. After we unloaded, we ate lunch and crashed for a little nap. We got up and ate lunch with my brother in law and his wife and my sister in law and her husband. I stayed that night at my brother in laws house. On Thursday I got up at around 7am. and started my trek home. I was listening to the weather reports and there were suppose to be severe thunder and lightning intermittently all day. There were a couple of radio warnings about upcoming flash flood watches, but they were naming counties that I had just crossed an hour earlier. It is quite odd because you can see the ominous dark clouds about a mile on either side of me and the sun was shining in the center. You can also hear the thunder and see lightning flashes. I made it through most of the thunderstorms. I did get caught in one. I was in the hills just outside of Wilcox Arizona when a crazy hailstorm started. It hailed and rained so hard that you had to drive about 10 – 15 miles and hour. The hail was near an inch in diameter. My van was empty and it sounded like someone dumping a load of boulder onto a tin roof. Many people started to move to the side of the road and parked to wait out the storm. Since the storm was not moving, I thought I would follow the 18 wheeler in front of me with my emergency flashers on. In about a mile the hail became the size of a pea and the rain subsided slightly. Another mile further and we were in just heavy rain. After about another mile, no rain, just clouds. I looked in my rear view mirror to see several lightning flashes and the hail continuing to come down. Wow it was really scary! I drove to Phoenix from Austin. It was about a 16 hour drive. I felt good and felt that I could have driven home. I stopped at a hotel and slept overnight. I got up this morning to drive the remaining 9 hour to home. I got stuck in traffic from Thousand Oaks to Ventura. It cleared up until Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara was packed as usual. After Santa Barbara things were clear until just past Los Alamos. Someone dropped their belongings out of their truck and were parked on the side of the freeway and darting out to pick things up. My 9 hour trip home took almost 11 hours. My arms were tired from holding the steering wheel for so long. I was more tired today than from the 16 hours that I drove yesterday. I am finally home. Back to life at the bonsai nursery. When I left my daughter, she seemed happy to begin her new life. She has plenty of support from my in laws that live nearby.

Las Cruces New Mexico

George — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:22:00 +0000

This past Sunday was crazy. I worked on pruning some Japanese black pines in the field. I worked for a couple of hours to make sure we would be done with the field grown pines by the time I got back from Texas. Then I went to the Obon Festival in Santa Maria. The San Luis Obispo Obon Festival is coming up this August on Saturday the 7th from 2:00 – 8:00pm. Then I went up the hill to water the trees up the hill. This was now 6:00pm on Sunday. My daughter called and wanted to know if I could help them finish cleaning and packing for the trip to Texas. I told them I would help after I finished watering. I grabbed some dinner after watering and went to help them pack. It was now 8:00pm. When we were done at their place at 11:00pm, we went to my house to finish packing their stuff. One of our closets at our house was full of boxes. When we were done it was Midnight. I went in the house and I put 5 trees on e-bay. It is now 12:30 am. I took a shower and went to bed at around 1:00am Monday morning. We got up at around 3:00 am on Monday after a few hours of sleep. We left the house at around 3:30am went and got gas and left Nipomo at around 4:00am. We drove for 15 hours and 900 miles and got to Las Cruces at 8:00pm on Monday. We ate dinner at 9:00pm and went to bed. What a day! We only have to drive around 600 miles to get to our final destination of Austin Texas. We should get there at around 5:30 pm after we leave at around 7:00am. If some of the times don’t add up, we lost an hour to time change yesterday and we will lose another hour today! Whew! Time to hit the road. After we get to our destination, we have to unload on Wednesday, buy them a bed and possibly a couch and I have to turn around and drive the 1500miles back home. I hope to be home some time on Friday evening!

Next stop, Texas!

George — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:11:00 +0000

I will be in Texas for a week. Four days will be spent driving. It is a 25 hour drive to Austin. I will be helping my daughter and her husband move. I hope to be home on Friday. Life is always interesting. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I hope everyone out there is doing well. Pray for me that my brain won’t be fried in the hot Texas sun!

Almost done!

George — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:52:00 +0000

We are almost done pruning the Japanese black pines in the field. Now I just have to prune about 150 pre – bonsai and about 400 container trees! I still have to prune the landscape black pines that my customers want me to prune. It will have to wait about 1 week. Next week I am helping my daughter and her husband move to Texas. Whew!!!! I am tired just thinking about it. I also have been fairly busy at the nursery. It seem the harder I work, the more customers I get. I think I’ll go into hibernation for awhile so that I can catch up. When I come back from Texas, I will be going to a few nurseries to update my bonsai stock. I have over 10,000 container trees and I just need a few more. I just really need to fill in some plants that I am getting low on. I also take the opportunity to find new material. I hope to get some time to start working on my own bonsai trees. I have a display coming up at the San Luis Obispo Obon Festival. It is on Saturday August 7th from 2:00pm – 8:00pm. It should be fun. Our bonsai displays are always top notch for this show. We will also be doing a demonstration. I am glad it will be indoors this year. In the past few years, it has been outside. That would not be so bad except it is alway around 90 plus degrees in San Luis Obispo in August. Well it is time for me to do some bonsai paperwork.

Back home

George — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:58:00 +0000

We drove back from Sedona Az. on Saturday. It was a long 12 hour drive. We went through some extreme weather. Just outside of Blythe(one of the hottest areas in the U.S.) the temperature was 117. It was the same temperature as we were just outside of Indio. Los Angeles was around 100 degrees. When we hit the coast it dropped to 75. When we arrived at home at around 9:00pm, the fog was in the air and the temperature outside was 57 degrees. Just think, it was 60 degrees cooler then the temperature we were experiencing about 4 hours earlier. We have the best bonsai growing weather on the planet. Its great to be home……….