|
Posted December 13, 2007: The first real
snow fell outside last night. It wasn't the first snow, but
the first time that it laid on the ground for more than a
few hours. Temperatures were in the 20s all day, and it seems
like, in the middle of December, winter is finally here to
stay.
I didn't have any tender plants outside this year—since
I moved several times and will move again before the year
is out—but everyone who did knows about the rush to
bring everything in before the first frost. That was several
months ago, but autumn is the prelude to winter and the frosts
of late autumn put everything outside to sleep. Fortunately,
that's not the case indoors and planters can be brought into
the warmth, ground-sown plants can be propagated with cuttings
brought inside, and the growing season can continue in a greenhouse
or on a windowsill.
My personal interest this winter season is indoor bonsai,
normally an outdoor craft, but one which can be adapted to
species that do better indoors than the traditional conifers
and deciduous hardwoods. Tropical species like the Jade tree
(Crassula ovata, Crassula argentia), Elephant
Bush (Portulacaria afra) and Hawaiian Umbrella Tree
(Schefflera arboricola) are perfect for indoor bonsai,
thriving in bright sunlight but also managing to be content
in lower-light conditions.
The key to creating superior indoor bonsai, according to
David Fukumoto—the creator of the “True Indoor
Bonsai” and a world-renowned bonsai artist—is
a process he calls “reduction-building.” Of course
you must start with a healthy plant that is well-adapted to
its environment, but once you have a suitable specimen you
must then prune it back drastically, but also precisely, leaving
just enough growth to allow the plant to regenerate. It is
left to do this until it seems full again, and then, once
again, it is cut back to a bare minimum. Each time the plant
is pruned it enters a new phase of growth, presenting a new
form unforetold by the old. It is this cycle of reducing and
rebuilding which will give the tree its immense character,
like a tiny replica of a grander and older cousin, shaped
and weathered by the elements.
But anyone who's grown anything successfully will know that
a plant's growth above the soil line mirrors the growth below
it, and in order for such drastic reduction to take place
in a bonsai's limbs, it must also be done to the roots. Otherwise,
the plant will choke itself with the regrowth, and the desired
effect will not be achieved.
I find, especially in this season of natural rest—a
time for “coming indoors,” so-to-speak—that
the art of bonsai offers an appropriate metaphor for contemplation:
In the shaping of our own bonsai tree, it is the act of focused
self-reduction that makes possible our regeneration and builds
our distinctive character; but to keep our tree healthy and
balanced, the work we do on our surface must mirror that which
we do below it, inside. Where the hands cannot work, the mind
and spirit together must always be busy.
On December 21st my work at The Rodale Institute is finished,
and as I conclude my internship at The New Farm and prepare
to draw this chapter of my life to a close, I'm focusing on
what to reduce and where to grow in the new chapter of the
new year.
On the farm, it's time to order the seeds for spring planting
and to tend to any cuttings we might have taken in the fall,
propagation being a sort of reduction-building exercise of
its own. It’s time to make our plans for the future.
Working with annual crops, it's often easy to forget that
the larger cycle doesn't stop and start, and that things don't
really end; they simply change form and continue on down the
line, like water that flows, then rises to the sky and falls
again to the earth as rain. Likewise, winter is just another
phase of the cycle, a time of rest and the earth's regeneration
after a hard summer's growing.
Hopefully this harvest past was fruitful for you. It certainly
was for me, and in so many ways. Already I'm eager to be back
outside with my hands in the dirt, but there's a voice that
says “all good things in all good time.” It's
time for slowing down a bit, catching up with all the folks
we missed during the busy times of warmer weather, and while
the snow falls outside in the cold, sitting by the fire and
drinking warm drinks that warm the soul.
Winter is the season to contemplate the renewal of spring,
and how it is that we might achieve such grand things as we
dream, like a bonsai tree in our own tiny space. 
|
