join the bonsai growers association

I can’t actually join the bonsai growers association (and have no idea where to put the accent but am sure someone will tell me) until I can go out at night, I have decided to bonsai in anticipation.

I found an old conker covered with a leaf which had sprouted so there you go, a bonsai horse chestnut is on its way. If that is possible.

And I saw that you can buy baobabs for six euros, which last 5,000 years (how do they know that? And surely that’s over-value for money) and because in the Petit Prince he’s always talking about baobabs they are synonym for me of all the shit I have to do which I don’t quite get round to doing, I thought I would bonsai a baobab. And every time I get around to doing something I would ceremoniously chop off a branch.

And in nine years of being a mother, and I know it’s horribly commercial and all so we don’t do that, I got a present on mother’s day. A future bonsai baobab looking-after set :)

So, motivation abounds unsusually for a sunday evening.

the idea of growing very very old but remaining in miniature. I bet people have wicked bonsai in little corners of their gardens that they don’t tell anyone about.

I have come the closest in love to anything I discovered since cat stevens.

slightly control freakery, majorly arty. I went to the expo today to suss out whether I was quite ready to commit myself to a ‘club’ – which is against my principles (but they have the knowledge!). They have all these lovely bonsai trees and even bonsai daisies and shrubs.

Excitedly, I called my-mum-the-gardener who eventually said something like ‘well if making fire is your thing’

Quoi? Turns out I’‘m so unenglish thesedays that ‘bonsai’ sounds like ‘bonfire’ and I’m so weird that doing japanese calligraphy at the bonfire club (!) seems like a totally normal thing to do if you’re my mum’s daughter.

Haha.