Bonsai Garden Quotes

Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.

It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry, wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy. Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realized, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about sixteen feet high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday.

In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden" Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and Landed in the middle of those ever-so-slightly green leaves That seem no mix of seeds and soil but of pastels and light and Chalk x’s mark our oaks that are supposed to be cut down I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street without It has always puzzled me that people coo over bonsai trees when You can squint your eyes and shrink anything without much of A struggle ensued with some starlings and the strawberry nets So after untangling the two I took the nets off and watched birds With red beaks fly by all morning at the window I reread your letter About how the castles you flew over made crenellated shadows on The water in the rainbarrel has overflowed and made a small swamp I think the potatoes might turn out slightly damp don’t worry If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them To close I’m sorry there won’t be any salad and I love you

I’d move to trim the front hedges by hand in an insane act of “yard maintenance.” This act of kaiju sized bonsai left me exhausted to attempt any more complex yard acts, but it did give me time to ponder the control a hand tool can provide.

Revisiting the past, he wondered whether things might have turned out better—better for him, better for Hannah—if he'd just made one or two different choices at key decision points.  If only he'd done a better job of negotiating the minefield of his career.  If only he'd had the foresight or intelligence to set a course for a happier future.  But deep down he knew that he'd made the right choices, done the right things, and that what had happened to him was as unpredictable as it was arbitrary.  It was never in his power to look out for or control. Knowing this brought solace on one level, but strong anxiety on another.      In the middle of the night, he gave up on sleep, got up, turned on the outdoor floodlights, and went about trimming every single bonsai in his Japanese garden to shapely perfection before raking the decorative pebbles into an even, orderly plain.