What a Difference a Year Makes
We had a great event on February 18th at Cantigny Park. You may know that this is our third Silhouette Show at Cantigny. The first was held in 2020, just a month before the pandemic shut down everything and everyone. It was well-attended and we all considered it to be a successful event, particularly for the first time we had run the event. There was no show in 2021, due to the pandemic. We did run the show again in 2022, but the number of attendees was far fewer than the 2020 show. I believe we had about eleven 8-foot tables of trees at each of the first two shows and both times we were a little squeezed for table space.
This year we were able to set up the room a little differently than in the past, partially because Cantigny has remodeled the room at the Visitors Center and partly because the sealing of the diorama of the entire park under the plexiglass in the floor had been done earlier and we were able to walk on it. We ended up with eighteen 8-foot tables available for trees. We ended up with at least a couple of tables with no trees. That said, we had many wonderful trees. A special thanks to Chris Baker of Chicago Botanic Garden who brought a fantastic forest display from CBG (which we placed front and center for the show), and had to make two round trips to and from Lake County to deliver and pick up the display. Dan Turner also brought two multi-point displays totaling at least nine or ten trees. We also experimented with showing a limited number of coniferous trees selected by Larry Magee, Jim Beck, Phil Malhiot, and Nick DiBattista, not only deciduous as in the past. Thanks to everyone who displayed a tree!
We really put Jim Beck and his assistant, Bill, to work all day. The vendor room was packed most of the time and Jim did not need to take too much material home. I talked to at least two people who were interested in taking lessons and I remember seeing one woman juggling three trees from BC Bonsai as she walked to her car.
A big congratulations to Nick DiBattista, the chair of the event, for running a very successful show. We really did not have the capacity to handle too many more people than we had that day.Â
Harold, where are you??
We have a bit of a mystery to solve. For many years, PSBS periodically awarded an award named after Harold Lenz of Chicago. I do not have a lot of Harold Lenz’s history, but note that a page on the PSBS website summarizing Ivan Watters’ bonsai career mentions in the very first line that Ivan started studying bonsai with Harold in 1975.Â
The Harold Lenz award was given to Jennifer Price as recently as March 2013, according to Jim Keith’s President’s Message in the April 2013 Bonsai Hai. I am including information about the award in this month’s Bonsai Prairie Roots. Individuals winning the award were given an individual plaque, but there is also a larger plaque somewhere with the names of all past recipients and we hope to find it.Â
We know it is out there somewhere. Please contact us if you know who has it!
Urban Yamadori
As mentioned previously, we are participating in an urban yamadori day planned for Saturday, April 1st, this year. We will join with friends from three other bonsai clubs to dig up invasive burning bushes on a Milwaukee property. If you are planning to join us, please send me a message at craig_cronquist@yahoo.com or call me at 630-244-0155. More info to come.
Dues are Due!
As always, the PSBS year begins in March and most memberships expire on March 1st. Katlin has been busy notifying everyone via email. You should be able to renew on the webpage, but if you are attending a meeting, how about writing an old-fashioned check and giving it to Membership Director Jim Beck or Treasurer Badar Zulqarni? Paying by check saves a couple of bucks in PayPal fees for the club. No matter how you pay, we have a fun and educational year planned to enhance your bonsai skills.
Hope to see you on March 1st to learn about Phoenix grafting. I suspect we all have dead trees which could be revived!
Craig
