Dr A's Bonsai

mini tree journey

During lockdown, I was overwhelmed. The workload was horrendous, the lack of any expressive outlet even for someone that can get busy doing nothing most of the time, felt almost like being imprisoned. I knew I always enjoyed gardening and when the opportunity came, I definitely did more of that. But, it just wasn’t enough, I wanted something to occupy my mind throughout the year. I just figured, to keep busy, by messing around with some small trees & trying to get them looking a bit nicer over time. It was like having a small garden indoors during the winter, that I could play with and keep myself sane and busy, and something that required a bit more of my attention to stay alive and thrive.

This is one of my hobbies now. It took hold just by watching some videos on YouTube and it became an obsession. As obsessions go it became a passion, and now I spent a lot of my free time in a state of almost serene mindfulness looking after these small trees. Spending sometimes a couple of minutes and other times, hours just trimming them, bending them to shape and cultivating & propagating them. It feels exciting - but calm at the same time.

This is my way of documenting that journey. Just because each little tree has its story and it would be unfair to not document it.

They were all started from basic material, collected or bought. None of the trees received much in terms of training and I am cheap, I don’t spend a lot of money on trees - just because I feel I want to get them from a state of minimal development to something that I think looks beautiful.

I am no expert, I don’t have a shop, I make mistakes and I will document as much of it as I can. I have started being a bit more mindful of recording things now. I know that for some of the trees you will have nothing more to go with than my word and for others just some screenshots from ebay or wherever else I bought the tree from. But I am trying to be better and document the process better.

In the blog you will see the journey of each tree as I find some time to update it. Hopefully at some point I can record some of the work that I do to those trees and it might be worth doing short videos to show the process.

Thanks for dropping by - even if you hate it, this website just serves as an expansion of the hobby anyway. And feedback is always good.

Take care

- Dr A