Gandalf, You missed the point. What I am geting at is to be true to the spirit of bonsai a progression is needed BEYOND thanking the Japanese/Chinese for their cultural "gift" to us. If we are to really practice bonsai, as the Japanese do, we have to stop the "hero" worship and get on with it. Of course the Japanese (Chinese, Koreans, South Asians, etc.) are due credit and honor for developing bonsai. The cultural debt is a deep one. However, retaining "the Japanese do it better" inferiority complex won't help us in the least. Bonsai is a dying art in its homeland(s). It's known as an old man's passtime in Japan by and large. The cultural revolution in China pretty much squelched it there. Things are changing in both places. The market for bad mass produced mallsai in Japan is a fast growing one--so much for tradition. China is struggling to emerge as a world power and is struggling with traditions as well. Bonsai's primary driver in the coming decades will be the West and I'm not being an insensitive cultural barbarian. This thought isn't mine. It's been voiced by more than a few Chinese and Japanese bonsai people. Check out this thought in books like Wee Yu Sun's Artistic Potted Plants, or in the statements of more than a couple of Japanese artists over the last few decades. "The term "Americanization" comes to mind. Cultures/peoples/countries across the world resent the fact that their younger counterparts give up on or quit practicing the old beliefs and adopt a "Western" attitude, just so they can be chic or fit in in the popularized way the "Modern/Western" world is." And please stop with the "big bad America" rap. It's quite a tiresome, lazy argument and doesn't apply to Japan in the least. Japan has long been in the "first world" and on the cutting edge of modern technology for quite some time. That's pretty apparent to anyone with a television or a computer. However, in becoming that modern economic power, the Japanese are losing alot of traditions. The country is undergoing a tremendous population shift and dropping traditions right and left. Bonsai is one of those arts. What I am arguing is not to be trapped into thinking that we in the West have nothing to offer bonsai. We do. In fact, we may become its principle repository as Japan's culture continues to change. For what it's worth, you might do some more detailed research on the history of bonsai. The long 1,300 year history you've cited is misleading. There is a huge difference in what was done in China a millenium ago and what the Japanese are doing now. The Chinese collected trees and plunked them into containers without altering them. A majority of the meticulously groomed award winning Japanese bonsai that one sees now in shows and in books have been bonsai for only a short 100 years or less--which is the rough time frame in which bonsai took firm root as a popular passtime in Japan. The gulf between the original Chinese animism, tree spirit container plant and the primped, wire-groomed, power tool-carved Japanese bonsai today is a pretty huge one. I think there may be a thesis in how modern power tools and modern manufacturing capabilities (wire, tools, etc) have dramatically influenced the advancement of bonsai...

Do you know what kind of olive you have? I have a few black olive (bucida spinosa). They have very small, tear drop shape leaves. The internodes are angled as the branch grows. Does this sound like your tree? Vigerous trees have small thorns as well. If this sounds like your tree, drop me an e-mail. I will tell you all I know about my black olives! Jeff

Hello Josh: I have pics below. I think I will move the tree to a smaller pot, like 10" and 5-7" deep, keep the potting soil, instead of bonsai soil. Since I want to see it everyday at my work sooo sooo bad. :D The rootball hopefully will not get affected too much since the soil content originally is about 8" deep or so. :D In March I will make it a bonsai. What do ya think? Risky risky? Little bit okay? :) It will be okay I hope. I will watch it everyday to see how it's going. If it's not doing well, I will post you pics and ask more help then??? Please stay tuned!!! :) Thank you so much for responding to my questions. ;) Pics Notes: - The pic with more foliage is the tree that I already pruned on the right side ( after I pruned it, I said hey I forgot to take a pic of it...) The right side had as much foliage as the left side. - Flower buds are on the right side. - Fruits are on the left. - The pruned tree is about 12-13" tall.

My property is 1/2 sand, and 1/2 clay. 95% of my rose planting area is pure sand. Timely question, as I'll be adding about 20 roses to a new, never planted in area of pure sand this spring, and as soon as the rain stops I'll be grabbing the tractor to dump in some buckets of composted horse manure to mix up in the sand. First, I LOVE working with sand. Digging is heaven. The more you can amend into the ground before planting the better, and then expect to amend the ground whenever you have the energy to do so (at least annually). Everyone's recommendations above are great, so many choices for soil amendments. I'm lucky to have 9 horses, so I mix in a lot of composted manure and hay into my ground. I do have cats, but I find dealing with kitty littler gross (with or without kitty droppings in it), and it just feels so chemical"ish" (poor kitties!) that I can't bring myself to put it in my garden. 90% of my roses are on Dr. Huey, who thrives in sand, and most of the roses you buy locally out here will be on Dr. Huey which is the go-to rootstock for California. The only 2 problems I have with my ground are 1. drying out fast, and 2. gophers. For the first, no matter how well amended my ground is, I have to water every other day to third day all summer. While roses are hardy in sand and will survive without enough water, they will not thrive at all. For gophers, I make hole cages out of 1", 20 gauge chicken wire. I made the mistake for my area which I already know has a dense gopher population, of not first planting cages. I realized after about 80 were planted that gophers loved rose roots, and after losing a handful to gophers, I dug up absolutely every one of those 80 roses, caged the holes, and replanted. Didn't hurt the roses at all, so it does still work as an afterthought if it is found that it is a problem.