Five #2
“You have a good eye. That seki-joju is my favorite too.” His voice was precise, almost clipped, and with an accent I couldn’t place.
When I looked up the speaker did not belong to the words.
He was a thin framed man of very average height with long intensely blond hair bound tightly back in a bun, leaving his very chilly blue eyes as his most prominent feature.
He was slight enough that even in my lame state I could’ve knocked him flat easily.
Despite his physical appearance he was intimidating.
Maybe it was the square of his shoulders or his high held head, but he looked like a seven‐year‐old buck with full antlers, entirely certain of himself and master of all he surveyed.
The only response I could manage was, “The what?”
“The seki-joju pine. It doesn’t translate very well but it’s the tree clinging to the rock.
” The man ran his finger across the square edge of the dull black pot.
“I’m Ulrich Baumgartner.” He extended his hand which I shook.
“I understand these are all for sale if you are interested. I’m just here to check on and water a few. ”
“Sekay-goge, what is that?” The words were toffee in my mouth.
He smiled at the effort, “It’s Japanese. Bonsai is the Japanese artform of tree nurturing. Seki-joju identifies a tree that grows its roots over a rock.”
He looked as much like someone from Japan as I did, which was not at all.
He was all European, maybe German, or Russian.
But what did I know, I’d only left the Pacific Northwest twice in my life, and never set foot in Japan.
“It’s cool. It reminds me of the trees growing off cliff faces.
This whole display feels like walking through a forest.”
His smile widened, but despite its openness his measured movements and icy eyes still chilled me. “Good. I tried to arrange the display like a grove.”
“Well, you did a good job. I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods and this felt like home again.”
At this his chilliness melted away and he gestured me inside the green house. “Then you should see what I am working on.”
Inside the greenhouse were shelves of leaf bare trees, all in pots of various shapes and designs.
Some pots contained their own tiny groves, like aspens waiting for the first spring buds.
Others were tall broad giants, just what you wanted to climb under on a hot sunny day.
On one side of the greenhouse was a workbench.
A pair of pots rested on one side of the bench, on the other were a collection of hand tools, pliers, and a small spade.
On the bench itself rested a juniper, naked and potless, its root ball a mass of white twisted growth.
“This was shipped here by mistake. It really needs to be repotted. Given its late dormant season, it also needs a trim and rest before it goes out for sale. I was in the middle when you came into the display.” Then with a natural and careless precision, Ulrich began snipping away the plant’s roots.
I watched as he removed a bit more than half the growth.
Grunting his satisfaction, he cleared away the trimmings and pulled a tall squarish pot toward the center of the work space.
“Doesn’t it hurt the tree?”
Smiling over his shoulder at me, he said, “This is the secret of the bonsai. A tree in the wild expands its roots ever outward looking for more nutrients. When the roots are trimmed the bonsai must send nutrients to grow new ones instead of growing tall. Over time it still takes on the characteristics of a full‐grown tree, but without the expanding foundation it will always remain small.”
Something about that felt wrong. Shouldn’t the tree grow big and tall? Didn’t keeping it small rob it of its destiny?
I must have said something to that effect because Ulrich nodded thoughtfully.
“Each bonsai has its own shape, and while it may resemble another it is not another. It is unique. And just like its shape, each tree has its own place in the grove and its life.” Then he shrugged, “Well that’s what I say, but they are just trees in a store meant to go in someone’s garden or home.
But it’s also important to remember that the pot itself is part of the tree’s foundation. ”
As he spoke, Ulrich filled the bottom of the squarish pot with soil before settling the bonsai into the pot, fitting its roots inside and covering all of it with more soil mixture.
“This juniper is in a han-genki style, or semi cascade. See how it flows upward and then down to the side.” Settled in the pot, the tree did bend up and out with its canopy, the farthest branch ending just below the height of the top lip of the pot instead of high in the air.
“This pot is bottom heavy and very solid, helping to keep the plant balanced. The pot itself takes on part of the tree’s foundation, in this case the tap root, anchoring it in place.
Bonsai are both wild and cultivated. Take either away and the plant either dies or you don’t have a bonsai, just a houseplant. ”
“Huh.”
Rotating the plant to examine his work he asked casually, “So have you decided which you want to purchase?”
The question felt dirty in comparison to the discussion we’d just had.
Well, it was more of a lecture, but it wasn’t the stale jabbering of my high school teachers and it left me more filled than a math equation.
I’d drunk everything in, reaching into the dirt and sky to find something I was missing, until it became transactional and money entered into it.
“Uh, no. I was really just looking. Lukas said one had been sold and I needed to see if it was the sick-ay-joe-chu,” I said slowly reaching for each syllable.
“Lukas?” The question was genuine as if he didn’t know.
“Lukas Mace, he owns the place. Mace and Maize?”
“Oh, Mr. Mace. Yes.”
“He’s my brother-in-law. I dropped by to see my sister but got sidetracked. I really just love these trees,” I drifted off.
A glimmer of warmth bloomed in his icy blue eyes. “It is easy to get sidetracked among them. I always spend more time than I plan.” Glancing at his watch he added, “Like today. I need to clean up. I have another stop to make and will have to come back next week to do all the trimming I’d planned.”
“Next week?”
“My main studio is in Seattle. A couple of times a month I travel on a circuit to the stores that I sell to.” Ulrich carried out the cascading juniper and placed it in an empty spot in the display.”
Looking around he said, “If you’re not going to buy one can you give me a hand while I clean up the greenhouse? Because a tree was sold they aren’t spaced correctly anymore, they need to be adjusted to remove that void.”
Remove the void? Fill in the hole, and just by moving a few things around, place them in a new order.
When you cut down a stand of timber you plant seedlings to fill in afterwards.
This forest wasn’t getting a new seedling, instead it was just being rearranged to make the most of what was left. “Yea, I can do that.”
“Thank you. That would help me make up some time.”
Ulrich disappeared into the greenhouse while I turned my attention to the display
The hole in the display was obvious. Between a semi-cascading juniper and a tall singular sequoia like pine potted in a low thin tray was an uncomfortable emptiness.
The pots weren’t spaced evenly, but this gap was unnatural, like someone had come in and ripped out a tree by the roots and strapped it to a station wagon to claim it for Christmas ornaments.
Or took a potted plant to the register. Hopefully it went to a good home.
Reaching over I started shifting the spacing of the neighboring plants to erase the gap but that was wrong.
After moving four I saw that the entire balance would be off, moving those trees made the display look like a display instead of a forest. Instead, I leaned over, trying to keep weight on my good leg, and lowered my head to the level of the pots, examining them as if I was walking through the forest. The tall tree was out of place.
It demanded attention but the focus was now on a heavily cascading tree reaching below the bottom of its pot.
Those two needed to be equidistant apart.
Careful not to drop them I began swapping plants around.
When I’d finished the sequoia was in its own grove accompanied by the seki-joju with the partially cascading juniper supporting the edge, as if they all lived on an ascending hillside ending in a drop off.
The waterfall-like plant was now in a mixed forest of mostly pines and junipers but intermingled with bare deciduous trees.
Other than the heavily cascading juniper that hung low, these trees were roughly the same height.
Stepping back, I enjoyed the design. It wasn’t a real mountain.
The display bench was all one level, but the variation and arrangement of the trees and their pots gave this impression.
The greenhouse door clicked closed behind Ulrich and he stood for a minute, turning his head one way and then another inspecting the display before settling his head at a slight lean for perspective.
Finally, with a grunt he gave a soft nod, “I’ll be back next Thursday.
” Then Ulrich walked away with a quiet step.
After standing to take in the arrangement, I also left the store.
I didn’t go back to find Kathy or Lukas.
Somewhere in my mind was the concern that they would ask me about Ulrich and I didn’t know what I would say.
I didn’t even know what to think about the grove of Japanese trees and the strange German man tending them, let alone put it into words.
Luckily when I saw Kathy and Lukas at home Ulrich didn’t come up.