While away for 6 weeks my work-mates in the crowded work space ignored the bonsai. By all accounts it was very close to dead. So it was whisked away from them by another more observant work colleague and placed downstairs where it was daily placed outside, by a third and very diligent colleague, so as to receive sunshine and likely lots of rain as well. The plant has flourished!
Really flourished! It’s now a mass of green fronds and tilts extremely to one angle as the starved death throes of a plant, eagerly sought the sun. It now looks to me like a fluffy misshapen ball of green with no elegance or sophistication. Alive yes, irrefutably. But no longer a bonsai. On my return it was proudly given back and sits on my desk as a large green blob. Clearly the Cambodian staff member who happily adopted it didn’t know of the bonsai concept or maybe the plant was so naked and unhappy it was impossible to even see the shaping that it had had. So the plant has been saved. While the bonsai has not been saved.
Bonsai is all about shaping the natural tree but placing it in a restrictive environment. Branches are stripped from the main trunk and remaining branches are made into a specific shape. Not a good attitude to have to the tree, is it? The concept of bonsai in Cambodia is rough and ready even by gardeners, as the concept is vaguely adapted by Cambodian gardeners who saw the idea come here with Chinese gardeners. Yet my original bonsai was charming despite it only being worth US$2, bought at a nursery near the work office. There is a logic in my Cambodian colleagues not being aware of the pruning that would have been required to maintain the bonsai.
Now the dilemma is do I put up with the misshapen small shrubbery on my desk that no longer relates to the concept of a bonsai? Or do I live in a materialistic culture where I ditch it by giving it away and go and buy another plant more to my liking. Probably not a new bonsai as the concept now bothers me; especially as I am selfishly rejecting the new non-restricted bonsai even more, than the original highly styled little plant, did already slightly bother my ethics.
