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A new start :)

After a longish pause I have decided to restart my bonsaiblog. I hope this will help me to document my work in a more consistent way and as a side effect I hope the blog will give inspiration to fellow Finnish bonsai enthusiasts. We are not that many up here in the north, and bonsai is not yet an advanced hobby for many. I'll put up some links in the sidebar to Finnish blogs I find worth a look at, and other places of interest for the Finnish enthusiast. The shops are the ones I have good experience of, those that have delivered their orders promptly, and with whom it has never been a problem to deal. I hope you too find their sites worth a visit. And I encourage you to take a look at the Finnish bonsai association Kitabis pages (so far only in Finnish). The members of Kitabi are gathering six to seven times a year in the Helsinki area, to talk over specific themes, and to work on different trees.

You might wonder about the language I have chosen for the blog. A Finnish bonsai blog written in English? The reason is simple, I think a lot more of my friends are able to read if I write in English. I have bonsai buddies who speak Finnish, Swedish, English and German. I find blogs written in several languages a bit hard to read, and, speaking out of experience, it takes a lot of time to write good blog texts in several languages. I myself is Swedish speaking, so Finnish wouldn't be my native tongue anyway.

When you read about my trees, take into consideration that I live in the south of Finland, zone 5 in Europe, and when looking at just Finland zone 1b. Here is a good climate zone map on Morten Albek's Shohin site. The climate in other parts of the country might require different time schedules (and those will vary from year to year too) and different measurements for for example winter shelters for the trees.

Then who am I? My name is Maud and I'm a mother of four teenagers and owner of two dogs. I take a deep interest in Japanese cooking, but Italian cooking is also close to my heart. A lot of my free time is dedicated to my dogs and work for their breed club, where I function as secretary. I'm lucky enough to live in a house with plenty of winter storage space suitable for trees in the cellar and a with Finnish city standards taken quite big garden. I have been interested in bonsai since the mid 80's when I came into contact with bonsai while living in Munich, Germany. I have been an active enthusiast since the beginning of this century, and I have visited several big bonsai shows in order to see and learn more than what is possible in this country. Right now I have between forty and fifty trees, most of them native Finnish trees, but also a lot of Japanese maples and other more sensitive trees.

Well, I hope you find interest in my site and will return again! Until then, bye!