Awhile back I was given some bonsai trees. Actually, I won them in a silent auction, inasmuch as you can “win” anything for $45. I’ve always vaguely wanted a bonsai (pronounced bone’s-eye, as I learned from the expert who gave them to me), and now I have two. As I type this, they are leering at me. They are saying, “Neglectful woman!”  They are saying, “Call Child and Family Services, we’d like to report a case of tree neglect!” If a bone’s-eye expert came to this house right now, he or she gasp and slap me.

It’s not so much that the bone’s-eyes are lacking for water or sunlight—no, they have so much of both of those that they are starting to look like shrubbery. And that’s the problem. Bone’s-eyes are supposed to be tiny, jewel-like works of art, yet in my hands they are transforming into potted lunatics. Overgrown, untended, liable to send bombs in the mail…I need to take some pruning scissors to these trees before somebody gets hurt.

Part of the problem with the one bone’s-eye is that I’d had it in my backyard but a week when the neighbor’s three-year-old tipped it over and replaced its expensive, rarefied potting soil with great grubby pawfuls of dirt, leaves, whatever happened to be lying around. Unfortunately, this exchange took place right where I’d dumped a pile of super-gro potting soil the year before (as part of my “gardening” experiment, which yielded many bugs), and so now that bone’s-eye is being nourished by chemicals the likes of which its organic little roots have never dreamed of. Up, up, up it grows, along with assorted tiny weeds and grasses that have taken root in their luxurious new lair.

Occasionally, squirrels and other animals will stop by to nibble on the bone’s-eyes’ leaves, but it’s a well-known fact that squirrels have little aesthetic sense in the realm of horticulture, and so the bone’s-eyes end up looking frazzled rather than pruned. It’s as though, rather than opting for a haircut in a salon, I simply laid my head down and let wandering animals gnaw at my locks instead. Which believe me, I’ve thought about. And am now thinking about again.

Banzai!