Page 76 - BSAM 2018 Q2

Top; A large jade bonsai in Adelaide, Australia
Middle left; Aged Baobab tree (and author’s wife) in Queen’s Park, Bridgetown, Barbados
Middle right; Bougainvillea with a twist at St. George Village Botanical Gardens on St. Croix
Bottom left; Multi-trunk island near boardwalk at Ponce, Puerto Rico
Bottom right; Exposed roots at Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico
Making New Friends.
My experience amply supports this analysis. I’ve made a point of checking out local club websites on many occasions, and sometimes could only manage a phone call or brief encounter with local growers or businesses due to timelines. Even these helped to guide our decisions of where to spend time. On several trips, however, the effort resulted in experiences that were highlights of the vacation, for both of us actually.
The first was during a trip to Australia several year ago. I had, in advance, contacted Alan Jabs in Adelaide, who had previously spent some time with club members in Winnipeg. Alan was extremely kind to not only allow us to check out his collection, but also to spend several hours touring us to other local growers. I gained a great deal of knowledge on several of their popular species, and was amazed to learn how much we actually had in common between dealing with their extreme summer heat, and ourselves dealing with extreme winter cold. We do also experience short durations of excessive heat in summer, although for much shorter periods and not as extreme. Regardless, we both gained from
74 | BCI | April/May/June 2018