Tending tiny trees isn’t exactly like raising small people, yet bonsai elicit extraordinary emotions from their growers. And the pot-grown minis do have a lot going for them. These small trees are arboreal haiku, horticultural poetry, representing an art form, a philosophy, a tradition, and all of nature itself. `Bonsai are like our children,` Fuyumi Iimura told the New York Times (paywall). Iimura and her husband Seiji run a fifth-generation bonsai shop in Kawaguchi, a city near Tokyo. The couple lost seven small trees worth $90,000 to thieves last month, including a 33-inch, four-century-old Shimpaku she has been tending for 25 years. `They are our children who have been living for...
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