I don’t normally like attaching words like “legend” and “one of a kind” to people but I can do some with a certain degree of justification in the case of Roger Oldham, British Shohin Bonsai’s oldest member,who sadly died this week. Although he had been successfully managed both a heart condition and diabetes for many years, it seems that 40 plus years of working in the chemical industry had caused a lung issue that he was unable to pull himself out of.  Knowing Roger, he would have put up one hell of a fight.

Rather than try to write an obituary, I thought it would be better to reproduce an article that appeared in the BSA Newsletter in 2012 which I feel sum him up far better than any sad words can ever do.  Here goes:

It is a wet and raw Friday afternoon in October and I am sitting in…

We have a pot. You may remember this calcium and lime riddled pot from that popular and witty post:Buy the Trunk, not the Branches. The tree featured was suffering pretty badly from chlorosis and neglect.

Our pot has what could be called “patina”. Lots of patina. I might even call it “the Florida Patina”…. even. Way too much, in my opinion. It’s the result of the Florida water, of which our source is an aquifer (the Floridan Aquifer System) located underneath most of the state and is encased in carbonate rock (fossilized coral really) that was formed during the Paleocene to Miocene eras when Florida was underwater. The water in the aquifer is estimated at about 17-26,000 years old, not that old really. The water in Orlando is drawn from what’s called the deep aquifer….

Which is on the edge of the true Floridan aquifer. But our poor…