An art form that allows her to transcend time and approach a Zen-like state is how a Dunedin proponent describes bonsai.
Otago Bonsai Society president Joy Morton says it helped her through some difficult times.
Mrs Morton is helping run a workshop to introduce others to bonsai over Waitangi weekend.
She said at the Dunedin Community Art Gallery yesterday she came across the art of developing miniature trees about 46 years ago, when she was facing difficult times in her life.
Her daughter was in hospital with nephrotic syndrome, from which rugby star Jonah Lomu suffered, at the same time as her father was involved in a farming accident in which he was crushed by a tractor.
‘‘I saw in a book when my daughter was in hospital a display of bonsai."
With the permission of one of the sisters working at the hospital, she ripped the article out - she still has it - and took it home.
While her daughter lived, her father died, and bonsai helped her.
‘‘That was a thing that got me through a lot of things at that time.
‘‘It's my life, I just love it. I can't think of life without bonsai. It's captivating.''
That included days when she went outside at 10am to tend to her plants, forgot to have lunch, and her husband walked around the corner and said ‘‘where's my tea?''.
‘‘You forget everything - you go into a Zen zone, I suppose.''
She had never counted her collection, but had ‘‘round about 700, and that's just a blind guess''.
The society got good numbers for workshops, and had four or five people booked in for today. People would be taught to develop a tree and ‘‘how to do a tree with style''.
While pine, cedar and maple were the most common trees used traditionally, in New Zealand people used black beech, kowhai, totara and even hebes.
The workshops and display, open to the public, finish this afternoon.
