It was the summer of 1979 and Dr. Sun had a project for me that was beyond the regular lawn mowing at his Limekiln Lake camp property. The camp was the last one on the North Shore and the most luxurious cottage on the lake.
It was one of the few that had a wide sweeping lakefront lawn.
Tucked against the house were 20 or so low growing Cedar trees that made for a nice two foot tall natural fencing to break up the yard.
That spring I had spent a lot of time raking leaves, pine needles and freshening up the plantings.
I had sealed the large driveway with 15 five-gallon buckets of stinky black driveway sealer.
The sealer had found its way to my sneakers and coated them with a permanent water barrier that proved great for backwoods excursions.
It was a perfect July weekend when I showed up ready to mow the lawn.
Dr. Sun was out in the yard in his over-sized shorts and old t-shirt.
He had a mug of coffee in his hand and grinning wide as I strolled down the driveway with my mower.
Though his English was pretty good it was still very difficult for me to understand him.
But he was very patient with me as he explained his newest ideas for the property.
He made tons of gestures with his hands while we toured the property.
He showed me where he wanted to open up an area around the feeder creek next to the driveway, so he could build a water feature with a pool for fish and some adornments.
Then he made a beeline to the two-foot tall Cedar accent bushes and started to explain what he wanted to do to make them beautiful.
He had already started to trim one out with a pair of small pruning shears.
He had almost stripped the small bush clean of its smaller branches and most of its green foliage.
I stood there a for a while taking it all in. The nearly-naked Cedar stared back at me as if it was pleading with me to make the pruning stop.
Dr. Sun said he would pay me well to find the inner perfection of each of these trees.
I paused, took off my ball cap and squatted down in front of the stark plant trying to figure out what the heck he was asking me to do.
The confused look on my face must have tipped him off that I was not yet fully on board with this project.
I spoke right up and asked, “Wont this just kill ‘em?”
“You just try one and see if you can make Bonsai,” he said.
I had never seen nor heard of Bonsai tree sculptures.
I mean, it never occurred to me to cut anything off a tree unless it was dead, in the way, or if it looked like it would make a great hotdog or marshmallow cooking stick.
I toiled away for more than a week on the project. For a couple hours a day I tried to find the inner perfection of each of those Cedars.
When I was finished all I could see were scalped and scarred little trees that were pretty near ugly. But it was my first experience with giving a customer what they wanted.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com