That's the way to pronounce those little "trees in a tray,'' Fred Nowak told members of the Memphis Horticultural Society about recently.

Fred's enthusiasm for the miniature trees of the Orient was so infectious I actually thought of buying one. But then I remembered how I'm not so keen on plants that need a lot of grooming and care. And somehow giving trees fertilizer to keep them healthy but then pruning them back to keep them small seems counter-intuitive to me.

I don't have the patience to carefully wrap wire around the limbs so they can be coaxed into a position nature didn't intend for them to take.

But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the art form, and it is art because the owner of the tree "sculpts" an entirely new creation from nature's raw materials. It's amazing how bonsai enthusiasts can make a relatively yonng tree look old, weathered and/or contorted.

Bonsai can be an expensive hobby as evidenced by Fred's slide of a rare five-needle pine bonsai priced at $25,000. But he takes a more affordable approach. He might splurge on a great nursery-grown tree now and then, but he also gets great pleasure in turning a $5.95 basic juniper into a cascading bonsai with his careful training and pruning.

He also grows potential bonsais from seeds and cuttings.

His own collection has been edited down from 40 trees to 30. One or two were lost to spider mites that inflicted fatal damage before he noticed them. Others were under or over-watered. Every gardener worth his gloves kills a few plants along their way to learning what they should have done differently.

Fred loves working with the trees in his bonsai garden, a space outlined with tables that put the trees at a level where they can be easily viewed and groomed.

When he's out there, hours pass before he knows it. And isn't that what happens to all of us when we are doing something we love?