Guest Writers

Our Guest Writers

At Bonsai.ie we aim to bring you the best in knowledge from all aspects of Bonsai culture from Japanese Gardens to maintaining and caring for your Bonsai.

Lisa Lane of Koi Pond Guide

Lisa’s website, Koi Pond Guide provides information about Japanese koi fish in all its aspects to help new and existing koi fish owners to learn more about koi fish.
Lisa’s will be writing articles on Koi and Japanese Gardens. Most suitably how to create that piece of Japan in your garden, the pond and plant life. For more information keeping Koi, visit her web site.

Koi fishes are bred all around the world. In fact, they are considered as the most famous freshwater ornamental fishes that live in ponds. They are also known as Nishikigoi, and they are Japan’s national fish. Koi is a mascot of the said country and it also serves as the courier of Japanese culture. Its name is taken from the Japanese word “Nishiki” which is used in describing a highly coloured piece of cloth and “Goior Koi”, the Japanese term for carp. Putting the two words together,  “Nishikigoi” means coloured carp.

Monica Wachman of Butterfly Mountain Press (Aka: Moni)

Monica (Moni) Wachman is a wanderer, an explorer, an artist and a writer. Since her first madcap journey across the United States at the age of 16 Moni has never been able to stay in one place very long. There was always another town or mountain or lake to explore. These explorations were sometimes just visits of days, weeks or perhaps a month or two. Other times she started life over in another city, another state and most recently, in another country. Currently this transplanted Californian is living on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

Through all the travelling, there has always been something to draw, photograph or write about. Sometimes places or experiences inspired poetry, others were woven into tales, some embellished, others not. One clown wedding, an unusual but fun and colorful affair, resulted in the birth of a play as well as countless works of poetry and a book that is still in the works.

Though for the present, Moni has taken root on Vancouver Island, she has not stopped travelling. In 2008 she bought a motor home and took a three month trip across Canada, driving the length of the Trans Canada Highway from Victoria to Halifax. With her very spoiled ex-actor cat Mouchie playing co-pilot, Monica met people all across this vast nation of mountains, prairies and an endless supply of lakes. Guess what? She came back with more stories, enough to fill a book, or maybe two.

Moni is also a freelance travel and business writer with the ability to write on a great many subjects. She writes for several online firms and various private parties mostly in Canada and the United States. Moni is also involved in marketing, producing and directing plays for Stage West Players in Sooke, B.C. One of her plays will be produced in the spring of 2010.

After the play closes, Moni plans to be off in her motor home, named Ezzie, to drive the old Route 66 in the United States. But she is taking her computer and will be writing along the way. Oh yes, her co-pilot Mouchie will have his whiskered self along for the ride. Someone has to navigate.

Her email is esmereldarose@msn.com