Anyone who’s watched_ The Karate Kid_ knows that Mr. Miyagi had a fondness for bonsai trees. He meticulously trimmed them in his shop and in his home, and _Karate Kid 3 _was all about

saving a bonsai tree_. _Heck, a bonsai was even his dojo’s symbol that appeared on the gi (karate clothing). And now I, too, have a fondness for bonsai. I owe much to Mr. Miyagi (played by

Japanese actor Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, who died in 2005). I credit nostalgia. I’m a 1980s kid, and like any good and proper ’80s kid, I grew up on a steady diet ofcartoons created to sell

toys,Duran Duran and, of course, _The Karate Kid_. I was one of thousands (millions?) of kids practicing the crane kick in my backyard, on top of whatever stump I could get my grubby little

things, such as slap bracelets and recording Van Halen songs off the radio to round out my killer mix tapes. Fast-forward 20-plus years to the _Groundhog Day_-esqe repetitive nature of COVID

lockdowns. My wife and I have two young children, who made it their mission to bludgeon my sanity with YouTube videos, video games and endless requests for whatever new (and terrible) toy

appeared during the last commercial break. We love our outdoor time, but we live in the South and can only be so active when it is approximately 200 degrees with 150 percent humidity. “The

Karate Kid, Part III,” from left: Ralph Macchio, Pat Morita, 1989. Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection One day after putting the kids down for the night, I was on Netflix when it

recommended _Cobra Kai_, a 2018 reboot of the popular ’80s film franchise. I’d heard about this show but assumed it was just a joke regarding the lack of original intellectual property

coming out of Hollywood, like going back to the well 10 times with _The_ _Fast & the Furious_ franchise, when six was obviously the right amount. But it was real and starred two of the

original cast: Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). I was immediately all in and binged four seasons in under a week, with no regrets. My wife, two kids and I

also rewatched the first three _Karate Kid_ movies and considered changing the name of our 4-year old to Daniel. It was rad. While revisiting the _Karate Kid_ Cinematic Universe (the KKCU?),

something became apparent that I didn’t catch the first time around: Mr. Miyagi really likes bonsai, and I’ll be darned if the KKCU (I’m just going to make this a thing now) didn’t get me

to bite and proceed to set the hook with the fantastic trees in seemingly every other scene in _Cobra Kai_. I find bonsai, roughly translated from Japanese to “tree in a pot,” to be

particularly appealing. It addresses my twin hearts: art and horticulture, the science of growing things. Bonsai’s goal is creating a miniature version (the art bit) of a very old tree (the

horticulture bit). Any tree species can be a bonsai, but some are better suited to life in a pot and miniaturization. What started out as a dopey hobby borne from my _Karate Kid_ bingeing

ended up having a transformative effect on me. Like a grasshopper to a butterfly, or something like that. I went to my local nursery in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and purchased a bonsai

pot, soil and training wire. Then I moseyed to the Home Depot and plucked a dwarf Alberta spruce in a 3-gallon pot from a sale rack. Almost any tree can be turned into a bonsai, and my first

one was going to be a clearance-special training tree. I named him Daniel — Danny, for short. After I put Danny in the pot, I broke out my pruning shears, went to town and proceeded to make

a whole mess of beginner mistakes. I had retained just enough information from _KK1_ and Reddit to be dangerous, but not enough to even approach being good. Here’s my first piece of advice:

You can always cut a branch off, but you can’t put it back. This is particularly true with conifers (cone-bearing trees). I aspired for an ancient, wise tree that might invoke memories of

Mr. Miyagi. Instead, I ended up with an anemic model of 1984 Ralph Macchio.