What I've learned about bonsai so far

I've decided to crank up my interest and involvement in bonsai. I really enjoy growing things, and I think that bonsai is a great way to grow something that's a bit more interesting than a typical houseplant.

I've had houseplants before—I used to have three of them in my room. Here's one of them, and here's another. And now you can see why I don't have those plants anymore.

So, back to the topic at hand. I want to practice bonsai because I'd like to do something more than just try to make a plant grow—I'd like to shape what it looks like, too.

Although I haven't gotten any responses to my inquiry, I'll go ahead and list what I've found so far in the belief that most of you haven't seen to much about growing itty bitty plants.

• Bonsai really just means "plant in a tray." Technically, tray growth. Although some of the most striking bonsai look like miniature trees, it's just as reasaonable to bonsai up something that looks like a regular houseplant.
  
• Most bonsai are grown outdoors. I actually didn't know this when I started looking into it. I had just assumed that most are grown indoors. This makes getting information on how to grow bonsai inside an office really difficult.
  
• It's really easy to grow ficus. I sortof knew this already, but apparantely the ficus is one of the most popular beginner bonsais. They're really difficult to kill.
  
• The local Borders has all the bonsai books positioned right next to the shoplifting alarm so that every time you pull a book off the shelf it makes the alarm go off and the manager comes and yells at you. Ahem.
  

And that's most of it. I also found out that there are at least two shops that specialize in bonsai locally, so I'll probably hit up one of them sometime soon.