NYbonsai12,
Like most things bonsai: location, location, location, species, species species.... lol.
Thesteve and I have pretty much the same climate so with my pines I do move them to drier areas of the yard as we can get weeks of rain from Oct-June....especially my pondy that came north west from south of the border many years ago.....I'm a long way from its natural geographic distribution.
Cheers Graham