Another Yew that got thinned out today.
Before
after
You would think I had no trees of my own 🙂 As I have some of Mario’s bonsai to look after for a few years while he’s in Dubai, I gave them a check today to see how tight the wire was. Both his little White Pine and his Juniper needed to have the wire removed. Not a big job, here they are after wire removal.
The very top bit of foliage on the Juniper is a sacrifice branch that will be made into jin to match the rest of the tree once it has thickened sufficiently.
Happy days, I thought they had switched to Japanese Gardens 😀
This is a great one looking at Japanese White Pine. Interesting to hear how they feed them to control needle length in Japan.
Click on the image to view on You Tube.
Now that Josh’s trees are nearly all away home again after holiday care, I have just taken possession of Brian’s trees while he floats around on a Narrow Boat for a few weeks.
He dropped off his trees yesterday, and today I moved a few around the benches to make better use of space. I took this opportunity to take a few photos.
This is his Alder.
Shohin Pyracantha
Chamaecyparis Obtusa
Golden Yew
Brian lives in an exposed spot along the shore and has struggled to keep a few species in good health since he moved there I few years ago. He says ‘enough is enough’ and is now selling a few of them. This Beech is one of them. You can see that the leaves had been severely wind burned this year but the tree has put out another flush. Obviously a strong tree.
He has left them with me for care and to sell. A few others as well if anyone locally is interested. A beech group, a cascade juniper, Korean Hornbeam, Fuji Cherry and a Chinese Juniper.
What a strange year it’s been for our trees. I’m seeing signs of Autumn all around the garden and not always where you would expect it.
This is one of my Crab Apples, well on the way to leaf drop.
This is a Beech Forest that belongs to my friend Josh. One of the stragglers still to make it home after the Summer care. If you are wondering what the yellow bit is, it’s a rope off a kids swing that has been wound around the slate edge for a year to allow loose soil from the repot to mesh together.
This is my Hawthorn Raft already dropping leaves, not much in the way of colour though.
This Rhododendron usually only flowers in March. Over the last week or so it’s had flowers opening. They started at the extreme right and have been working their way back along the tree.
If you haven’t already come across the Kevin Willson Carving videos on Bonsai Basho, you should give them a look.
Not much chat past the first episode but interesting to see his technique all the same.
Here’s a link to Basho’s You Tube Channel. Just click the image below.
Another tree added to the My Bonsai Tab.
This one is a Large Trident Maple. I’m not even going to attempt to figure out it’s size classification, I’ll just call it a ‘Big Wee Tree’ 😀
This is it in 2003
and in 2011
View page HERE.
Am I the only person to find the sizing classifications of bonsai a real pain?
Everywhere I look on the Internet I see different classifications. Some are similar and some have no resemblance at all. Some are classes in themselves and others call the same thing a sub category of a size class.
Peter, from Willowbog Bonsai, queried my sizing of a Trident Maple I have in another post. He was spot on, I had it down as a Kifu size tree when Chuhin would be more accurate. I could also call it Katade-mochi!
The Japanese Maple I call Chuhin could be called Kifu , although some would say Kifu is a sub category of Chuhin and others don’t even mention kifu as a size at all.
From what little I know about all this, in Japan they don’t worry too much about sizes and measuring tapes are never seen at exhibition. It’s more down to the feel of the tree than the dimensions.
I know there are some very knowledgeable folk out there reading this, either for amusement or through friendship 😀 , Id be interested to here your views.
Here are some of the sizes I have stumbled across on the net.
I have added Peter’s and my own comments from the other post below to explain how this topic became my focus for the morning 🙂
is Kifu not between shohin and chuhin ?? surely that trident is a fairly big tree ??
they all look very well !! lots of nice maples throughout the UK lost following the last 2 winters !!
Sizes confuse me a tad to be honest. Everything I read contradicts! Some don’t have Kifu at all. I have done a bit more googling this morning and have come to the decision that no one agrees on this at all. The Japanese Maple above, that I have called Chuhin, is 28 cm tall and could be called Kifu or Chuhin. The Trident is 48cm tall and, as you say would be better called Chuhin as well. However it could also be called Katade-mochi! There seems to be about 3 different size classification for Bonsai out there. Considering how complicated bonsai is, this doesn’t surprise me! 
I think I’ll just stick to calling the Trident ‘Stratford’ to differentiate it from the others 
Might be worth a post on the blog about this 
I sympathise with what you say !! I was lucky enough to win best Kifu at the N.Trophy a few years back with a P. densiflora that I thought was shohin , talking to Marco about it later he claimed to have never heard of Kifu despite his time in Japan ! many years ago in B.Today there was an interesting article that had been taken from Kinbon, where a few Japanese masters got together to discuss what constituted bunjin style , the consensus seemed to me, at least, to be that a tree had to ” feel ” like a bunjin to the viewer !!!! never mind thinking about style criteria , I think the size issue is a bit like that as well , no matter what a tape measure says, the bonsai has to ” feel ” like a shohin , chuhin or whatever , John Armitage reports that he has never seen a tape measure used in shohin bonsai shows in Japan , they are more interested in just enjoying the trees than worrying about size , of course , the other side to that is that I suppose generally folk know what is appropriate for each show and what it not !! I good example is bunjin style in the shohin category , this style of bonsai can be still shohin and yet be much taller than the 22 or 25 cms height limit !! alternatively I believe that a tree that in all respects seems ” big ” can be within the height limit for chuhin and yet not really be appropriate for the category .
confusing ? perhaps just to western minds !!!
Still trying to add more trees to the My Bonsai Tab.
The latest one is this Hawthorn Raft. Click the image to view the page.
Today I finally got around to pulling a few trees out from the very back of the poly tunnel. Well, my son did, I’m trying my best not to muck up my bad neck!
This Celtis had grown vigorously whist I was on holiday but I couldn’t reach it for a trim. This was it when I eventually got it out of the tunnel.
This is only it’s second year in a pot after being field grown for 7 years. It has a lot of development to go before it looks like anything. Read more HERE
This was it after a quick haircut. I would normally just have left it at this stage with it being so close to Autumn, but I needed to get it back into the poly tunnel without taking up too much room!
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