Apr 8 2012

Happy Easter

Happy Easter, and as it’s Easter Sunday, I’m not taking my usual walk. However, here are a few from last weekend that I haven’t shared as yet.

I was just talking to Stephen on the walk about how you rarely see wild Primrose any more and about 100 yards later we see this 🙂

On Easter Sunday Scrabo Tower is a busy place to walk as many people attend a Sunrise service and in the afternoon many local children, mine included, roll their eggs down the hill.

Stephen snapping away

Gorse/Whinbushes covering the quarry face

Blackthorn in Flower

The next Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke , Fred Daly or Graeme McDowell.

Northern Ireland is the promised land for golf’s best players 🙂

This is Scrabo Golf Club. A tight course!

Some of Strangford Lough’s 365 Islands

Patchwork Quilt, County Down

Wild Flowers

Scrabo is famous for it’s bluebells. These are among the first to appear.

Blackthorn Hedge

Spring is Sprung

Doggie Dust Trails 🙂

Amazing trunk on an old Hazel

Apr 7 2012

Clean Up

As part of my concerns regarding the health of my maples I emptied my maple greenhouse today and disinfected it from top to bottom.

I also renewed my accent and mame grit trays. I spent a little time splitting some of my pot bound accent plants and potting on some cork bark elm cuttings too. A productive afternoon and long over due!!

Apr 7 2012

Ben Bonsai Ben

Yes, two Ben’s 🙂 Both were at my place last weekend and had a tree or two with them. Here’s what they brought.

First up Ben F. A Fuji Cherry

Ben’s Inherited Japanese Black Pine .

The first styling of his Japanese Larch

and Ben B’s trees. His Fuji before pruning.

and after

His Scots Pine, we gave it a little bud selection and removed some old needles. Ben plans to style this in a Peter Warren Workshop in October.

Apr 6 2012

Petit-arbre.com

One of the best parts of having a blog is the great folk who you make contact with. A week or so ago I got chatting with Xavier from France who has his own blog www.petit-arbre.com [now upgraded to bonsai friends list to the right →] He liked the coltsfoot I had featured and we got to talking, anyway, one thing led to another and I received a parcel yesterday from Xavier containing a selection of Hostas and Rhodohypoxis 🙂 Another parcel is winging it’s way to France with some Coltsfoot and other oddities. This is what Bonsai is all about, or in this case, kusamono 🙂

To visit Xaviers Website click on the image link below. Google translate works very well from French to English.

Apr 6 2012

Pleione Orchid Accent

This Pleione Orchid is emerging and will flower in the next few days. Short lived flower but worth it.

Apr 6 2012

The Latest Bonsai Art of Japan Video

It has it all, Kokufu, loads of trees, interviews, YMCA and Peter Warren in a tie!!

Apr 5 2012

Tufa Rock Landscape

I was given this lump of Tufa by Josh about a year ago. We had been talking about rock plantings and I mentioned that I’d been looking for a weathered piece of tufa but could never find a suitable one. He said, ‘Hold on a minute’, disappeared around the side of the garage and came back with this in his hand. It was already mossing up nicely and has gotten better in the last year.

I’m not planning anything too fancy with it. I just wanted a natural lump of stone with a few odd bits and pieces clinging to the rock face so to speak. I have added a few cotoneasters, an elm, a hawthorn, a creeping willow and a flowering current! With the flowering plants and different types of foliage it should make an interesting object to look at in a few years time. It’s still very early days. The cascade cotoneaster isn’t right and will probably be replaced once I find a suitable replacement. Everything else needs to mature.

The Elm clinging to the rock

The flowering current, not the usual one you see in gardens I might add, this is a climbing one that with some leaf removal and pruning in the next few years will make a nice splash of colour on the rock.

A cascading Hawthorn

A dwarf willow that will climb down the back of the rock and create a very nice image on a bare uninteresting part of the rock. I have seen this used before by Stephen, aka bonsai baker to great effect.

The moss is delightful 🙂

I keep it under a bench in the shade to encourage the moss and keep it moist. Ideally I would like another smaller piece of tufa to add to the finished image by making it look like two islands sitting in a water suiban. Aiming for something like this 🙂

Apr 5 2012

Very P1$$ed Off!!

My Chuhin Maple and a few other maples have been eaten by something! The buggers have stripped bark on branches causing either very slow budding or branch death! Could it be slugs, never had this before and of all my trees to eat they picked this one.

The damage can be seen clearly on this little maple that died as a result as it was on the trunk.

Fingers crossed I don’t loose too many branches, only time will tell. It’s already been set back quite a bit.

Apr 4 2012

Snow in the Mournes

I jokingly added a post on April Fool’s Day about there being snow in my garden. Here we are a few days later and it has snowed in many places in the UK. We have been lucky here in Northern Ireland with snow only lying on high ground. I took this photo this morning with my mobile phone when I was working in Newcastle, County Down. White tops on the Mourne Mountains.

This is one taken in the North of England today. After high temperatures last week and spending a little time basking in the sun, we dropped back below zero!

Apr 4 2012

Shohin Japanese Maple

This little maple is about to come into leaf.

I recently read somewhere that if you remove the stipules from the bud as it opens it allows the stalk to dry out faster which causes the inter-nodal length to become shorter. A desirable feature in shohin maples.