This time I wish I had been along on the trip with Mr Monkey Mountain 🙂
Click on the image below to see what wonders he visited.
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Revisiting an old friend
Hey folks, I know its been a while. My gracious sempai Mike Hagedorn was nice enough to do a post about my recent work here at the nursery of Shinji Suzuki, and because of that act of kindness I gained a few new friends here at Reelbonsai. Since I used up all of my good “before and afters” of Juniper on Mike’s blog (Crataegus.com) I had to get creative. Today was a scorcher, mid 90’s with too much humidity, so in between watering and other daily apprentice tasks, I was asked to re-adjust a white pine that I had wired a year before. My teacher bought it from a client, it had grown leggy and out of proportion. Although I don’t have a before pic, here is what this old guy looked like after my first wiring on it.
After the first styling last winter, not bad for the first…
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View From my Bedroom Window this Morning….
Maintenance – Hornbeam & Hawthorn
Before, again all new growth post show on 21st July
After
Hawthorn before. The ramification on this one has doubled this year with numerous maintenance done this growing season.
and after
Josh’s Deciduous Bonsai
Took a little video back on Saturday when Phil and Stephen were here. Here is some of Josh’s bonsai that I’m looking after at the moment.
Maintenance – Trident Maples
A few more before and after trimming
Maintenance – Cotoneasters
In 20 years of bonsai I have never witnessed growth on my trees such as I have seen in the last two weeks. I spend some time on Sunday getting them back into shape.
These two Cotoneaster have been trimmed multiple times this year and this is the growth in just the last 2 weeks.
After trimming. You’ll noticed I missed a bit. I’m making a few changes to the image in that area and I’ve left extension to allow me to do a little wiring and improvement.
This was in a show 2 weeks ago!
And now.
Sunday, Must be a Walk
As usual today saw me walking and admiring the view around my home town.
Strangford Lough
Scrabo Tower
My wee town
Mourne Mountains
Secret things happening in Killynether Wood!!
Patchwork
The Short Straw
Phil and Stephen were at my place today and one of our tasks was to pick out our trees from last years collected Larches. Yet again I got the short straw and last pick!
Ah well, made for an interesting session watching what other people pick as the best tree.
Stephen as usual drank all my coffee 😉
Phil was trying to count how many trees were on the benches and ran out of fingers 🙂
We also photographed a few trees, more on this in future posts.
This was the back garden as we started out and before the camera went away in the thunderstorm. Four trees each.
Working between workshops
Watching these Kathy Shaner demos provides a good reminder to work on rough stock to prepare it for styling later. 40 minutes well-spent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhN4oKgJw6c&sns=em
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72OcyVnVL00&sns=em
It motivated me to take another look at this shimpaku stock that’s been allowed to grow mostly unchecked for the last couple years waiting for just the right opportunity. It has several good alternatives, and I’m not ready to exclude any of them yet…but several branches are unnecessary from any perspective. Best to get them out of the way now, and push that growth back closer to the trunk, and let it “puff up” again, as Kathy put it.
Several potential fronts:
Before:
Reduce branches fom 3 to 2:
Continuing this throughout the tree leaves all the design options on the table, spreads out the branch reduction over time, allows more light into the tree, and improves density in close to the trunk/main branches. Not…
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Bonsai Eejit 