That’s Munster not Monster!

Phil and I travelling down to Cork City on Friday, roughly 300 miles. The Munster Bonsai Club is only up and running 5 months and is keen for new members and hope that by bringing us down for regular sessions that we might attract a few others to the club.  

Plans were for a meeting on the Friday night were Phil would do a little demo on a Scots Pine showing a few techniques while I worked my way through some of the members trees doing a critique. Those attending on the Friday brought plenty of trees to chose from and we had a great night. It was obvious that the guys there are totally in love with bonsai, many of you already know that feeling. When people start talking about trees, you could feel the buzz in the room.

setting up

ready to go

study of demo tree

edge of your seat stuff

After the meeting we travelled home with Piotr our host for the weekend. He lives 50 minutes away by his driving standard 😉

On our return to the club for the workshop on the Saturday I was delighted to see everyone there and raring to go on time. We always start with each workshop participant picking one main tree for the day to discuss before we begin actual work on the tree. This way everyone can learn for everyone elses tree. We had a real mixture of trees to work with from large raw pines to a small Hinoki Cypress. We also covered a few other topics as a spin off to the tree critiques like repotting and feeding.

As time moved on we all got working on trees and again the enthusiasm showed in their application to the tasks at hand. In some cases one tree was enough while others were able to work on several during the course of the day. It’s important to state that work done was what was best for the tree on the day, not trying to achieve a finished image, the only target for the session was maximum learning and I think that was achieved. We managed this while having some great craic in the process.

Team shot

lets get started

getting afew before shots

Peter’s 5 needle pine before

Ray’s challenging Scots Pine

nice natural shari

and great bark even on the branches

Matt’s Lonicera before

base detail

Piotr’s Yew before

Adam’s Hinoki before

work underway

busy busy

Adam looking for nits 🙂

Matt and Peter in action

Peter between smoke breaks

Ray wiring away

Piotr looking for options

Peter wiring away

Adam’s Hinoki after

Mark’s Larch after

Matt’s Lonicera after

Peter’s Pine after

Bending time

A rare shot of Mark, good at ducking cameras

Ray’s Pine after

Piotr’s Yew after

I would like to thank Piotr, Adam, Matt, Mark, Ray and Peter for  making the day so enjoyable. Your openness to having two eejits from the North cut lumps out of trees was truly  inspiring.