I’m looking forward to the weekend spent at Willowbog Bonsai at the BSA’s 7th Exhibition. I have my camera batteries charging 🙂
I thought I’d share these video done at the last exhibition in 2012 to show what’s in store. I’m reliably told that the standard will be up again this year 🙂
Information re a bonsai display starting in Dublin today. Click on the Image to visit.
Click on image for more details
….. from Mr Warrens latest thoughts and reflections at Kokufu 2014.
Good read as usual, cheers Trev 🙂 Click on the photo below to view/read.
That’s my flights from Belfast booked for the 7th – 9th March for my trip over to the British Shohin Association’s Exhibition at Willowbog Bonsai.
I had planned to travel by boat with a few others and then realised that I had booked leave from work on the wrong weekend!! I was unable to add extra days around the actual weekend for travelling and have now opted to fly over to cut down on travel time. A big thank you to Peter Snart for assisting me with my travel alterations!!
So this means that I will be catching up with some old friends and meeting some new ones. I’m really looking forward to it, it’s shaping up to be an excellent exhibition. I have one tree for entry in the Deciduous Chuhin Class. I was able to sent it over with Peter last weekend, a bit hard to carry on the plane!
I’m looking forward to having a catch up with Peter Warren and John Armitage. I will also have the pleasure of meeting Valentin Brose for the first time. The programme for the weekend looks action packed as well.
If you are not following Mr Warren’s posts from Kokufu 2014, you are missing out, click the image below to see trees from the first half of this two part show. Maybe he’ll let me steal his photos 🙂
After the Friday Night and Saturday workshop with the guys at Munster Bonsai Club, there is the so far untold story of the rest of the weekend.
Did we go back to Piotr’s and get an early night before heading straight home on Sunday morning? Of course not, where’s the fun in that 🙂
When we got back to Piotr’s home his wife had made us a beautiful Polish meal, the name of which I can’t even pronounce never mind spell! Before long the beers were flowing, both Polish and Irish. Then something amazing happened, Piotr’s 5 year old daughter challenged Phil to a game of chess ❗ She won with a little help from her Daddy 🙂
As the night moved on bonsai yet again came to the fore and Piotr had his own private bonsai session finishing at 4am! Just look at the devastation on the floor. It’s easy to remove branches when pissed Piotr .
Next morning, bright and early Piotr and I had breakfast together and discussed club events while we waited for sleeping beauty to wake up. Once we were all ready we headed back to Cork to visit Mark, one of the guys from the workshop. Mark has been into bonsai for about 10 years but mostly on his own as the old Cork Club folded years ago. Now this turned out to be further away that we were lead to believe, Irish concept of time and distance seem to differ from us up North! These are a few photos taken around Mark’s garden. He had a major drama last year when the local farmer sprayed the field with roundup weed killer and the spray drifted onto some of his trees. Some are still recovering!
After Mark’s we headed back towards Piotrs and he was kind enough to show us one some of the trees he’s preparing for collection this Spring. Sadly I twisted my already bad ankle hopping in and out of the van and had to sit a lot of this out 😦 I did spot one nice tree in the van though 😉 A few bags of moss collected in preparation for Spring air layers.
After another bit of a drive we made our way back to Piotr’s home via some rather unusual place names, at least it was only one Nad 🙂
All that was left was a cuppa and the long drive home.
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.
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.
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.
That’s me back up from Cork after a great weekend with the Munster Bonsai Club. I’ve been trawling through the cyber world looking for anything Noelander’s Trophy related related and I’m going to share what I find via links here. If any of you know of other sources, please drop me a line and I’ll share that too.
I do have these 🙂 I’m kind of trying to make my point about the whole no photography thing. My normal Noelanders photo taker took these from the full car park 😀 and had this to say about the show, ‘ Quite some impressive, great and big trees. The character of the bigger trees seems to become more and more spectacular.’ A picture really is better than 1000 words, especially in bonsai!
Here’s your links:
Petit-Arbre.com First Noelanders Photos
Petit-Arbre.com Noelanders Winner
A debate about photography ban at Noelanders 2014 on IBC Forum
There is loads of demo photos knocking around on Facebook, but I can’t link as you might not have access and I don’t photo grab off FB for this blog.
A full run down when I actually make it back up the road but while I’m stealing Piotr’s neighbours wifi signal I thought I’d do a quick post about our weekend. New friends, great times , good craic. Can’t wait to do it again 🙂
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