Jan 7 2016

What it’s All About

I suppose everyone does bonsai for their own reasons, some for fame and fortune, some for a reason to get out of the house, some for the love of working with nature, some for the pure art of it. The last two hold true for me but the main one for me is friendship. A lot of these friends are local to me but many of you I have never met, just quick chats via social media and if I’m lucky, a face to face chat at an exhibition or two.

There’s nothing like sitting around with fellow bonsai enthusiasts and just enjoying bonsai. The photo below is from a recent session in my garage exploring options on trees and then putting them into action. This in another aspect of 2016 that I plan to increase, good honest enjoyment of bonsai in every way.

Jan 6 2016

Bonsai Europa 2017

Time to consider what I can enter next time 🙂

Jan 6 2016

Video

Video – Daizo Iwasaki Bonsai Garden

Trying to get back into the swing of sharing any interesting videos I find on-line. It’s easy to miss them! Some great trees in this one from Andy Jordan.

Jan 5 2016

Esprit Bonsai – My 15 minutes of Fame

I love this magazine and not just because they published a photo of my Escallonia in issue #79 It’s a great addition to what’s available in the current market.

Anyway, did I mention that they published a photo of my tree 🙂 In case you missed it, see below. Not just my tree, but also another tree from here in Northern Ireland, my good friend Stephen’s Raft Japanese Maple. These where both exhibited at Bonsai Europa back in October (was it that long ago!) What I liked about the article was that they highlighted what Europa had that was different that other European Exhibitions, namely more deciduous bonsai. I’ll be honest, that’s probably the only reason my tree was featured in the article when so many other top quality trees were available. However it was a very pleasant surprise to turn the page and see my own tree, a first for me.

Jan 4 2016

Happy New Year Eventually!

Happy New Year everyone. 2015 was a roller-coaster of a year for me with many changes in my private and work life, I won’t bore you with the details. As a result I had to put blogging about wee trees on the back burner and my posts have dropped away considerably as a result. 2016 will see some major changes in my life, hopefully in a good way and I hope to get back into the swing of it all again. No this isn’t a New Years Resolution, I’m just trying to show resolve at a time of the year that coincides with the turn of the year 🙂

I’ve been busy working on trees for the last week and have been trying out a new technique to help me with this. It’s called a Tens Machine 🙂 It seems to have worked as well.

To start the ball rolling I’ll share this one with you. A Cork bark Chinese Elm that needed some more structural work done, so this is it before and after pruning and wiring.

Dec 28 2015

One to One: Hornbeam & Zelkova

Here’s a couple of pieces I worked on last week during a one to one session. Both the before shots are slightly older photos but give a good view of the changes made.

First up is a hornbeam that was getting it’s first proper wiring. Tree has a nice trunk and we wanted to get it started on the path to make a nice deciduous image.

And then this Zelkova group got taken out of it’s training box and potted into a more suitable pot. Two new smaller trees were added at the rear to help the image.

Dec 5 2015

Thank You

Has it been a week since the workshop!!

A big thank you to the guys who took part in the workshop last Saturday here at my home. Phil and I hope that everyone got the results they wanted on the day. It was a great day with good craic.

Here’s a few General shots from the day.

Nov 30 2015

Eejit Artwork

A big Thank you to ‘Jurgen’ 🙂 at Makisada Ceramics for sending me the original Artwork for my Bonsai Eejit logo. I was delighted to receive this in the post. Just need to find the right frame now.

Make sure you check out Robyn and Veerle’s fantastic pots at www.makisadaceramics.com

Nov 5 2015

Video

Mirai with Bonsai Empire

Oct 30 2015

Break the Rules

Well worth a watch this one. Great to hear someone explaining why sometimes a tree can be better by breaking the rules, especially working with yamadori.