Jan 14 2012

Club Night January 2012

Had a good night at the club meeting last night. We had asked for members to bring Larch and we had a great turn out. As usual for January, numbers attending were up. Must be the post Christmas effect.

A few pics from proceedings.

Birch root over rock belonging to Hugh.

Roy’s Raulii

Phil pointing out how many more trees are needed in the forest planting.

First styling for Roy’s Larch.

Davy’s little shohin Yew

Jan 13 2012

Larch Night @ The Club

I’m heading to an NIBS meeting tonight were we will be looking at some of the members Larch Bonsai. Our meetings are always workshop based and this year we have decided to theme a few of them on a specific species to allow for better learning. First meeting of the new year and I must admit, I’m rather looking forward to it.

I’m taking along this Larch group. It needs some thinning out where branch tips have become too congested with buds.

Jan 8 2012

More Tree Inspiration

As usual for a Sunday, I snapped a few pics on my walk today. It was an early start to get down to Gosford Forest Park in Armagh. Here are a few of the trees that caught my eye within the park and on the way back home again.

A big old fella in the open area of the park.

His little mate.

Some of the farmed deer lounging around in the open grassland area.

Some beautiful trees to admire.

A stand of Scots Pine

Old Beech

Tall Fir of some sort.

An ivy choked Larch with very unusual upturned branch tips!

Deadwood on a large Hawthorn.

The previous generation, beautiful in it’s own way.

Moss choked beech.

Two branches that fused many years ago creating a hollow on this old beech.

Same tree, beautiful in the sunlight this morning.

And the beech next door, tree after tree worth admiring.

An old heavy limb that has fallen in the high winds. The top of the branch has ferns growing along it. Using the moss as soil.

I can’t take a walk without getting some fungi in there somewhere.

and a nice nebari to finish off.

Hope you enjoyed the walk.

Jan 6 2012

Harold and Kumar go Tree Hunting…

…. lol and we found some 🙂 Apologies for the movie reference, in an odd mood today.

Phil and I decided to check out a site that we thought might yield a few nice Larch and Spruce to collect. Phil had spotted it near one of his fishing spots up in the Sperrins area in Tyrone. Being vague here but you can understand this 😉 Anyway after a rather long and wet hike over 5 miles on rough ground, we found a small patch of trees that fit our needs.

We hadn’t planned to collect anything today. The whole point of the trip was to find the site and gain permission. The trees were commercially planted but no longer viable for harvest due to some very nice goats and sheep roaming the hills. 🙂 They have stripped the bark on many of the trees causing multiple trunks and shari. The Spruce are to be cleared anyway by cutting off at the base!!

Can you call this yamadori? Not really, they are commercially planted trees and is some cases not even that old. However nature and the elements have done some good work here for us in a short space of time. We don’t have the Alps on our doorstep and have to make do with the best we have on offer. As Larch and Spruce aren’t native in Ireland, this is the best we can do with regards to those species.

After finding and photographing the trees we set out to find the right person to gain permission. This turned out to be harder than walking to the trees in the first place. After some detective work, we got the right man and returned to the site with him. A quicker route as he had the key to the locked gate! When he saw what we wanted he was happy for us to remove trees that he was going to have to remove anyway.

The moral of this story, always ask for permission. I’ve asked twice this year for two separate sites and both were happy to say yes on hearing what they were for. Take a bonsai book with you to show examples and keep a big friendly smile on yer face. Works a treat 🙂

Here are the photos of a few of the trees we looked at. First some of the larch. Not the best trees but it gives you an idea of the ground we are collecting from. The trees are right on the treeline of the mountain and are quite exposed.

Phil gets the camcorder out. The deadwood on the ground is the remains of Lodgepole Pine that had been planed there but failed at some point a few years ago. A few survivors still showing here and there.

Typical damage caused by goats.

Trees eaten early on by having there apex damaged result in multi trunk trees. This is one of them but there are a few really tasty looking ones there and for some reason I didn’t snap them at the time.

Some of the Sitka Spruce that have to be removed. Someone told me today that they are spikey buggers. I found that out for myself yesterday!!

This one is interesting. I couldn’t get both my hands around the base of this one. It’s 4 feet tall but after major height reduction, I think it’ll make a powerful tree.

Showing some of the terrain that we had to walk over.

We spotted this Lodgepole Pine and gave it a closer look.

Me for scale. Some nice bark and deadwood on it. A few others were pointed out by the landowner later in the day as the light was disappearing.

Some nice little mountain streams feeding down into the lake nearby.

Stream cut through a peat bog surrounded by heather.

So there you go, I hope you enjoyed the photos as much as we enjoyed our day out. Being caught out in an open area during a cloud burst and having sore legs today was worth it. 🙂

Jan 5 2012

Plum Tuckered Out

I had planned to spend a little time posting pics from a trip to the Sperrin Mountains in County Tyrone today. Phil and I wanted to check out a new site for collecting Larch and try and get the necessary permission to do this.

It was a successful trip but I’m just too knackered to post now 🙂 I’ll add all the photos tomorrow. In the mean time, here’s a pic to wet the appetite.

Jan 4 2012

Introducing ‘The Bonsai Baker’

Many of you have heard me talking about trees belonging to my friend Stephen. Stephen and I met way back in 1995 when he joined the NI Bonsai Society. We have stayed good friends ever since. You will recognise him from my Sunday walks as he’s a fellow dog walker and nature lover. I can honestly say that Stephen is one of the nicest blokes you’ll meet in bonsai circles in East Belfast 😀 Oh OK, Northern Ireland and the world beyond 😉 I count myself lucky to have him as a friend.

Today Stephen took the plunge and started his own blog. Like me, he is starting this because he wants to keep a record of his bonsai and related events during the year. He asked me to help him get started with his blog and I was happy to oblige. I doubt he’ll be as a prolific a poster as me, who is 🙂 he isn’t a computer lover, but, with encouragement, I think he’ll happily become an internet regular.

Why Bonsai Baker? Simple, he keeps bonsai and he’s a baker 🙂

Click on the image above to visit his blogsite. It’s bare bones at the moment but be assured, I’ll be keeping the pressure on him to add more. He has plenty of trees to share with us. You can also follow him on FlickR and Facebook.

Leave him a few words of encouragement.

Jan 3 2012

First Walk of the New Year

Sunday just happened to fall on New Years Day this year and, never to be deterred, we had our usual walk. About 9 miles along the coast from Holywood to Bangor, I must admit I could feel the holiday excess eating taking a toll!

As usual here are a few snaps taken along the way.

Some of my usual attempts to capture birds in flight or otherwise.

A goose

A hooded Crow

A normal black crow picking through the rock pools for sea snails .

and most unusual, these two different types of crow were together. First I’ve ever seen this.

Perfect wind for little sailing on the lough.

Hawthorn still carrying it’s harvest.

A nice mixture of moss, grass, heather, sedum etc growing in among the rocks. Natures kusamono .

Most important on a good walk is good company. My two brothers..

My mate Stephen, out with his new camera. Watch this space for his new bonsai blog coming very soon 🙂

and lets not forget my two best mates, Smudge and maggie 🙂

Dec 24 2011

Eejits on Tour Part 3

The final instalment.

At one point on our day out, Phil took me to a river that he fishes on for Salmon. A beautiful spot. We lingered there longer than planned thanks to a show put on my 3 Dippers fighting over the same set of rocks. Must have been good fishing there 🙂

The water reminds me of a pint of Guinness getting poured. The colour comes from the peat in the area. The foam finishes it off 🙂

In the shot below you can see a branch that has been placed in the river as a perch for kingfishers. None on view today sadly.

What was sad to see was that some idiot was dumping into the river from the road side above! There was even the remains of a car in the pile. A strange pipe also drained into the river and nothing much wanted to grow below it 😦

Some nice beech trees along the riverside as well.

Some deadwood and a fallen Beech 🙂

We stopped for a Fish Supper on the way back at a lovely little Fish & Chip Shop beside a Harbour.

The fish was rather on the large size, but we both managed admirably.

That’s it! The day in photos that took 3 days to share with you. Hope you enjoyed viewing the images. You’ll have to wait for the yamadori photos 😉 but they’ll be on here in the Spring. I’ll leave you with a photo of a Heron winging it’s way along the coast.

Dec 23 2011

Eejits on Tour Part 2

Some more shots from our tour of the North.

This was a rather strange one! A tree surrounded by a large stone wall. I assume that the wall was there first, some sort of hill fort or burial cairn. The tree probably self seeded in there and it now looks like this.

The whole area is covered with long abandoned crofts which add to the look of the place.

Some of the terrain that we find collectable Hawthorn on.

A rather unusual hawthorn hedge. Up, down and up again!

Nice in the Summer but bleak in the Winter!

Spotted some very interesting fungi along the way. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by them! There must be some sort of support group out there for me 🙂

I loved this little fella growing in a hollow on a tree. Tree had an entish look to it 🙂

Yet more to follow!!

Dec 22 2011

Eejits On Tour Part 1

Today Phil and I went on a little tour of Northern Ireland. This wasn’t a random thing, we did have a purpose. We were looking for new collecting sites and checking on a few old ones. We planned to get the required permissions needed to collect legally, so we could devote the day of collecting to just digging trees. We also wanted to touch base with the land owners who previously had allowed us to collect on their land, just to let them know that we’d be back in the Spring.

It was a very successful day and we achieved everything we wanted, and more. I’m not about to broadcast to the world exactly where we collect, that would be rather stupid!! We are eejits [idiots], but not complete eejits!!! 🙂 However, I did take plenty of photographs along the way that won’t compromise our plans. I plan to share these over the next few days. Some are trees for inspiration, some wildlife etc.

It was a long drive with most places not yielding much in the way of decent yamadori, however, many nice trees were on view.

A common sight in Ireland, a hawthorn in a field. Untouched due to superstition that it’s a ‘fairy tree’.

A few Birch.