A few snaps from my walk on Sunday. A great day for a walk.
Detail on an old Railway Bridge
Hooded crow that was singing Black Betty Bam aLam 🙂
Tag Archives: Northern Ireland
New Toy
After playing with one of these at Burrs I just added one to the tool kit. Great for cleaning deadwood and on the lower setting, algae off bark.
Seijyuten 2014 Gallery
As usual these amazing photos come from the Nekotoban Blog. Make you you follow this Japanese blog with loads of exhibition photos from the more obscure shows.
Happy New Year
Wishing all those who follow this blog a Happy and Prosperous New Year. Looking forward to an exciting year in bonsai.
2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 380,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 16 days for that many people to see it.
Happy Christmas
Where did this year go?
I find myself at home today, finished work for a week and tempted to open a bottle of something tasty. Apologies for the lack of posts lately, I had a near fatal experience with ‘Man Flu’ all last week but I’m glad to get it out of the way for Christmas.
Thank you to all those that follow my blog, or even just pop in now and again from a wee look. I appreciate you comments and feedback but most of all, your friendship, even if it’s from a far.
I’ll leave you with this lovely photo of one of Ken To’s sculptures, just click on the image to visit his site.
I hope you all have a great Christmas.
Burrs X in 2015
Kingdom of Mourne
Had the pleasure of working down in the Kingdom of Mourne last week. Some snow about on the peaks and some great scenery.
And also this old deciduous tree along the roadside near Castlewellan.
Winter Image: Trident Maple
Sequoia Sempervirens Update
Did a little more work on my Sequoia Sempervirens last weekend. An odd choice of tree to work on especially in the UK, but I have enjoyed growing this from a 6 inch nursery tree to this. Been trying to pick up a few tips from the West Coast Americans on their traits as bonsai with varying advice being given in return.
2011
First styling
Some carving in September with Peter Snarts assistance and advice.
and now…
Trying to get the rising branches to behave. They have a natural tendency to pop up. Here you can see the first branch wired.
This was done before raffia and taping up in an effort to set it more permanently in position. A groove was cut along the length of the branch for the initial 6 inches and then sealed with paste, raffia’ed and taped. I did this on a few of the heavier branches.
This was the tree after wiring and thinning out. I’m learning a lot about this species as I go along. A fun journey. It continues to grow when most other species have stopped. I now see what branches are likely to be thrown and how to work with this, hard to explain. Give this tree another 3 years and I reckon I’ll have a pretty decent image, but then I love tall trees.
Bonsai Eejit 