New Horror Movie

You heard it here first, Jim Carey is starring in a new horror movie where he uses a Makita Die Grinder to hollow out the insides of unsuspecting bonsai enthusiasts heads. He infiltrates clubs and gains the confidence of members. He is even know to gain a seat at the committee table before he strikes 🙂

Ok, not true, but Ben does look like Jim Carey and this photo of him carving in my garage last Saturday is pretty darn scary 😀

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Ben was here to play with my carving tools and gain a little experience using same. He spent most of his time on a raw material pyracantha stump but also managed a little work on an Elm and a Lonicera clump.

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Stephen came down to give me a hand removing wire from a Larch I have and to make sure Ben behaved.

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Always good when you remember to put a towel down to stop copper wire getting into the potting mix.

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I played about with a raw Collected Scots Pine. I wanted it to resemble some mature trees near where it was collected. It will take a few years to fill and develope but I think it will make a nice image. Nice bark and better character than the photo shows.DSC_0483

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This was the lonicera stump that Ben carved. First photo from a few months back.

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An enjoyable afternoon.

 

Subtle Change

Check out this post over on Centro Bonsai Tenerife, I’m sure Jose won’t mind me borrowing the image to use as a link 🙂

I really like this one. Check out the changes on the before image on the original post, subtle but so important.

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Monster Hornbeam Repot

Another quality Video from Sandev.

MBC New Website

The Munster Bonsai Club have just launched their new Website/Blog.

Give them a little boost and give them a follow.

Click on the image to visit.

MBC LOGO V3

Also check out their social media links.

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Munster Trip Video

I always like to do one of these to look back on. Good times…

Munster Trip the Untold Story ….

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 🙂

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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 .

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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 🙂

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All that was left was a cuppa and the long drive home.

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Ulster Vs Munster

What a Post Title, wish I’d thought of it but sadly Ray got there first. Here’s a link to his blog post about his experience at the recent workshop in Cork. Thankfully no one was throwing balls about the room 🙂

ULSTER VS MUNSTER Both Winners…

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Ryan Neil Demo @ Noelanders 2014

I’ve had the pleasure of watching Ryan do a demo before and this one from Bonsai Empire is yet another great example of his work.

Munster Workshop

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.

Noelanders Hit List

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!

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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.