A few mates came over last night to play with trees. There was plenty of variation, from raw material to Forests, and fine tweeking.
Michael, as promised brought this Juniper that I discussed HERE on the blog. It isn’t a Common Juniper as we thought, but a Squamata variety with a short needle. We all had a good chat about the options for potting angle etc. A few things worried me. Michael said that it has suffered a bit this year and some of the foliage on the lower branch was weak. I also wanted to confirm the limits of the live vein before we went any further. A few places looked like it could have retreated since the carving work. I wanted to confirm if this was a cause of the weakness shown during the year.
Here you can see an area that I felt may be no longer alive.
On a brighter note, I felt there was a better front on the tree by adjusting the angle. The foliage also looked to be making a come back with new strong buds appearing.
We used a makita with a wire brush to define the limits of the live vein and it soon became apparent that there was one live vein which started at the back of the tree and extended to the apex. To ensure that we could see where the vein starts from the bottom we had to consider the back being the new front. This actually turns out to be a far better option for the tree.
The area marked in yellow below is still alive but I think this will also die back this year leaving one narrow vein from base to apex.
This is the proposed new front.
As you can see above and here, the shari now extended to the top jin. In this pic you can also see the split in the trunk created by Michael to get the initial bend in the trunk.
Michael has done his own comprehensive post about this tree on his own blog. This is the virtual that he has come up with. I feel that the top jin needs shortened and there’s plenty more refinement required on the dedwood
I feel that with the proper after care, this tree should continue to improve in health and has the potential to be a very nice juniper indeed.
A very enjoyable night for me. Maybe it’s just me, but I get a buzz from helping others learn. Definitely one of the best parts of being in a club.
and after…
Hugh’s Scots Pine after needle removal, shown from a few angles.
One of Ian B’s Mugo Pines grown from seed.
and after styling
and another one before.
and after
Michael’s Juniper
and after, still work to do but ran out of time 😦
We cleared away the surface soil to find about 3 inches of trunk line previously unseen. We wired the main branches and added a little deadwood.
The result after todays work.
I also had to explain to Stephen from a Health & Safety point of view that we had several tables on offer, all at different heights to suit the size of the tree.
The tree after dewiring. It has back budded very nicely since it’s haircut in May. Next year should see some strong growth for this tree.
Michael brought along a Japanese White Pine. This tree had lost a few branches in the last few years and it made the original front hard to work with. This was the original front.
The first part of the trunk line was interesting but the straight top section was a problem. Also, the first branch to the left was heavy and straight and had also suffered die back. We discussed a few options and Phil even took some time out from bark striping to have a look too.
We had a few options. One was to make a shohin tree by taking it back to a low branch. If it had been a Scots Pine, I might have considered this, but not with a Japanese White here in NI. You rarely see a happy vigorous tree of that species here. People allow them to receive far too much water. This new option would require strong growth and the tree would bleed sap profusely from the major wound.
This front had a few benefits. The movement in the upper trunk was better and the straight lower branch was now a back branch that couldn’t be seen. The nebari isn’t just as good but there was marginal. The branch layout created a better and more convincing image. I thought that the tree was too tall and that a new lower apex was going to be needed. The biggest problem, and one that can’t really be seen in the photo, was going to be the fact that the apex leaned back slightly. We discussed this and decided to add a guy wire to pull it forward.
We got to work and very quickly got the rest of the tree wired so we could place branches. We ensured that all buds were facing up, important on a JWP. We added another guy line to bring the apex more over the base of the tree. As it sat, the flow of the trunk line was annoying me. By applying these two guys the height of the tree was reduced sufficiently for us not to bother with reducing the height of the apex by removing branches. This was it after wiring.
Mike had to shoot off at the end and there was a few other tweaks that I wanted to do. That branch near the top on the left needs to be lowered to match the rest. However I think we made a better tree out of it in the end. Here are the before front and the after front side by side.
This is how we attached the guy line. Mike hadn’t seen the eye loops used like this before, however he was first to suggest using a wood screw. Sometimes this is the only option as there isn’t anything suitable there to guy too.
This is one of the pads. Where foliage would allow, we rounded out the pad to make a fuller image.
Before [well nearly before. We forgot to take a photo at the start]
After [ well, not quite as he’s still to finish it!]
This is what he left behind for me to clean up 🙂
It’s got 5 trunks if you count the dead one. For some reason I haven’t taken a photo of the actual new front. The tree needs to spin slightly more clockwise to bring all the trunks into view.With some filling out, and some added shari put on the boring straight sections on the trunk, it might actually sell 🙂
Bonsai Eejit 