Cascade Juniper #2

I've had this strong juniper bush since last year- began to work on reducing it then stopped abruptly early in the year.  Well I came back to it a few weeks ago, here are the pictures.

Beginning point

Really decent nursery tree, actually.  You could hardly see the black pot when I first bought it, what you see now is what I left on the tree, with about 6 months of fall, winter, and spring growth plumped back on.

Now time for some fun styling!

(Yes, better photo settings are in mind next time; white sheets, better lighting - this was all I could quickly put underneath the tree to allow it to stretch while I wired!)  This took a few hours of non-stop clipping, pinching, and wiring.   

The top, now has direction and a few options.  the far back branch will eventually be reduced, letting it grow wild a bit to thicken the main branch out some.

Most, of the cascading branch.  

The bottom portion of the cascading branch.

This was a fun and truly rewarding learning experience.  My 2nd cascade tree; time to let it grow back, begin pinching and begin ramification of the pads.  Continue to work the top, and thicken some of the top lower branches.

Cascade Juniper #1 revisited

Here is the earliest photo I can find that shows the tree already somewhat styled, and in it's first (and current) pot.  This is a really nice, solid North Korean clay pot that I found while on one of our yearly vacations at The Outer Banks in North Carolina.  

As you can see - not much direction yet.  To me though at the time it was great - my first cascade wiring at that.

Here it was before I styled it further: 

Now it's just an overgrown juniper in a pot!  Time to get to work..

Now, it looks like a tree with some potential..

Now it has a real cascading branch, albeit small - it's evident now.

Also has a real apex started, and a jin of a previously large branch that was just going nowhere.  It's yellow as I just applied the lime sulphur, I was anxious to get a photo and didn't even wait for it to dry and start to turn white.

2 Friends + 2 Trees, Part 2 of Juniper Bonsai Styling

So Aaron and I revisited our junipers that we worked on together last year, and decided it was time for a 'real' sculpting of these trees to prepare for placement into a pot sometime next year.    Their beginnings are better detailed here.

Aaron decided to put more motion into his tree and enhanced it's upwards motion and balance with wiring and pinching.  Here's where his tree began, and where it ended after our session:

As you can see, both lower branches were removed to help reveal it's strong trunk, with a nice jin worked into the left branch (lime sulphur applied.)  Aaron I think has given this tree many promising directions for it's next working.  At this point, I will begin pinching the new buds and begin it's ramification, something we did not attend to this past year after their initial styling.

My tree took a completely different turn as I realized my amateur thoughts last year of forming the tree into something it naturally would not hold without great work, was not the best approach for this tree.   For better or worse this tree is headed into a Bunjin future.

A few before and after photos:

Couple of options in my mind:  Take the top branch upwards and turn the lower into another jin, or, make the top a jin (leave a little green growth at center for now I think) and take the lower towards the trees center and really bend it into a new beginning.    This was really fun for me to do, I feel the tree felt better and found it's true shape buried in the odd 'decidious' shape I was trying to force on it.

Another fun evening with my best friend - next time we style these, they will also get worked into training pots I do believe.  Shohin size are for both, with mine potentially becoming a Bunjin.  (Are there shohin bunjins?)   :)