Old Juniper gets a major styling

This Juniper is closing in on 40 years old, and has gone through a great deal of changes since it came into my hands as pre-bonsai material about 4 years ago.   Found a great deal of deadwood on the tree to turn into Jin and Shari work this go-around.  Cleaned it up; some more work to be done on it but this is it for the weekend.  Will soon pay more attention to the pads and also to cleaning the trunk up a little better.

How it started; quite leggy and have not given it the attention it needs to piching..

Found a healthy live vein runing down the back, allowing for the exposure of some great deadwood down the front and worked it into the existing Jins.

Close up, still some carving to do and cleanup, nice living vein down the left here.

Parked the tree for now  Fired the deadwood some, and a good deal of wiring and pinching all over.

Cascade Juniper #2 Update

This is my 2nd (and more successful) cascade styled juniper that I'm working on.  a picture from last year, then a few updates before/after today's work.  Shortened it some actually to put more motion into it.  Plan to move it into it's first pot very soon as the weather continues to warm.

After last year's work in late mid August.

Today before work begins.

Wire off except for last bit that is giving the main branch a bend inwards.  Rotated slightly to find it's new front.

Some pinching done, new bend at the bottom to give more depth and better motion.

 Top a little more refined, direction to apex given for now.

Bottom given a little depth; firm direction for the rear to go.  

Juniper coming along

Slowly making changes through the winter to my Juniper I worked on last year at the Warren Hill bonsai session at Plant City Bonsai.  I need to find a good (easy) art program to use to 'model' trees as I see some people doing.  (This would be much better than me trying to learn to draw - Zero chance there, I confess.)

A few pics after the latest (and last major) branch removal, some minor wiring (deciding where to take the back branch before I begin detailed wiring, which it does need), and a guy wire here or there to position some branches where I'd like them to park for a while.  

Then a close up of the Trunk, and a good view of the tree's rather nice character branches.  They add to the flow/motion of the tree, and the one that moves to the back adds depth.  Still work to do on the Jins, I'm still learning and looking up 'when' to do 'what' (or at least good guidelines).  The health is the most important so it will be slow going on this one, maybe a rest throughout the next year to regain vigour after all the work it's had done the past few months.

I simply cannot wait for warmer weather, blooming, repotting..   Hands in the earth!

Warren Hill workshop - and my project tree

Well the day finally came and went - looking forward to the next workshop.  I attended Warren Hill's bonsai workshop at Plant City Bonsai last Saturday the 16th.  Truly a learning event for an amateur as myself - being my first ever bonsai event - I feel spoiled!   Great bunch of students/bonsai artists were on hand attending and also many assistants helping Mr. Hill during the session that are friends of or work with Steve Cratty (Plant City owner).

The sessions were held in Plant City's greenhouse, so it was plenty warm for an early crisp Fall morning.  Here Warren Hill is talking to us about the art of Bonsai, answering questions, and then beginning a quick review of each person's project tree - helping give species types, care for each, potting soil and proper pot ideas for each individual and their tree.

Mr. Hill was a pleasure to listen to and learn from - I wish he'd had more time to speak about his Zen thoughts while working on Bonsai - it struck me that this plays greatly into his personal bonsai designs (mine as well) however that would be straying from the bonsai art itself - strictly speaking, so I understand why he seemed to cordon himself from going into that aspect deeper.   I may have to plan a trip to south Tennessee and his bonsai studio/classrooms one day..   Check out Master Warren Hill's webpage yourself for more info about his origins, and bonsai works and classes he offers.

Here is one student's forest creation of Trident Maple's that essentially Master Hill wired in and created himself - in-between the 2 sessions held that day while lunch was being served by Steve and Sandi.  This is going to be a keeper.  There was a lot of work involved that Libby took care of - de-leafing, de-potting and root cleaning - not to mention finding a big enough pot to get it in (Steve had to un-pot one of his own bonsai to present this beautiful pot for the forest use!).  This seemed to be the most powerful creation I saw that day.

So this is my project tree.  I purchased it from Plant City back in July as a late birthday present to myself - and got to learn it's habits for a few months before the bonsai class.   I cleaned it up some underneath and had it prepped for work.  It is a very thick and nicely aged Juniper - procumbens nana.  It's old enough that it has mostly old scaled growth, and not much 'immature' normal juniper needle growth on it.   Beautiful material!  It's not evident here, but this tree is easily 35+ years old already, with a girth the size of a modern plastic soda bottle through the main trunk.

This, is immediately after getting home from the class, and remembering to take another picture!!  I should have had my camera out more but there was so much going on and I got so involved in working on my tree and getting input from Master Hill and the other bonsai assistants (thank you Dave!) that I hardly thought about photos.

Here it is currently, I'm going to put lime sulphur on the jins today and in a few days take another final 'Fall' photo of the tree.  I absolutely love it, The tree has so much movement and grace, and this was it's first 'working' it had ever received really!

A few more photos from different sides.

There's still a lot to do with it - but for now after so much reduction, both branch and root, I thought this was a good stopping point.  A bonsai is not created overnight, but rather it's a continual work in progress.  Yes trees 'do' eventually reach their peak, where all you are doing is tending to removing new growth and maintaining, but that is many years away for me for this tree - or any that I own currently.  I have alot of 'fun time' ahead of me in Bonsai.

Next photos I take will have better pictures of the pot it is in, and some way of showing it's girth/over all size a bit better.

Good find - now what?

Found a species and a bush that I don't normally see here in the southeast, but I see and hear about all the time from West Coast bonsai'ers.   San Jose Juniper!   Take a look at what I started with and also where I am now - not sure where to take it from here (either way, alot of bigger branches will need to be bent).   I'm thinking I may take this to the Warren Hill bonsai class I'm attending later this month at Plant City Bonsai - to see what sort of ideas others could give me.

So you can see what I started with - pretty healthy tree - what you can't see until you move some branches, is the very nice trunk that it has.

Lots of possibilities to my eye - It needed a trimming bad, but I left enough branches for selection down the road.    Any insight from other bonsai artists would be appreciated.  There are alot of techniques I will need to use on this tree to get it where I'd like it that I really need to practice first before I apply to this one. (Raffa/wire bending of big branches, and some Jin carving here and there).  Really excited about this considering the age/girth/price I paid for the material.

Would love to hear your ideas about where to take it at this point.  

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?)   :)

Juniper Shohin Bonsai in the works

Another nursery Juniper found it's way home a few weeks ago.  I'm really getting into the Junipers - I'm 2000 miles away from infamous California species, I'll have to see what grows naturally in the Appalachians here and try to piece together a yamadori trip  (I've spotted some nice Junipers on top of Stone Mountain, so there must be a few species that could be found in these parts or a little further north in the App. Mtns. I'd imagine).

Pretty standard Nursery plant!  Albiet it was extremely healthy and putting out a good amount of 'adult' needles.  Luckily I thought to grab a picture before I removed too much.

Closer look at the trunk after some more branches are removed.  When I purchased the nursery plant I looked deep in the heart of the tree to see what was there, and saw a decently beginning upright trunk.  Almost all my Junipers I have are trained as Cascade (follows the plants normal growing characteristics), this one will be different.

I didn't work on this tree for 2 weeks after I got close to the trunk; I had surgery, and it took awhile before I was able to sit upright for any length of time and tackle a tree.  So when I got back to it, you can see I lost a lower branch that got Jinned instead, and some trims on top had turned brown already.  Either the jinned branch, or the one opposite from it will be eventually removed, I'm thinking the left branch to give the tree some balance.  (It looks like all the branches are from the left side, some balance and hopeful new growth will provide places for the tree to go).

Future work will involve working the green growth pads some (pinching, wiring), just letting it get used to having so much removed already, before I decide what else to do.

Now things are cooking - it's hot outside

It's pretty hot right now in the southeast US, in fact the entire east coast is having a heat wave with temps 100+ for many days straight.   Excessively high temperatures can be stress for any tree or plant - especially species that are not growing in their 'home' Zone, sometimes even humidity levels being the single downfall - temperature aside.  Watering during these hot periods is essential to your trees surviving heat waves such as this - proper watering that is.   Early morning and late evenings are the best times - no direct sunlight of intensity on the plants so they aren't burned by water droplets on leaves, and also not evaporating away before reaching the roots properly.  You hear a great deal about over-watering in Bonsai, but I have to say I don't think that's quite possible given the current heat wave.  I'm sure I'm still not being generous enough to them, but they are all happily sending new growth everywhere so my mix of fertilizing heavily in spring and good watering now seems to be paying off as it should.

Being hot, you could say that my trip to the closest thing to 'Bonsai Heaven' within a good 200-300 miles I'd estimate of my home, wasn't such a good idea in the middle of an afternoon?  (I probably lost a few pounds just in water!)   So what is bonsai heaven do you ask?   Plant City Bonsai located in North Georgia, about 1 1/2 hours from my home - no matter how you try to skirt Atlanta's parking lots - I mean Interstates!

I was lucky enough to meet the owner of Plant City and Bonsai artist Steve Cratty while there, and really gained a good deal of insight just from walking around his gardens and hearing his thoughts on Bonsai, my choices that day for material - and in general finally getting to 'pick the mind' of a local artist who is basically an institution for material in finished and pre-bonsai stages in this area.  Quite a selection of stock material that is attended to with 'bonsai' in it's future from the day it hits Steve's hands.   Junipers and Tridents being the ones that caught my eyes that day, I came home with one of both, however he has many species that are calling for me to make a quick return.  Absolutely beautiful crab-apples, horn beams, elm, ginko (I must have one, although I'll be old before it's a bonsai - I love seeing them and Steve had an absolute beautiful specimen there to gaze upon!) the list goes on.   I'm going to hold off on pictures of my 'material' until each one launches as a  project.  For now they are getting used to their new home and I'm getting my thoughts around both and how I want to progress each of them, and what they are 'telling' me as I start to tend to them.  Truly large material -  I have a pot for the Juniper already mapped out in my mind that I already possess, the Trident - not so yet.  Maybe Aaron can design a really beautiful low round pot for this beauty to finally rest in (in a year or so from now).  Why a year or more?  I don't plan to really touch either very much until next season as this is not the right time to be doing much of anything to Bonsai other than applying pesticides and keeping up on the watering.  (Fertilizing is generally out for most species when it's this hot, I do lay off the organic and go with emulsions during the hot months).

So back to my visit - I spent almost 2 hours there in the hot sun, and I must say Steve was kind enough to provide some iced tea while I walked around - true gentleman indeed!  This was my 2nd visit to Plant City.   I was there in early May with my best friend Aaron on a visit and at the time there was a workshop in progress, and I was just amazed at what we'd found.  We both stumbled around just enjoying the plants, pots, and atmosphere of the nursery, and did not get to really talk with anyone (just mumbling back and forth to ourselves - 'hey come look at this!').  This visit - I had an agenda.  

I also found out that Warren Hill pays a visit fairly often to Plant City, and will have another workshop in October.  I plan to be in on this one, time to turn things up a notch and really 'learn' as much as I can and also get involved with the local area Bonsai community which I've so far found to be all-so-far from where I live!

I'll have a great deal to post tomorrow - I've worked on a few projects recently that haven't made the blog yet, so I have catch-up to do and will also be working on a few projects tomorrow.  If nothing else the blog will be a good journal showing (hopeful) progress, my enjoyment of the art, and beauty of the trees.

Namaste',

Jason

2 Friends + 2 trees = Good Times

This was a planned project; My best friend Aaron and I planned to work on 2 trees one evening, and have a ‘sculpting’ night with trees instead of just making bonsai pots.   I picked up 2 Dwarf Japanese Juniper plants, (or Juniperus Procumbens ‘nana’ for those who also desire species knowledge.) from one of my more favorite nurseries to haunt.   

We each got a tree – mine was more directional and ‘whispy’, it would need a lot of removal and vision to make use of some of the branches it came with.  Aarons on the other hand looked really bushy; but underneath it held a few firm, good branches to work off of to build pads.

While we did not discuss this beforehand – in hindsight I can see immediately that we each picked the same style, but different ‘method’ of presentation.  We both created an ‘Informal’ tree – that is, a tree that goes up, but has bends in it’s main trunk, and is not straight from ground to apex.   However, I went with a ‘Far’ view of the tree, while Aaron created a ‘near’ view of his tree.   I believe that we internally arrived at these decisions based on the material, and also the ‘vision’ we each inferred from our little trees.  This I found interesting in itself – as this was Aaron’s first real ‘tree sculpting’ (and first time I ever guided anyone through the process), yet we both came out with some interesting creations.

Take a look!

Aaron’s 1st Bonsai sculpting – Informal Bonsai ‘Near’ view

This is what he started with, after cleaning all the dead material off and getting it 'cleaned’ and ready for action.

Rotated it slightly to find it’s front, and this is after branch removal, wiring, and some pad work.

All cleaned up, final trims and pinches done.

A view from higher up, you can see the pads already nicely formed – I think Aaron’s done a great job on his first tree sculpting.

JayVee’s Informal Juniper #4 – ‘Far’ View

Here’s what I started with; alot of motion in the main trunk, with many branches to work on (and remove – too ‘sticky’)

I found it’s front, and moved many branches around.  Looking to form a broad crown, from left to right with the apex in the current ‘center’ of the tree.  Lots of shari to create on this one!

Shari worked in, nothing too eye boggling for now.  I have a good vision for this little tree, it’s going to have a ‘Far’ view – that is, seen better from a few feet away and thought of as seen from a ‘distance’ than right up under it’s branches.  In time, it will look good from anywhere..  :)

View from the left rear angle; Here you can see the trunk motion a bit better; very angled with ‘masculine’ features in this already masculine species.  I’ll be making a rectangle pot with strong features to put this little Juniper into next spring!

It was a great evening; hanging out with my best friend since childhood, working on trees and teaching the little knowledge I’m ‘sure’ of so far into my Bonsai experience.  Good times..   :)