The Bonsai Blog of Andy Smith

5/10/08

It’s cold and snowing here again today. It’s aggravating when it gets up to 85 F one week and then snows the next. I have a lot of pines collected, but have not potted many yet. I’ve been waiting for it to warm up for good first, but I think I have to start anyway. Otherwise, I’ll be finishing in July.

I did some work on my large juniper on May 2nd, as scheduled. Here’s a picture of it before I started.

My plan was to just clean up the profile a bit, and not change the character of the tree much. So I wired the folige into pads pretty much where it was. I did have to split the deadwood on one branch to make the crown. I think it came out pretty well, although my friend said I should have separated the pads more. But I like it. There are a few branches that probably need some minor adjustment. The next project will be to refine the deadwood somewhat. There is a spot or two where the taper could be improved. i have a better pot for it and I’ll be moving it into it in about two weeks. Then I’ll be done for the year. Here it is, after the wiring I did.

What do you think?

5/2/08

Here’s a pair of old Black Hills spruce that I’ve been working on for several years. They have grown together for maybe a century and I did not separate them when I collected them. I really like the trees, but I don’t think they take a particularly good picture. I always wonder what that means. If a bonsai seems to look good in person, but does not take a good picture–does it mean the photo is revealing the tree more honestly so you can see the flaws? Or is the beauty of a tree in a photograph somehow different from the beauty of a tree in person? I favor the latter view, though I am not completely sure. So many of the trees I see in books look fantastic!

I like these old spruce for another reason as well. I brought them inside the house to work on in February 2006. It had been very warm for a couple weeks–up in the 60’s and 70’s. I had them inside for 3 days until I finally got them styled to my liking. Then I watered them and put them back out in the cold greenhouse where they spend the winter.

We had a sudden, very dramatic temperature shift, which is common here in the spring and fall. The temps dropped to -20F for a night or two, then warmed up again.

My poor spruce trees turned brown within a few weeks and lost all their needles. I was heartbroken and sure they were dead. I assumed that watering them shortly before such a sudden freeze had crushed the roots and killed the trees. However, I noticed the buds still looked good, so I did not take them out of the pot.  I removed all the wire from the fine branches. To my amazement, and happiness, when spring came the buds opened and produced new shoots. They were very sparse trees that year, but seemed healthy otherwise. They did well last summer too and so I recently wired the foliage again. They look pretty good now, and I’ll start pinching again this spring.

Here’s a picture of one of my favorite (ex) collecting sites. I’ve been getting trees there for many, many years. I knew there were some timber sales laid out in the area, but they never seemed to start logging.

Well, they finally did! it was a bit of a shock, and disappointment, to go down there recently and see my favorite rock outcrops with logging slash all over them! The forest is much too dense (at least compared to historical photos) in most areas and thinning it out is a necessary improvement, but I hate to lose good bonsai specimens to a chainsaw!

I was still able to collect a few trees in the logged areas. Most of the damage is done by skidding and falling the larger trees, not by deliberately cutting the smaller ones. However, after logging the next step (probably in a few years) will be thinning, which does specifically target small contorted pines.

And today, May 2nd, the day we were to work on the big juniper, it is only 25 degrees out and we got 15 inches of heavy snow. Most of the roads are closed and a lot of trees are down. So the weather has stopped us again!

4/13/08

John Kirby and I were going to work on this big, very ancient, Rocky Mt juniper this weekend. John lives on the other side of the state though, which is about a 400 mile drive, and the weather wasn’t good enough to travel (the boys just went out to go sledding). So, we rescheduled for May 2nd. I want to do some styling this spring and then put it into a better pot sometime in mid-May.

That’s a 1.5L wine bottle sitting on the pot. The tree is quite large and I honestly think the age would be right around 1,000 years. Imagine that! John Ruth helped me collect this tree in 2004. It was laying flat on a piece of bare rock and did not seem collectable. But the rock it was laying on lifted up and the whole root system came easily out of the hole. We stood it up when we potted it and it looked like a different tree.

It’s been suggested to me that I cut this into 3 individual trees and style each separately. I have no such plans. I admire the character of the tree as it is and I’m not going to force it into being anything else. I just want to develop some foliage pads and refine the deadwood a bit. The crown will be a bit perplexing. The picture doesn’t show it well, but it does not have a single crown. That is the part that will take some thought.

Since I didn’t work on the big tree yesterday, I decided to work on a couple other junipers instead. The tree above is a common juniper I collected in 2006. This has been a hard species for me to collect and at first, survival was very low. I’m not sure why. Part of the problem is the roots seem to grow away from their spot of origination, much like the top of the tree does. So I find these fantastic old common junipers, but where they come out of the ground, or rock, there is just a single, heavy root, travelling away. And the feeder roots might not start till you get three feet away from the trunk! I don’t quite understand it, because this species tends to spontaneously sprout roots right off a branch, if the branch is naturally covered with moist duff or soil. Anyway, the last couple years I’ve done a little better collecting these, though I’m not completely sure I know why this is. It’s a beautiful species to work with though. And they are very common here. In many spots in the Black Hills they carpet the forest floor for hundreds of acres at a stretch.

The descending branch on this juniper makes it a little odd. I pulled a branch on the opposite side up and over to make the tree taller when I wired it. I think it looks pretty good. The trick will be finding a pot that fits. Most of the roots, of course, are on the opposite side of the tree from the cascading branch. That’s what will need work next.

Here’s a Rocky Mt juniper we collected in the fall of 2005. I worked on it yesterday, too. It’s always been a bit of a puzzle. It has some good parts, but the branch structure was very confusing. It had kind of an “octopus” structure, with branches crossing each other awkwardly. I trimmed off as much as I could to simplify it, but it was still puzzling. The picture above shows it after I had pruned it. I took it to two or three shows, and had it on my website on and off, but no one even asked about it. I can understand why.

People sometimes ask why I would collect a tree that is an obvious problem, or has an obvious major flaw. With junipers the vast majority of them are not collectable at all. We spend hours and hours scouring a mountainside, not looking for a great tree–there are great ones all over the place–but looking for one that has a root system that can be collected. The main thing, the only thing, really, is to get a tree that you can get to live in a pot. If you can keep it alive you can make a bonsai out of it somehow. But if it doesn’t live it doesn’t matter at all how great it might have been.

Eventually I knew I would have to make some improvement to it or I’d be watering it till my teeth fell out. I worked on it yesterday afternoon. I studied several different possibilities, but eventually decided on the easiest and simplest one. I cut off the extra branches and pulled the main branch downward.

The wood was extremely hard and stiff and I was surprised I couldn’t pull it downward by myself. I used a branch splitter and put support wires and raffia on it and I still had to have my son lend some muscle to bring it down.

I’m pleased with how it came out. I left those two small tufts of foliage on, though probably they would need to come off. But, who knows, someday you could use them and make a shohin out of it. I also shortened the deadwood so that they didn’t cross the trunk and make the profile too confusing. I think it will become a nice tree.

OK, time to get back at it!

4/11/08

We got nearly a foot of snow here today-Here’s a large pine sleeping through it. It’s Friday today, but supposed to be almost 70F by Monday and then warm all of next week. That’s about right for here. It seems like in the spring the storms come a week apart. So it ought to snow again about next weekend.

I have a bonsai class to teach in two weeks through Community Education. They have a great Community Ed program in Rapid City. My wife took a handgun class, my son is taking one on cave exploration and they offer them on anything you can imagine.

I’ve done several bonsai classes. This spring I’m trying to simplify it. I have $20 per student to spend on plants, wire and a pot. I’ve found that people here are absolutely horrified at the idea of spending $50 for a plant. They can’t imagine that I have some bonsai pots that cost $200 and I actually leave the things sitting outside with trees in them. So, I want to focus on doing bonsai with plants you can get at Wal-Mart. Actually, Lowes is my favorite discount plant seller. They often have some pretty interesting trees to make bonsai out of.

It seems since all the discount stores have gone into the cheap plant business the local nurseries have done the opposite and focused on more expensive, developed material. So far both seem to be doing well.

Anyway, I went to Lowes and Wal-Mart and didn’t find much to choose from. It’s been so cool this spring they have delayed getting material in. I was hoping to get some small evergreens, but they said it might be a couple weeks yet. However, at Lowes I found they had a whole bunch of blueberries in pots.  Perfect!

Blueberries! At the first bonsai show I ever went to I bought a blueberry bonsai for $140. I really liked it too, but I left it out on the porch and hail nailed it. These blueberries were only $10. They get white flowers and have fruit, so how could I go wrong? I bought 18 of them.

I’m not sure yet how many students there will be. I might have a lot of these blueberries to make bonsai out of myself. Or, I might need more.

In the past I have potted the trees for the students before hand and just focused on shaping and wiring. The students seldom have any previous experience and I don’t know how successful that’s been. I get the feeling it is too much for some people, who really walk in there with no idea what they’re getting into. I myself enjoy wiring, but not everyone seems to pick it up easily. And too much detail slows things up.

This time I’m going to have them clean out the trees, pot them and prune them and then do a minimal amount of wiring. I’m going to try and show them everything they will need to know to get them started, so they can go to Lowes, or wherever, and start making bonsai. I’m hoping to make it fun and easy. I’m hoping eventually to create a group of bonsai fanatics around here!

I took one of the blueberries inside and worked on it myself to see how long it would take. It took about 45 minutes, so that should leave enough time for everyone to finish. The buds were already starting to swell when I bought them, but it’s much warmer in town than it is at my house. I put them in a cold greenhouse and hopefully that will slow them down enough that we can still pot them with no trouble. The soil was frozen on the one I brought in.

I found the trunk went into the soil another two inches before any roots came out. So I raked all the top soil off and raked out the roots a bit, but not too much. These trees have to live if I expect anyone to follow up on this. I mixed the potting soil I raked off with some of my bonsai soil and used it to fill the rest of the pot.

The pots I have are a little too big, but that means we will have less risk to the trees, which is better. I have a pot I’d rather use for this one, but I decide to use what the students will be using so I can see how it will come out. After I potted it, I pruned it a bit and used aluminum wire on some of the branches. No fancy wiring this time. I want to just touch on it, so everyone has an idea of what is possible.

Styling deciduous trees is still new to me. I have hundreds of conifers and one maple. Lots to learn.

The tree is not exactly awe inspiring, but I think if I put moss and a stone on the pot it could look pretty nice. And then it will flower and bear fruit, so over a few years time it could make a very nice small bonsai. When the snow melts I’ll go out in the woods and collect a bucket of moss to put on the pots. Some kinds do well in a pot. Many only last a short while though. And, it attracts birds.

Here’s one last picture I took a couple weeks ago. Look at that trunk! It’s a pine, or was a pine. I love the literati style. If only I’d gotten to this one a hundred years earlier!

4/9/08.

Alright, I’ve finally agreed to actually become a blogger and write something. Although I sometimes enjoy writing, sitting in front of a computer is worse than pulling teeth for me. I have to get up and pace the room after every paragraph. They say some computers are not user-friendly, but in my case the user is not computer-friendly. I was so bummed out when Y2K didn’t materialize as promised. But what would I do without one? I depend on it, like everyone else.

As far as bonsai, the pressure is building. The pressure of oncoming spring. Spring in the Black Hills can be a lot like winter in other places. We’ve had snow the last several days and have a big storm moving in. We might get a foot and we need the moisture very badly. We’ve been in a drought since 2000. I had planned on starting on my tree collecting at the start of April, but April 1st when I got up the temperature had dropped suddenly and it was only 4 degrees. April Fools! The next day was about as cold, then it snowed. Then, a line broke on the community well that we all get our water from, so I put off collecting to help everyone fix it, which took several days. Now we have another snowstorm, which is a sort of a mixed blessing. The last few years the trees have been so stressed by the drought that transplant survival has been going down. So, the additional moisture will help that. But, if the winter drags on too long there won’t be enough of an acclimation period between potting and the heat of summer, and that makes survival go down as well. Some years we get snow and freezing temps well into June and then it gets blistering hot at the start of July. Even with the recent warming trends it’s snowed on the first day of the boys summer vacation the last two years in a row. They go swimming anyway.

Strangely enough, March here is frequently warmer than April. I usually expect to see the temps get into the 70’s the last two weeks of March and then get colder again in April. The last two weeks of March were warmer, but it didn’t reach the 70’s. More like the 50’s. Even so, I went out climbing on the rock outcrops to look for some trees. I collected a few pines and one very nice juniper. The trees that were high up on the rock, exposed to the south sun, were thawed and collectable. Everything else was still frozen solid. I took the ones I collected home and heeled them into some bark for the next month or so. I won’t pot them until May. I’ve noticed that the trees I pot before then don’t do as well. I think cleaning the roots and then letting them freeze hard again is too stressful. Usually by May the bitter cold is over.

In March, I decided to go back to a pine tree I originally found in 1993, when I had a contract to collect sample cores from very ancient trees for the Forest Service. That’s actually what sparked my interest in bonsai, though it’s too long to describe here. Anyway, at that time I found a very unusual pine. The bark was so odd that I thought it must have a virus or some disease. After I had been in bonsai for a couple years I realized that the tree was actually a ponderosa with cork bark characteristics.

I went back in July about 5 years ago and was able to find the tree again. It seemed like it could be collectable, but it was so hot and dry that I left it and took some cuttings instead. I tried to graft the cuttings onto some nursery ponderosas I had bought but none of them took. It was my own fault for not learning a little more about what I was doing. Apparently the best time to make grafts on pine is late winter/ early spring.

I went back to the tree again in March of this year. It took me two days to find it because I got on the wrong slope of the mountain without realizing it. I’m usually pretty good about finding my way around out in the woods, since that’s where I work, but in this case I was stumped. I stayed out almost till dark looking for it, then fell and banged up my knee, and finally after I got off the rock I had a two mile uphill hike through wet snow to my truck. I was sore, mad and tired by the time I got home.

But as I was leaving I saw where I had gone astray. So the next day I went back and found the tree almost immediately. It’s definitely a cork bark; and after 20 years of working in the woods out here and collecting thousands of pine trees for bonsai, I can say it’s the only one I’ve ever seen. It looks like the thick bark starts developing after about 5 or 6 years of growth, and a branch the diameter of a man’s thumb might have a woody center the diameter of a #2 pencil. It also looks like it could be collected, but since it seems to be a one-of-a-kind I’m not sure I want to remove it. I spent an hour or so climbing around the rocks near the tree hoping to find another one, maybe a seedling that started from this one, but I didn’t find a thing. I didn’t see any signs that the tree had ever made cones either.

While I was climbing around I found some other trees that I recognized. The first was a ratty old juniper, about 10 feet tall, that I had taken a core from in 1993. My core sample showed 886 growth rings and I added about 20 years to that to account for the years it grew below where I took the core. So I estimated the age in 1993 to be 906 years old. If that’s correct it would be 921 years old today, and I don’t think it’s grown an inch. It looks exactly the way I remember it. I saw some other trees I recognized there as well. There were two 30″ tall pines that were side by side. I sampled them both at the base. I still remember the ages because at the time it was so amazing to me. One was 96 years, the other was 154 years. Both of them are still there and don’t appear to have changed a bit.

I also found another tree that I remembered. It was an excellent Rocky Mt juniper with a twisted 5 or 6 inch trunk, maybe 20 inches tall. I had found that tree years ago and had gone back to collect it for bonsai training. But when I went back for it, it had disappeared! I looked and looked and looked for it but finally just had to give up. I couldn’t find it. Now, here it suddenly was again. All the crevices and valleys in the rock outcrops can sometimes make the terrain a bit tricky to find things in. Anyway, I was in my permit area and the tree had an accessible root system contained in a granite pocket, so this time I collected it and took it home. I expect it will do well.

I went back to my cork bark ponderosa and decided to try taking a few more cuttings. I took two small branches. One I express-mailed to my friend Harold Sasaki, of Colorado Bonsai, and one I kept for myself. I did one graft on a ponderosa seedling in my yard and one on a potted ponderosa. Harold told me he made three with his branch. Hopefully at least one of them will take. I also read that certain pines can be reproduced by rooting cuttings, and even needles with the fascicle attached, so I tried a half-dozen of those. I’ve got them in the house, in small pots, under a plastic tent so I can keep them warm and misted. It’s been a couple weeks and they look good so far, but the trouble with pines is they often don’t look dead until months after the fact. So I may be watering these quite awhile to no avail. I’ll keep my fingers crossed though.

Meanwhile, I’m just waiting for spring so I can really get started. That’s all for now.

Andy

I first started trying to collect wild trees for bonsai in the spring of 1994. At that time I knew nothing about bonsai other than that I wanted to do it. I had never even owned a potted plant before, and had never considered the possibility that someday I might. But I had spent the last dozen years working in the Black Hills National Forest laying out timber sales, and as a tree planter for paper companies in the SE United States, so I had a good knowledge of the local environment and at least a vague understanding of how to transplant trees.

When I was first bitten by the bonsai bug (and I was really bitten too, it may as well have been malaria) I had no knowledge of how bonsai were pruned and shaped with wire. How they went from a raw plant to the beautiful trees I saw in books was a mystery to me. As a result, the first year or two I tried collecting I only picked trees that already fit my preconception of what a bonsai should look like. I saw many old trees that I thought were interesting and beautiful, but if they didn’t already look like a bonsai, or close, then I left them in place, because I didn’t know what to do with them.

I especially remember two very old pine trees that I found that first year. Both were on the same granite ridge, about a half mile apart. The first one I found was near the bottom of the slope. It was obviously a very ancient tree. I remember thinking at the time that it could have been 1,000 years old, or nearly so. It was only about five feet tall, but the trunk was twisted and 12 to 14 inches in diameter. My main interest in the tree was that I might get a good core sample from it and have a verifiable 1,000-year-old tree located. But, alas, it was hollow as a drum, as most really ancient trees are, so I could not get an age. I never even considered it for bonsai. It was much too large.

About a half-mile away, and several hundred feet higher up the ridge, I found another very ancient old pine. This one was a bit smaller and not quite as old—I thought it might be 500 years. Again, it seemed much too large to use as a bonsai so I didn’t even consider trying to collect it. I left both trees where they were. In fact, I forgot all about them.

It wasn’t until ten years had passed, in the spring of 2004, that I found myself climbing that ridge again. I had hiked in from a different direction, not realizing I was heading for one of the very first places I had ever collected trees from.

I have often gone back and collected trees again from a rock outcrop where I’ve been before. In fact, on a couple different occasions I’ve realized I had already been to a spot after finding a crowbar or set of pruners that I lost there the first time. Once I found a crowbar I’d lost years before on a ridge, and gave it to my boy to carry. He lost it again before we left and I guess there’s a slim chance that I’ll find it yet again.

In this case I recognized where I was when I stumbled across the original ancient pine I had found. It had recently died. What appeared to have happened was that a windstorm had uprooted a six-foot sapling that had taken root in the same soil pocket as the ancient tree. When the sapling went over it also pulled the old pine’s roots away from the rock, exposing them to the air and killing the tree.

But I remembered there had been some other interesting trees further up the ridge, so I continued on. As I hiked I found many great old pines that would make excellent bonsai, and I was amazed that I apparently hadn’t seen the potential in any of them ten years before.

Then, after along, steep climb, I reached a small shelf of rock and found my old pine again. I was immediately taken with it. It was a fantastic old tree, twisted and ancient looking and still growing strongly. It was awe-inspiring! And this time I decided it was the perfect size for bonsai. I scraped the duff away from the base of the tree to inspect the root system. The roots seemed good and I decided the tree was collectable. But something made me hesitate. I put the duff back and left the tree where it was.

I feel a responsibility for every tree I transplant. There is always the risk of killing the plant, and even though many of them might be cut down in forest thinning projects, or torched in controlled burns, I feel I should leave them alone unless there is a pretty good chance I can keep them alive. This old pine was so awesome that I felt a little intimidated by it. If I tried to collect it and it died, I’d feel terrible.

I went back a week later and inspected the roots again. Again I decided the tree was collectible, but again I left it where it was and went home without it. I discussed it with my wife, Judy, and my conscience. Finally, I decided to attempt collecting the tree, but to stop at the first sign things weren’t going as planned.

On April 26, 2004 Judy and our five year old boy, Woodlin, and I set out to collect the old pine. I carried a large pack frame to get the tree down with and my collecting tools. Judy brought a pack with some food and drink. I also brought the necessary permit with me, which I had purchased from the US Forest Service.

Hiking at Woodlin’s pace it probably took us an hour to get up to the old pine. He attacked the mountain as if it were Mt. Everest and did a great job getting to the top. He was very excited by the adventure and it was a lot of fun climbing up there with him. I was glad we brought him along.

When we got to the tree he was already tired and hungry, so we sat and ate. Then, while I examined the pine and set to work, Judy and Woodlin climbed up higher, exploring the nearby outcrops for more trees and caves.

There was one branch on the pine that went out several feet before it had any foliage and this I pruned off. I also shortened one very long dead branch to make the tree more manageable for carrying. The rest I left untouched.

I pried around the root pad and found it dense, radiating from the base of the tree, and well put together. An old root as thick as my forearm ran uphill from the tree and this I had to cut through to free the tree. Once the root was cut the tree easily, if somewhat heavily, came out of it’s pocket of rock. As the picture shows, the root pad is not huge compared to the size of the tree. But it is dense and full of fine feeder roots, which are exactly what is needed to keep the tree alive and healthy.

I wrapped the roots securely in burlap and strapped it onto the pack frame. It was quite a heavy load, but I felt I could manage it. I went in search of Judy and Woodlin and found them together up the ridge a bit. Woodlin had gotten into the spirit of things and had found a small pine he wanted to collect for himself. In the picture it’s just downhill from where he and Judy are standing. We collected that tree and put it in a small ceramic pot. It’s doing well today and he checks on it from time to time and occasionally reminds me that I can’t sell his tree. We haven’t styled it yet, though I want to get him started on that this year.

It was slow getting down the hill and back to the truck. Although the pine was heavy, it was not as bad as might be expected. Trees growing on stressed, very dry sites like that do not have nearly as much water in them as trees growing in wetter conditions, and so are much lighter. For instance, loggers (who are usually paid by the ton) make better money cutting timber on cool, north-facing slopes than they do on dry south-facing slopes.

The next day Judy helped me clean the roots and plant the tree in a large wooden box. It was definitely a two-person job! We frequently have freezing weather into June, so I put the tree into my shaded greenhouse where it stayed for most of the summer.

Trees vary in their response to transplanting and some can take a few years to start showing signs of strength again. That was not the case with this pine though. It seemed to like it’s new home and grew strongly right from the start.

The following spring it came out of dormancy right on schedule and again grew strongly all summer. I moved it outside right away that year so it got plenty of sun.

In early March of 2006 I decided the tree was strong enough to work on, so I styled it. Ponderosa pine are very flexible, and usually even severe bending is not much of a strain on the tree. In this case though all the foliage was off a single extension of the trunk, which was quite thick and very rigid. The diameter was around 3 inches and there was hard deadwood all through it. If I broke it I wouldn’t just lose a branch, I’d lose the whole tree.

I’d been studying the tree off and on for two years, trying to come up with a design. In spite of the excellent character of the old pine there were a few problems. First of all, as I just mentioned, all the foliage came out very high up on the tree. The branch it came out of was very stiff and looked prone to snap to me. The foliage was not balanced over the trunk of the tree. Several people who visited my nursery looked at it and were at a loss what to do. So was I.

Eventually I decided I liked the front of the tree that showed the orange reticulated bark at the base. That wasn’t my original front, but orange bark is a quintessential characteristic of old ponderosa pine, and one that is very rarely brought out on bonsai. I next decided that I liked the tree too much to take many risks in styling it. It was unique, and the day we collected it was unique and I decided to just let the tree be the tree and work strictly within that framework rather than trying to make it “better” by forcing it to become a bonsai.

Still, I had to do something, even if it was just making the foliage a little more orderly. I decided I would pull the top over and down, and shape it as much as I could without putting the tree at risk. I used aluminum wire backing, that is, running three or four strands of aluminum wire lengthwise along the outside of the stress areas in the bends and then covering it with raffia. I then wired in the conventional way, using two strands of #6 copper wire on most of the branches. Many of the branches were too thick to be held in place without guy wires, so I left many gaps in the wire where I could slide a guy wire in.

This tree took me longer than most to wire. I listened very carefully for cracking and splitting while I pulled the branches into place. I pulled until they quit giving and then stopped. On a different tree I would have pushed it a bit more but on this one I did not allow myself. I spent four or five hours one day and then, since I tend to get careless when I’m tired, I stopped. I took a rest and finished up the next morning.

I was very happy with the way the tree responded. I saw some minor branch cracking, but nothing that gave me too much concern. Usually a crack in a branch on a ponderosa pine is no cause to worry. They crack in the wind all the time with no ill effects. I was also happy with the way the design came out. Considering my conservative approach, I thought the result was very good.

By May the tree was looking great and showing no ill effects from wiring. I thought it was strong enough to repot, so I did so. I put the tree into a 27” oval ceramic pot that I got from Osiga Company. The pot is high quality and was reasonably priced. Best of all it looks good with the tree.

Judy helped me repot, and I couldn’t have done it without her. Trying to handle the pot and soil and wire and a large tree all at one time is really too much for one person. I used to think I could do it all myself, but I have to admit things are much easier with two people. In this case, we could have even used another set of hands.

Having someone there to hold the tree allowed me to back up and examine it to make sure we were planting it at the right angle. Despite this, we did not quite get it the way I planned, although it’s close. And it will have to be good enough. I don’t plan to repot it again for a couple years now.

There are still some improvements to make. I want to pull the top down further so the upper trunk does not look so long and bare. I will do this slowly and bit by bit, over a year or so. Perhaps the foliage on the left side could be pulled in, to tighten the profile somewhat. Mike Hagadorn, fresh from his bonsai apprenticeship in Japan, was able to come by and he immediately suggested the tree be tipped forward just a bit, so the extension of the trunk is not so nearly parallel with the rim of the pot. I thought that was very perceptive.

After repotting the tree grew strongly all summer. With a tree like this, I can’t help but thinking of it’s future. If it grew for 500 years on the mountain before I encountered it (which is a reasonable guess), I can’t very well let it end up in a yard sale when I am unable to care for it any longer. So I need to plan.

There is a boy though, now eight years old, who was there when the tree was collected and already has a bonsai of his own. I wouldn’t say he’s interested in bonsai right now, but you never know what the future will hold. Who knows? It could be the start of a long relationship.

…please be patient while I collect my thoughts….