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This is a maple I have been working on for some years and you might have seen on the blog before (2021 update, and 2013 update).
It came into the workshop recently (where i forgot to take before pics) and I gave it a structural prune. It really needs a full re-wire but overall I am pretty happy with the branch structure and development.
If you compare the tree now to some of the previous posts you can see quite a bit of development but then again i think I first started working this tree in 2013 so 10 years have passed so i would expect some change (and perhaps more development).
It had been somewhat neglected the last little while and particularly last year where it was overdue for re-potting and i ran out of time to do it.
As a result in the heat of summer I had some root issues and the tree suffered some die-back on the nebari. It was not a good result and entirely my fault. Well, lesson learnt and now i will have to spend the next few years healing the scar and will consider wrapping the roots in a towel or cloth to give some sun protection on our hottest parts of the year.
The tree still has a way to go but each time i work on it i can see the improvements. I am looking forward to giving it a full re-wire this Autumn.
So it looks like spring is on it’s way early this year with Trident Maples and Chinese Elms in my garden already swelling their buds. This might not seem all that strange depending on when you are reading this post from but ‘down under’ we are still in July (at time of writing) and I don’t normally even consider repotting until mid to late August and often run into September and beyond.
NOTE: (for those in the northern hemisphere, the months of June, July and August are our winter. For the Americans who don’t have metric winters; a short summary of the above might be that we are 64 ⁄ 79 ths of the way through winter and trees are budding out.)
I was lucky this year that I had a YouTube celebrity come over and help me out.
For those interested, his YouTube channel “Jeff’s Bonsai” can be found HERE.
Jeff is a great guy and we had a great day together and it only cost me a bowl of reheated left overs for his lunch!
I had forgotten how nice it was to have company when doing bonsai. So much of my work is done on my own down the back of the garden in my little shed. I suppose that social isolation generally has only increased with Covid so it was a really nice change to have someone else around lending a hand.
I think together we repotted 12 or 13 trees in half a day or so. I don’t think I could have done half as many in that timeframe, so thankyou Jeff.
The other thing you might notice from the above image is the black mesh screen on top of my green waste bin. This was another idea I got from Jeff (noticed in one of his videos). The night before he arrived I welded up the screen to easily and cleanly get all the old soil into the compost bin without risking the tree or tools falling in. It worked a treat!
As for the trees we re-potted, eventually many of them may make it to the blog but in the mean time a couple you might recognise from older posts are below.
Thanks again to Jeff. With his help we have broken the back of what can often be an overwhelming and desperate race against swelling buds. Hopefully I can trick him into helping again!
I’ve had a spur of motivation lately. In my private life i have changed jobs and am now working a 4 day week. It’s given me the hint of a day a week i can spend on myself and thus far i’ve been dedicating it to Bonsai.
One of the trees that has benefited from this work is a Japanese Maple that i begun work on several years ago. You can read a blog post about it below:
Its been a slow road, mainly due to my lack of attention but I have been slowly removing course growth and re-growing better branching.
It has a long way to go but finally I am beginning to see it growing into its final form.
The upper areas of the tree have a lot of length to add to the branching and there is the start of another trunk (which will be the fourth, shock horror) on the bottom right of the trunk.
That said I am pretty happy with where it is at and with a little more time up my sleeve I hope to get some more mileage out of it this year.
This post will hopefully be the first in a run that i have been preparing and working on. I have a couple of pines left to un-wire before repotting season hits us so i will try to cover off some of that as it happens.
I am thinking that when I repot this tree it will likely get a change of pot to mix things up a little.
Until the next one………
During my last trip to Japan I worked on what might be a very special maple. Oyakata brought it to me to cut back and wire in preparation for the following springs growth.
He said it was a very famous tree that had been sold, miss-treated, had gone backwards and was now back at the nursery to be re made under Oyakata’s care.
The tree in question.
The tree had supposedly featured in the Gafu-ten special tree album “Miyabi” that recognised important shohin bonsai masterpieces and pots.
Of course, I quickly dug out the album and tried to locate the tree. But, it was not so easy.
The best match I could find was the tree below.
The same tree?
I am fairly sure this is the same tree although it has obviously changed a lot since that picture was taken. I am guessing it’s been about 10 years between the two pictures and many aspects are similar although many are also very different.
The base has obviously thickened considerably totally changing the proportions but you can just make out the link to the original form. Some of the original branches have also been lost, have thickened and or have seemed to have moved as the trunk has spread. all this make recognising the tree difficult. I am 90% sure its the same tree but of course there is a good chance I am wrong.
Any forensic bonsai detectives out there? Can you see the similarities? Is this the same tree?
After some work.
The work itself was fairly straight forward. I tried to remove thick branch tips, pruned out other unnecessary branching and wired a rough structure. The usual work for a deciduous tree in this stage.
From the back.
It’s nice to know that the tree is back on the path to one day being a great little shohin tree again. Looking over the above pics really makes you appreciate how much trees change over time and how you are forced to forever re-imagine them and adapt to mishaps as they develop and change. The nice thing about working with living things is their ability to be reworked and recovered which i think this tree is a good example of.
A year later. Thanks for the pic Kelvin!
A friend sent me some photos of this tree during his recent trip that shows another year of ramification and a change in pot. The trunk looks thicker again! It’s amazing what a year can do and only makes you think of how great this tree could have looked if it hadn’t gone backwards for a period of years after appearing in miyabi.
Nichigo Bonsai 