Richard Brenden Memorial Rocky Mountain Juniper

Today’s post is the story of a little Rocky Mountain juniper I collected during a trip to my Dad’s memorial in Montana. I was his caregiver the last two years of his life and he used to like to watch me work on my trees. He was a best friend, patron and advocate for my career as an artist. I like to think this little tree embodies some of his spirit for the zest of life in the way it has responded since I collected it back in the summer of 2009. The day I potted it up was 106* in the shade in Portland! While we are never certain about the outcome of transplanting trees–especially old ones–I was concerned about the heat this one would have to endure directly after transplanting. So it got a lot of  TLC  in the way of misting and gradual introduction to sunlight. I potted it in 100% pumice in the plastic pot you see it pictured in. The roots were few and woody and that is the miracle of pumice; it holds on to just the right amount of moisture and drains excellently in spite of how much water we throw at it. I don’t have any photos of it right after collecting in July 2009, so the first pic I took was last December before deciding to style the tree. It had three years to recover and you can see by the photo was robust and ready to go. I did some light thinning along the way since it was collected, but mostly the work on this tree consisted of watering and fertilizing and protecting from extreme cold in winter and extreme heat in summer. Here’s the first shot of the tree before work began December 2012:

 

I used the lens cap of my camera for scale for you to get an idea of the size of the tree. It pretty much looks like a dense little bush at this point. I did find out that it is a male because it produced pollen flowers for the first time last spring. Male junipers tend not to have the best looking foliage for bonsai but this one has pretty nice color and texture for a male. After three years of caring for the tree and studying it for the best front, I decided to tilt the tree to the right and bring the trunk to a more upright position. This also put the peculiar little bit of deadwood in the front at a more interesting angle. I can only guess but I believe it was once a root that supported a branch which was also gone by the time I discovered the tree. New trunk orientation:

 

The next step was branch selection which is a fancy way of saying pruning. I wanted to keep only those branches that were in good positions up and down the trunk; the rest would have to go. One of the reasons we let junipers grow freely for some years before we do anything to them–that way we will have lots of options when it comes time to style them and we won’t stress the tree out too much. After removing some branches the trunk can now be seen a little better:

 

Notice how I’ve kept the entire length of the branches I’ve selected? If we remove all the extension growth–that is the long tips you see at the ends of the branches–it can stress the tree out enough that it will all but quit growing. A shot of the branches removed:

 

With a lot of the foliage now out of the way we can finally see the trunk of this little guy, just under 2″ in diameter at the soil level. And the next step is to clean the deadwood and bark of the juniper with a soft brass brush; this brings out the grain of the dead wood and the nice red tone of the live bark. It’s this juxtaposition of life and death that gives juniper bonsai much of its allure:

 

Now the tree is ready to be wired. I use copper wire from Jim Gremel on all my junipers for best results. Jim ‘soaks’ his wire at annealing temperature which results in copper that is soft as butter and as easy as aluminum to work with. The key to using copper wire is to not bend it much before applying it to the tree; that includes tossing it on the ground each time after you cut a piece off to use. That only ‘work hardens’ the wire and makes it stiffer and more difficult to apply to the branches. Here’s a shot just after applying the wire and rough placement of branches:

 

The next step after applying wire is to ‘set’ the branches into position; we put side to side and up and down movement into the branches by gently bending the wire into position around the trunk and in relation to one another. Our goal is to place the branches so that they don’t cover one another and can get all the sunlight you can give them. We also want them to look nice in relation to one another and like they belong there. Like they have been there for a long time…this is why we bring the branch down in orientation to the trunk, as though the force of gravity through the centuries is weighing the branch down. We also want to bring the foliage in closer to the trunk to accentuate its features–live veins and dead wood. Here is where I left the tree back in December of 2012:

 

Out of focus and right behind the tree is a piece of juniper deadwood that came from the same area I collected the tree from. At this point, winter was setting in so I put the tree into an unheated greenhouse and misted the foliage twice daily and watered the tree carefully. I wasn’t afraid of over watering because the pumice has such good drainage but the tree lost over 50% of its foliage, it was going into dormancy and it was in a greenhouse which conserves water loss, thus the need for less water. One of the things I watch for as well is the die-back of branches due to the styling process. I’m seeing less and less of this as I gain experience, but there always seems to be one or two branchlets or even whole branches that die back. No pain, no gain as they say Seriously, however, along with experience and time comes the realization that we can and need to bend the branches more aggressively than we did when we were first starting out. This just takes time and experience–to be able to gauge how far to take a branch or a tree for that matter.

As winter gave way to spring, I noticed the tree was responding well to its new form and it didn’t even change color when the cold weather arrived for most of January. A good sign. And then in February, I noticed new shoots popping out of the tips of branches every where on the tree. It was strong enough to get it into a bonsai pot is what I decided! I found an inexpensive unglazed pot at a nursery in Seattle that was of a comfortable size for the first pot. I don’t usually like to put a newly styled tree into an expensive handmade or antique pot in case things don’t work out–best to start off in something a bit more humble for it to prove it’s pot-worthy, don’t you think? So, here you go, the tree in its new home, all styled up:

 

Some dimensions for you:  pot is 10″  in diameter by 3″ deep; tree is 11″ in height and the trunk is 2″ at the base. This photo was taken late March and the tree is filling out nicely here mid-May. I will be laying on some Rose Society organic fertilizer this week. I don’t know for certain the age of this little tree, only that smaller ones like this can be older than one might think. But I am looking forward to many more years enjoying its charm–I hope you have as well.

Spring Delights

This time of year is like a blur to a bonsaiist–everything seems to be going off simultaneously. You can almost feel the energy of the plants and trees we care for, sending out new shoots loaded with leaves and flowers. And while all this is going on, we are trying our best to keep up with the ones that need a new pot or need to have their soil exchanged and roots reduced. It’s about this time I surrender and realize I can’t do it all so I try to get as much accomplished as I can and still leave time to watch them grow and document that here for you on this blog.

The first subject is a Pioneer Gooseberry, Ribes lobbii, in full glory. I posted a close-up of the fruit of this plant in a post titled ‘September Splendor’ and here are the flowers for you. The crimson color is quite something to see in person, I hope the photos can do it justice:

 

I collected this little shrub in May of 2010 with no idea what the flowers would look like, only that it was in the Ribes tribe. Some closer shots of the flowers:

 

Another branch of crimson lanterns:

 

Here’s a Black Huckleberry for you I’ve posted before; it was in a Mardella Brock pot until this beauty from potter Jan Rentenaar found its way to me. It reminds me of a giant huckleberry that burst open:

 

Some close-ups of the flowers:

 

There are four flowers, can you see them? They have an interesting form but not much color when fully open. A shot of the light pink color when they first appear:

 

One more with an insect–looks like an ant to me:

 

I collected this Winged Elm while living in Missouri, 24 years ago. I planted a Bird’s Foot Violet near the trunk that came from the same area. They are waking up together this year:

 

Closer:

 

Another Bird’s Foot Violet in its own Jim Barrett pot:

 

I should include the Latin name, Viola pedata, and the reason for birds and feet being dragged into this The leaves of the plant resemble the toes of a bird spread out. Hard to believe I’ve kept this alive for 24 years, but I collected it in 1989! The next offering is an Arizona Alder I’ve had for nine years now:

 

It’s at its best just now as the leaves become larger with the warmer weather. It can be partially defoliated as the season rolls along and the newer set of leaves do come in smaller. Its winter silhouette is getting nicer as the twigs slowly ramify. It really likes the climate here in the Pacific Northwest, some 1,600 miles further north in latitude to where it’s native. Coming up is a Pignut Hickory I’ve had for 24 years, also collected in Missouri:

 

This is one of those trees that is difficult to get to ramify, so I’ve pretty much left it alone and keep it for curiousity’s sake. A close shot of the plated bark is a nice feature of this tree:

 

And the nebari (Japanese for surface root) is of interest as well:

 

I always like to end a visual feast with a little ‘eye candy’ and an unusual subject at that. Here is a little plant that has evolved to live off another host and only puts up a flower–Orobanche uniflora var. purpurea or more commonly known as Naked Broomrape:

 

It’s the tiny purple flower with the yellow tongue in the center of the photo. A side view of the same flower:

 

It popped up amid some Prairie Stars, Lithophragma parviflora, I think may be the host plant. But there are also lots of grasses that could be hosts as well. It’s been open for a few days now, a nice surprise that was unanticipated. That’s all folks, thanks for stopping by for another look!

Cork Bark Black Pine

Well, as promised from my last posting on olives, here is something completely different. And I mean that in many respects. Here we have a conifer that lives outdoors the entire year and needs as much sun as you can throw at it (the olives are sun-loving too) It’s also the only black pine worth talking about in my collection. It has a story behind it before it ever got to me…

Scott Elser–three time National Bonsai Show winner–brought this tree into our club meeting for the raffle table. This tree is on Japanese black pine root stock and the cork bark cultivar was grafted on. The union where the graft was done is really obvious and is something we don’t want to see. Scott tried to air layer this tree at the graft union using the tourniquet method of wrapping wire tightly around the trunk  to cut into the cambium layer of bark in hopes the tree would throw roots where the tourniquet was applied. The experiment failed and he was left right back where he started. He decided to let someone else have a go at it by bringing it to the raffle. My friend Margie won the tree and was in the process of moving and asked me to look after it for her. I’ve got lots of room here, so it was no problem. That was a year ago.

I couldn’t help trying to come up with a solution to the problem this tree posed and after a year of moving it around because it sat in a section of lawn that had to be mowed every two weeks; it came to me this spring. Before I go much further, how about an image of what I was dealing with?

 

Here’s the subject in its decaying terracotta pot and quite an assortment of very bad weeds and an ugly trunk. The graft union is very obvious as the cork bark cultivar inverts the taper. Let’s go around the tree:

 

The tree sure is healthy, a result of using Portland Rose Society organic fertilizer pellets with mycorhizae. More views:

 

Another view of the ugly graft union; makes it look more like a cactus than a tree.

 

Straight, shiny needles are a sure sign of health!

 

The trunk does have nice movement–to its credit

 

A close-up showing the graft union/tourniquet interface. Scott did recommend another attempt with more conviction which might kill the tree in the process as one option for the future of the tree. It took me a year but I saw another angle…

 

I ’tilted her over’ into a Chinese pot I had sitting around (anybody know what the characters mean?) and this is what I got; the tree is wired into the pot ‘just so’. The angle of inclination, the position in the pot–even the pot itself all fell into place. I felt privileged to witness such a transformation. A close-up of the trunk/soil interface:

 

I still had to use a little of the grafted root stock, which I’m hoping will age and blend even further with the cork bark of the rest of the tree. I will keep an eye on the tree as the months go along and may start candle work as early as late May…we’ll see. I would like to wire the tree by fall at the very least. I took these photos over a week ago and the candles are already orienting themselves to the new planted angle–a sure sign of vigor. I hope you have enjoyed this transformation of a seemingly impossible piece of material as much as I have! Stay tuned…there’s much more to come

And before I forget, Margie has graciously allowed me to keep the tree for myself in exchange for bonsai work…Thanks Margie!

Sm’olives

It’s been a coon’s age since I last posted, I’m sure some of you might be thinking I gave it up. I was one of the unfortunate that got the flu this winter and a rather nasty strain of it too; this came with a cough that just refused to go away! Now it is completely gone in time for the spring re-potting season here in Portland. But I wanted to share with you today some of the small olives I’ve been working on through the years as they become the center of attention here in the winter. I have a room with a south-facing window in the house that I winter all my tropical and Mediterranean species. Another reason for posting is that some of the older photos of some of these trees have come up recently on my facebook page as friends check out my albums there. It’s surprising how much some of them have changed, so I’ll begin with one that I potted into an old pulley that came from a farm implement from my Grandfather’s farm:

 

This picture was taken early summer of  2010 right after I re-potted it into the pulley; it was never styled and you can see what these olives like to do–shoot their branches straight up and reach for the sky! Next shot was in November 2010 and hopefully you can see the result of a complete wiring of all the branches and some pruning off of the suckers at the base of the tree…still in the pulley:

 

Next is the image I took yesterday in a different pot and completely re-wired. I re-potted it to this Mardella Brock pot last summer and re-wired the tree last fall (2012) Summertime is the best time to re-pot the heat-loving Mediterranean trees in the Northwest. It’ nice having something to do in the summer when we normally don’t do much work on our trees except water, water and water some more

 

It really likes the new pot because it’s deeper and some of the vigor of the tree has been restored. I liked the rusty pulley and may put it in that one again, we’ll see. What do you think?  The next tree up was the largest of the olives I’ve got and I don’t have a photo of it when it was in its plastic pot. It looked very similar to the first tree posted, with lots of branches sprouting from all over the trunk and growing ram-rod straight. Here is the tree back in 2010:

 

The tree is 8″ high and the trunk at the base is 4″ in diameter…a little large for shohin. They are calling them Kifu now, I believe. This is not a ‘Sumo’ as the dimensions would have to be wider than it is tall. I have one that might qualify as a Sumo to post later on. I removed a lot of branches from the tree and shortened and wired the remaining ones that were important for the design. And here’s how it looks as of yesterday:

 

The tree was completely re-wired last fall and I turned it slightly counter-clockwise for a little more movement in the trunk. It’s starting to fill in a bit and is one step closer to the final image. I’m thinking about a different pot for it–one with the sides curving convexly…what do you think? Coming up next is one that we might consider to be ‘Sumo’–defined as being wider than it is tall. The first shot is from when I first potted the tree. It is in an unusual pot made by my friend Mardella Brock, a potter living in Bozeman, MT:

 

You can see that the tree was wired but you can’t see the trunk very well. This little spud presented a problem for me to solve as it was this little lump of a trunk with very little going on regarding movement or flow. Kind of static, if you will. So I was playing around with the pot last summer and lit on a solution; there was a dip in Mardella’s pot that accommodated the trunk if I tilted the tree to the left:

 

This is a case for the pot influencing the design of the tree, when sometimes a tree just doesn’t give us much to work with. And while I’m showcasing Mardella’s pots, this next little tree is in a fantastic pot she made–very ‘Chihuly-esque’ in feeling. First image is from summer of 2010:

 

This little tree had some styling from the previous owner, so I let it go for a while…but I just had to do something with it because these little suckers really take off  in the heat of the summer. Yesterday’s image is of the tree in at least its second wiring by my hand:

 

A little note about wiring here. You probably have noticed I use copper wire on these trees and not aluminum as most do on non-conifers. If I used aluminum, I could not have set the branches where I wanted or put the kind of movement into them I can with copper. My feeling about whether to use copper or not has to do with whether you feel confident with it or not. I just know that if I put wire on any tree–especially non-conifers–I need to watch the branches very carefully so that the wire does’nt bite in and remove it at the first sign it might be. Also with the olives, I wire them in the fall, when the new shoots have lignified or hardened off; October and November is a good time here in the Portland area for that. The little planting that’s next has no before photo, I’m afraid, but has been together since the summer of 2010, when I first potted it. It’s a little ‘Sumo’ stump I planted into a black lava rock and that was placed on a ‘plate pot’ Mardella Brock made especially for this planting. She really laughed out loud when she first saw it and it made me feel good

 

The height of the lava is 6″ to give you a sense of scale. It just might qualify for a shohin. And next is one of my favorites of them all…it’s so ugly it’s cute, like a little pug:

 

Dimensions on this are 4″ wide by 4″  high. Sorry there’s no before shot on this one. Up next is another for which there is no before. It is a root cutting and one of the most peculiar of the bunch. I potted it in a tuna can and am thinking of putting it into a Sara Raynor pot this summer…what do you think of the tuna can?

 

That does it for the European olives and now for some Olea oleaster. First is the one I’ve had the longest, it was given to me by a friend when I was in Tucson in 2001. I planted it on the lava shortly after I moved to Oregon in 2006. It’s been on that piece of lava for 7 years and is happy as a clam there:

 

I wired it last fall; those branches are starting to get stiff but they’re still flexible. I made a number of cuttings from this tree over the years and sold most of them at a workshop held at my friend Mardella Brock’s annual Summer Garden Sale in 2010; the rest I gave away but I held on to this little cutting I planted to a lava rock in the summer of 2011 and wired last fall:

 

The dimensions of this planting are: 10″ wide by 7″ high including the rock. That does it for the olives for now, how about a dwarf orange with fruit?

 

The trunk is 2″ at the base and the tree is 9″ high; the fruits are the size of blueberries and very tasty with a single seed at the center. I purchased this tree from Loveda Petrie in Tucson around 2003 as a seedling she had grown from seed. She got the original tree from a bonsai trip to Japan, it was part of the table decorations at a banquet. I have a small forest of these I grew from seed off of this tree. Not ready for prime time yet, but I’ll post a photo of it when it is. This tree blooms in the heat of the summer and the small white flowers are very fragrant. What’s not to like about a tree like this? That’s all I’ve got for you today but stay tuned as there has been some activity outdoors and surely some posts will follow!

September Splendor

I don’t normally post so frequently, but I ran across these photos I took late last summer of some of my fruiting bonsai when I was trying to find the ‘before’ pictures of the juniper in yesterday’s post. These are still in their early development, and I’m keeping them mainly for the appreciation of their flowers and fruit. We often miss out on that with these bonsai as we are constantly removing the growth that produces flowers and fruit until they are quite mature; it’s worth the trouble and wait, however, because more branches equal more flowers and fruit.

Here’s a pinot grape cutting I acquired from Dennis Vojtilla a couple of years ago that has fruited for me for the first time in a handmade pot by Mardella Brock:

 

And a close up of that cluster of grapes

 

I love all the different colors of each individual grape! Here’s a native gooseberry Ribes lobbii, or pioneer gooseberry, collected in the Oregon Cascades:

 

It sits in another pot by Mardella Brock, of Bozeman, Montana. And a close up of the fruits:

 

I wish I could say they are as tasty as they are beautiful, but they are only slightly sweet and mealy with an aftertaste something like tomato. My variegated porcelain berry set some fruit also. These display the multi-colored fruits on the same vine that the grape does. Porcelain berry starts out green when unripe, then turns purple, then blue, then turquoise and finally white when fully ripe. These are edible as well but are only slightly sweet. Birds like them:

 

Another shot with more berries:

 

I’ve had this little pomegranate, Punica granatum ‘nana’ since 1995. It has flowered and fruited over the years and this year put out lots of flowers:

It made one fruit this fall that dropped shortly after bringing it indoors for the winter. I thought I’d leave you with this accent plant that flowered well this year, it’s common self-heal, Prunella vulgaris. I dug it from the lawn and potted it in a tuna can:

 

And a detail of the flowers:

 

The individual flowers remind me of orchids. Thanks for stopping by for a look. See you next time!

J. shovelii III

Happy New Year to all! I thought I’d start 2013 off right with a new post to my blog. We’re getting a dose of winter in the Willamette Valley; the ground is finally frozen and there’s about an inch of ice on my rain barrels. I tend to go easy on my trees when water is frozen

A few of you out there know that I like to plant trees on old shovel blades that have become useless when the wooden handle breaks just above the ferrule (those not in the know, a ferrule is the tube that secures the handle of a tool to the business end) I do have one shovel planting that has an intact handle and it’s kind of awkward to work on the tree…I prefer the broken handles. The tree that is the subject of today’s post is a plain old ordinary green mound juniper–Juniperus procumbens ‘nana’. I sourced it from Randy Knight of Oregon Bonsai, who donated it to our club’s raffle table. This tree was so unappealing not one member put a ticket in its bucket I had been caring for it in my yard for the club and couldn’t bear to see all the months of nursing it back to health go to waste. It was the perfect candidate for my plan!

One of the nice things about using material like this, is that one is not too precious with it and daring to take risks is the order of the day. I’m sorry I didn’t take any before pics of the planting or any during its creation. Having a blog is really good to motivate you to take better reference shots of your trees and what you do with them. On July 4th 2011, I decided it was time to try out my idea. This tree had a skinny little trunk with branches cascading over one side of its gallon size nursery pot. The only design I could see for it was a cascade style or a semi-cascade style–I would just have to see how it went. I never like to force myself into a rigid mind set when attempting something new like this.

The other two shovel plantings I have done were with the shovel blade-side up, the thinking here was that it makes a nice shallow tray to hold the tree’s roots. I had been thinking about trying one with the roots on the back-side of the shovel blade. So I took the tree out of its pot and discovered the reason why it wasn’t doing so well when I got it. It was still in its original peaty nursery mix and had been root-bound for a long time. So much so that the bottom 2/3 of the rootball was dead. I had fed it well with an organic pelletized fertilizer which encouraged roots on the surface of the pot–where we want them anyway. Since I didn’t have to worry about reducing a large root mass, my job was easy–shake off the fine, rotted peat soil and lay down a fresh layer of a pumice-based mix I like to use for rock plantings and plantings like this. I pulled the little tree’s trunk right up into the hollow ferrule and really wedged it in. The tree was going to be stable in its new home and I worked on mounding soil over the roots slightly and covered the whole thing with living green moss. I also wrapped the rootball with some ‘buddy’ tape, a parrafin wax tape that is used for grafting. The tape is supposed to dissolve in time, so I thought it would be perfect for this application. Things were going so well I decided to wire the branches as well. I kept the new planting on the back porch of my Bungalow-style house and it provided just the right amount of shading for the newly styled and potted tree. I also misted the foliage several times a day as the air is quite dry here in July and it happens to be one of our hottest months. It got up to 106* in July of 2009 in fact!

I took this first shot of the tree in October of 2012 after one growing season of resting with the wires off. Yes, it was necessary to de-wire this tree in the fall of 2011. The re-potting to the new home increased its vigor so much that the branches were swelling after 3 months of growth.

 

 

A slightly different angle

And so November rolled around, which is a good time for wiring junipers like this as the new growth has hardened off and the tree is beginning to shut sown a bit. Here is how the tree looked after an afternoon of wiring:

 

Some different views going around the tree:

 

 

left side

 

the back side

 

right side

 

close up

 

That’s all for now–hope you enjoyed the tree!

Southwestern White Pine

The subject of tonight’s post is the story of a Southwestern White Pine, Pinus strobiformis, I collected from the mountains of Southeast Arizona right around this time of year in 2005. I decided to do this now to coincide with the publication of an article I wrote for International Bonsai that is out this month; I have permission form the Editor, Bill Valavanis to do so. Sorry I don’t have an image for you right here but I do have a pdf file you can download–IT’S SAFE. There you will see the article and images as if you were a subscriber to the magazine. By the way–International Bonsai is one of the better magazines about bonsai you can be reading. I highly recommend you take out a subscription to this publication. Lots of really good information plus images of really great trees like mine ( no pride here)

Let’s see if this works: Click on the link below:

ABOUT THE COVER; a second screen will appear with the same link…click on it again, then Voila!

So, I tried it out in the preview that WordPress provides and it works but the link comes up on a second screen that you have to re-click the link on…does that make sense? First click on the link  ’About The Cover’ a screen will come up with the same title, click on that and the file opens. and there you have the article about the pine. Sorry for all the hoops–I’m not a computer guy, I’m an artist. I feel compelled to post an image of this tree anyway if you are somehow challenged by all this

 

This photo was taken of the tree in its first public appearance at the Portland Japanese Garden Pavillion for the 2010 Bonsai Society of Portland Spring Show. The accent to this is also one of my babies–a rock penstemon in a pot made by Michael Hagedorn

Alaska Yellow-Cedar

The topic of today’s post will be the first styling of an Alaskan yellow-cedar, Chamaecyparis  nootkatensis, aka “Nootka Cypress”. The material was sourced from Elandan Gardens in Bremerton, Washington. I belong to the Bonsai Society of Portland and have been the first vice president of programs for the past two years and as such, I invited Dan Robinson, owner and proprietor of Elandan Gardens to Portland in October to give us a program working with species native to the Northwest. As a bonus to the program, Dan brought several trees with him that were for sale at very reasonable prices and had a lot of ‘gnarliness’ to them He brought some engelman spruce, larch and quite a few of these yellow cedars. I really fell in love with  them and had very little competition from my fellow members because they just couldn’t get past that foliage…

It’s true that these cedars have long, droopy foliage that doesn’t look very attractive on first blush. But that’s what wire is for! I could see beyond the obvious and what I saw were these incredible trunks that had been buried most of their lives in a peat bog. The conditions present rotted away the trunks in such a manner they looked as though they had been skillfully carved. I was not too flush the night of the program, but I convinced a friend she just had to have one of these and I would help her with the styling. Before I go any further, how about a photo of what we’re talking about?

 

That photo was taken one of the last sunny days we had here–around November sometime. You can see the planted angle as it was received was nearly horizontal and I had to keep that rock around everywhere I went with this tree because it kept flopping over. So, at this point, the foliage appears as it naturally does with this species–droopy, soft and fern-like. I really quite like it this way, but as I said before, I was intrigued to see if I could transform it with wire into something more like what we are accustomed to seeing as a bonsai. Some other shots late last week as I had it set up for a new styling angle:

 

I tipped the tree up on its axis (got it out of bed, so to speak) for a more dynamic feeling and also to show off the hollow feature of this amazing old trunk.

 

Another view, further away.

 

Over to the left.

 

Closer.

 

The left side.

 

Moving counter-clockwise toward the back of the tree. Notice the stub of a large branch that was cut off before I received the tree…this will have to go!

 

Moving ever-so-slightly towards the back. You can see why some thought the foliage was never going to be useful for a bonsai…

 

And the back of the tree; notice the length of that branch stub and how it prevents the live branch above it from being brought down. This is where I started the styling of this tree–silk carving that stub away until the branch above could be brought down with two #6 copper wires and a guy wire. These cedars are tough trees and can take a lot of bending but care must be taken as the bark is thin and can easily be marred.

 

Almost around to what I decided for the front. I guess the secret’s out about how much this tree cost

 

And here is a

shot of the front, before styling. You can see the hollow area near the top. It was full of rotting vegetation among other things, but the live area around the back of the tree was very much intact and once I cleaned the hollow area out with a steel brush, one could see the lovely grain of the wood and appreciate the hollow feature better. If this were my tree I would only apply a very dilute mixture of lime sulfur to the hollow cavity as well as mix some india ink or other black pigment in with it. I really like to see a hollow trunk be dark inside–it adds to the mystery and beckons the viewer to come closer and inspect what’s inside.

Before I unveil the final image, I have to say that while progression shots are educational and interesting, I was unable to take any good ones as it was pouring rain the whole time I was working on the tree and I really don’t have a dedicated area indoors for photography yet. Coming soon though, I promise! So, here is the tree as it looked yesterday, after one and one half days of work:

 

Let’s take a little tour around the tree:

 

Notice the beautiful color of the bark once the old flaky pieces are removed. I’ll bet this would look really sexy oiled up for a show

 

This looking at the back but moving toward the left side of the tree. Note the carved stub and how the branch that was above it was brought down to make the the lower left branch from the front.

 

A shot from the left side of the tree.

 

Detail of the hollow section near the top of the tree. I quite like the natural color of the wood and would have to think hard about covering this up with anything. It will oxidize naturally on its own and the cedar wood is impregnated with resin that has allowed it to remain laying in a bog for how long??

 

Detail shot of the trunk base showing the natural hollow of the tree. Gorgeous trunk!

I thought I’d leave you with a little eye candy for the holidays; I planted this violet in an iron nut I found alongside the railroad tracks near where I live. Railroad tracks are a great source for rusty bits of iron to plant stuff in

 

Can you believe violets are blooming in mid-December? Very odd…Happy Holidays dear reader!!

Ignoble Fir?

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve got a bit of a reputation for doing some pretty ‘out there’ stuff with trees. Once in a while I give in to my urge to let go and just have some fun with it…and such is the case with the subject of today’s post, a little noble fir I dug out of a long-abandoned logging road shortly after I arrived in Oregon. I was new to the area and anything looked good to me because it was such a change from living in the Sonoran Desert. This poor little fir had been driven over by an ATV which gave it the character to cause me to stop and take a second look at it. I potted it into a dollar store plastic collander and two years later, in 2008, I wired it:

 

Check out the mushrooms growing out the side on the left:

 

Sorry for them not being in focus! Let’s try another shot:

 

I’m not sure what they are,  but I’m calling them chanterelles. They’re kind of the same color as a chanterelle anyway…

This little tree grew like crazy over the next few years and I decided to find a pot for it. I like to go through old dumps I run across on my hikes and found a pretty rich source of junk from one in particular. It had the old ‘bones’ of some household appliances along with some old automobile parts that somehow followed me home I happened to find the burner well from an old electric range that was a dead ringer for a namban if I ever did see one (namban is Japanese word for the ceramic lids to vessels that were used to feed ducks; bonsai artists drilled drainage holes in the bottom of them and used them as containers for bunjin style trees) This little fir was quirky enough, I felt, to merit such an unusual container. The next shot is the tree in its new ‘pot’. It’s also sporting a new styling done recently:

 

In case you’re wondering what that thing it’s sitting on is, think of it turned upside-down and mounted on a wheel–it’s the business end of an old garden cultivator I found in yet another old dump. I thought the two made an interesting combination together…what do you think?

Fall color

We’ve finally got our rain back here in the Northwest and with that, more time indoors to go through the few photos I’ve been able to capture between the rain and flat, gray light. My trees seem to be a bit confused this fall because our spring was so cold, summer came late and we’ve had no cold weather yet to speak of. So, I tried to get what I could with the little I’ve got. Here’s the forest of Japanese mountain maples I grew from cuttings that was featured in the last post to this blog:

 

Another forest in training; this time the species is Vine Maple:

 

Fall color on vine maples can be a bit difficult to achieve if you’re not careful about where to site your tree; leaves get sun scorch very easily and generally look pretty ratty by the fall. Next up is a shohin vine maple I posted in an entry earlier this summer. Color isn’t stunning, but still nice and adds a little seasonal interest:

 

Another shohin size tree, Horse Chestnut, from seedling:

 

My Boougainvillea decided to flower too:

 

If you’re wondering what the netting is for, it’s to keep the birds from rifing through the soil; we had one of the driest summers on record here in Portland and my pots had the only moist soil for them to search for insects. The English sparrow is the real culprit and a non-native species to boot! While on the subject of flowers and tropicals, here’s a shot of a Serissa in flower with a bee in paradise:

 

And my night-blooming Cereus cactus put on a late show:

 

Back to the trees–a Black Huckleberry with a little splash of color. I posted this in an earlier entry too:

 

A very little Arctic Willow from cutting:

 

A little Lodgepole pine, Pinus contorta latifolia also featured in an earlier blog entry:

 

There’s a trunk in there somewhere, I promise you!  Our club hosted the Pacific Northwest Bonsai Clubs Association convention in September, where I set up a couple of tables as a vendor. Jim Gremel came up from California and kept me amused when things got quiet. He had some of his killer cedars with him and I just had to have this one, so I traded a mountain hemlock and an Engelman spruce for it. I love the color of the needles!

 

Jim tells me this was grafted to deodora rootstock and that the trick to getting movement into the trunk is to start them while still young. Trying heavy bends on an old trunk is very risky as they have a tendency to snap like a carrot and break clean so there’s not a strip of cambium to save the tree. It’s nice to get one that has all that going in…I’ll wrap it up with a shot of a common juniper I did a little work on between showers. This is the mother tree of ‘CJ’ the subject of a couple of entries this summer:

 

The sun just broke through the clouds, so it’s outside for a rare ‘sun break’ (never heard of that in Arizona