BritBonsaiBlog, what else?

To Sphagnum or not to Sphagnum?

2011-06-15T18:52:00.003+01:00

That is a rhetorical question, for in no way do I wish to emulate the Bard. (Well, only a little :o)

Nor do I wish to make this a 'how-to' post. That was never the purpose of this blog. Loads of other sites on the interwebs for that, some with people advocating their way or no way. And they probably do it with a lot more brio and conviction than I ever will.

Once in a while, though, I will answer a question or tell you what we do and why. What you do with that information is all up to you.

This one is a result of a remark a friend made, when TOH said we top-dress our newly re-potted trees with chopped sphagnum moss. This protects the top layer from drying out, since this is the layer where the feeding roots tend to be most active. The contention is that, this would encourage the roots to grow into the sphagnum (i.e. up towards the surface) rather than down into the soil (i.e. towards the bottom of the pot).

The only time we've ever had the experience of roots growing towards the top of the soil is when we used to lay down the large cakes of rapeseed fertiliser. This acted like some sort of root magnet but we have long since gone for other forms of fertiliser, since the decomposing rapeseed cakes are a blackbird magnet as well as a root magnet. The blackbirds used to chuck the rapeseed cakes off the bonsai and go for the grubs that would inevitably come with the decomposition factor.

So, going back to the chopped sphagnum layer. What we do is blitz the stuff in a food processor, so that it comes out in relatively fine flakes. We first started out by grating it over a fine-meshed metal sieve, but ditched that for a more high-tech method. 'Cos I'm all about the user friendliness, y'know... :D

A thick-ish layer (about 5 - 8 mm) of this finely-chopped sphagnum is laid over our top dressing of fine Akadama, then tamped down and misted well so that the whole lot doesn't go flying off at the initial watering. The newly re-potted bonsai is then given a VERY thorough drenching, then left alone until the layer of sphagnum starts to show signs of drying out. Then it gets drenched again, then only re-watered until the sphagnum does its show-and-tell thing again. And so on ad infinitum for the rest of the life of the bonsai (or until real live moss starts growing over the existing sphagnum layer). Which is basically the same way we water every potted (or not) thing in the garden - accent plants, kusamono, et al.

To illustrate the sphagnum business, this is a 7-lobed Japanese maple (previously featured in this post) that was re-potted at the tail end of this Winter. The top dressing of sphagnum moss is lighter in colour before watering, thus making it easy to identify which trees are in need of a drink:

And after watering (check out the water mark on the bark of the tree), it goes a darker colour (and so does the Akadama; click to enlarge the photo). The moss also clumps together when it's wet:

Before watering, the top layer of akadama just beneath the sphagnum is only very slightly damp while the lower layers of soil deep beneath will still retain more moisture; hence the feeding roots will naturally find their way towards this source of water. Another person I know used to call this 'making the roots work'.

The sphagnum moss layer prevents erosion of the top soil layer, particularly for people like me who use a watering hose. Here is where we haven't bothered to replenish the sphagnum dressing on this exposed-root Trident Maple, which of course is not the most energised of bunnies at the moment:

I suppose, if I were less careful with the watering and kept the soil evenly damp all the time, the roots of our bonsai would probably work their way to the top layer of sphagnum moss. I would probably also have lost lots of trees by now. Still, we have been using this top-dressing method for the past 10 years at least, so there must be some merit to our madness.

Some people say the moss should be taken off after a time - I've never bothered as the birds tend to do that for me, either through boredom, foraging, nest-building or just the desire to cheese me off. If anything, we wind up having to renew the moss layer after a few months as it gets eroded by watering and bird activity. And it is fairly easy to tell if moss has started growing due to over-watering; it has this sort of manky look to it, plus the surface would always be wet to the touch anyway.

A word about the sphagnum-blitzing business, though: it really does tend to get blown away by the slightest breeze once it's finely chopped. And watering - either with a hose or by dunking - is another quick way to lose the lot when it's freshly laid. Hence our utter reliance on a good nozzle that has a 'mist' feature. Never say you haven't been warned...

BTW, did anyone notice the gratuitous pun embedded discreetly up there? Energised? Bunnies? Yes? Yes?

Now WTF was that about?

2011-06-12T23:06:00.001+01:00

Well Blogger, you've locked me out of here for over a month, but I'm too relieved to be back in - and too knackered from the almost continual frustration - to even get worked up about it.

'Cos I has pics! And had nowhere to post them while Blogger was doing its nut. Other than Twitpic, that is.

So there. Don't blame me for the hiatus this time. Wasn't my idea, folks.

A Smattering of Accents

2011-05-07T18:33:00.004+01:00

These past couple of weeks have been so hot - and so dry - that I positively welcomed last night's deluge. And since today isn't really that much cooler, I look back with a bit of nostalgia to the days when it actually was too damn cold... yep, there's no pleasing some people :D

Despite the uncommonly hard winter we had - which BTW makes 2 years in a row - everything in the garden came out in a rush last spring. Or at least, everything that was going to come out, came out early. Anything else that didn't, was not going to cooperate for the rest of its natural life.

Among the precocious performers this year were a magenta-coloured Hepatica (seriously, magenta), Lily of the Valley that flowered weeks earlier than they should have, a Trident Maple that sulked after the hard winter of 2009 but didn't get any winter protection last year either, and a lot of Accent Plants that we didn't think would survive wearing a foot of snow on their heads for nearly 3 weeks. And the reality is that getting the garden geared up to face a similar hard winter will mean several weeks' worth of prep work. Actually we have lost more trees from drying out while we were on holiday in the summer than we have from a hard winter. And we have lost more bonsai pots to cats and birds going on the rampage rather than the ravages of the cold. In point of fact, our broken Bonsai & Accent Pot score for this year is Birds = 5, Frost = 0.

So here was one of our earliest flowering Accents this Spring - a blue Soldanella (possibly carpatica) from Poland which we have had since 2007.

This one self-seeds relatively well and we have also broken up the parent plant several times over. Being an Alpine, it may not be the easiest thing to keep alive in the wet winters of the UK. This guy has been in the same (Japanese) pot since 2008 and is planted in neat Akadama. It's probably also due a re-pot sometime, but at the moment it's still taking in water quite easily. It lives on the shelving right by an exterior wall, and this is all the winter protection it has ever had. I still check the Accent Plants almost every day in the Winter, but watering is done only when absolutely needful.

This second one started out as a planting of yellow Iris - possibly reticulata - in a 'dragon's egg' pot that Walsall used to make a long, long time ago. (David Jones has since stopped making them and we only have three.) I created the planting about 3 years ago and whatever was the companion plant to the Irises has since died; the Irises themselves have done absolutely bugger all, but 2 years ago, this Epimedium self-seeded itself into the mix. This is the first year it has flowered. The first picture shows the flower spike just coming out in February:

And these are the fully open Epimedium flower spikes, with the Iris leaves untidily lying around after having done bugger-all again this year. The Accent Plant in the background is a clump of Hakonechloa, also in a Walsall pot.

And I leave you with this image of the earliest Accent to flower this year - something like late January; a Buttercup with a posh name: Ranunculus ficaria 'Coppernub' in a teacup-style pot by Brian Albright.

We have had this guy for a while now, you can see what it looked like in the Spring of 2009 in this post.

Meon Springs - an Alternative to a Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T01:43:00.005+01:00

Not being wedding-y type people (although we do wish well to every couple that ties the knot) and certainly not street party-type people either, TOH and I decided to spend the day fishing at Meon Springs in Hampshire. Well, one half of this couple went fishing, and the other half chilled out with unlimited mugs of coffee and a laptop. Up to you to decide which one was which :o)

But...I took pics! Oh yes, 'cos it's really lovely country over there. Meon Springs is within the South Downs National Park and is adjacent to a working dairy farm. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get up close and personal with the cows, but as them heifers have two very big, very butch boyfriends, maybe it's just as well.

Here's one of the vistas from one of the hills, as you drive up to the fishery:

And views of the fishing lakes as the afternoon draws to a close:

Imagine having something that looks like this tree but in a nice 12-inch landscape pot (with possibly a bit of depth in it for the roots, as I think this is an Oak):

And my personal favourite, with just the lone angler at the end of the day (double-click on the photo to enlarge):

A big Thank You goes out to manager Keith for treating us like royalty (or was I just a royal pain in the A?). Even if you don't know one end of a rod from another, the whole area is really rather pretty and I would still encourage you to discover the villages of the Meon Valley in Hampshire.

Oh, and TOH bagged a couple of four-pounders.

Then and Now: Larches on a Slab

2011-04-21T22:39:00.003+01:00

There is a plus side to blogging, I suppose. While blathering nonsense to the ether, I've also wound up with an inadvertent photographic history of the development of some of our trees. Take this European Larch group, for instance. TOH created this planting using a bit of fake slate.

This was part of a blog post which dates back to the summer of 2009. Almost two years later and - wonder of wonders - the roots have stabilised enough that moss has started to grow of its own accord on the surface of the planting.

Which now looks like this:

The slab is faux slate, so actually not all that heavy (not that anyone is carrying this thing around). The soil mixture is akadama, some organics (peat substitute of some description) and Keto to bind it all together. The planting was top-dressed with some chopped sphagnum moss, but the birds made away with all of that almost immediately, and we gave up fighting a losing battle after a couple of seasons. The Larches were some not-very-expensive saplings bought from one of the Bonsai nurserymen at a show, and TOH keeps threatening to add a few younger, thinner ones to get a bit of difference in trunk size (the close similarity of the trunk diameters make the planting look boring and a bit contrived, IMO). I suppose it will happen one day, when we find the right size saplings.

The curious thing about the whole thing is that the group is just sat on top of the slab. There are no drainage or wiring holes. Initially, wire was wrapped around the whole lot to keep the planting from falling apart. Years later and the roots have knitted themselves together, moss has grown naturally and the birds have (fingers and toes crossed) ignored all that freebie nesting material. Or they have decided that our nicer-looking, more mature trees are better objects for vandalism. And gravity just keeps the whole planting sat on top of the slab. Double-click on the photo to enlarge, you will notice the Larch roots sticking out of the bottom edge of the planting, just under the moss. OK, so some of it is dead Larch needles (so what if I didn't tart up before taking the photo; bite me), but most of it is roots that have given up any attempts of encroachment.

Had we been a bit more anal about clearing out the dead needles, I suppose we would have more moss growing in the centre of the group. As it is, I'm quite happy to see that what moss we have is thriving without any assistance on our part. I will occasionally pull out the odd weed, but that is only when my conscience actually wakes up and takes notice of the world around me.

And one can only hope a big, fat pigeon doesn't decide to land on one edge of the slab. Otherwise, boy will it be in for a suprise :D

The first photograph is courtesy of our friend Stef in the Netherlands, to whom BTW I still owe an e-mail along with a few hundred other folks. Join the queue, Stef...

Red Japanese Maple - in flower, no less

2011-04-20T14:45:00.001+01:00

Last week ended with a Spring re-potting and pruning session with Teacher-san. Almost a whole day gratifyingly consecrated to the trees - not just those that needed root and branch work but also those that just needed their top dressing refreshed; plus some weeding, clearing out dead branches, checking benches for pests, etc. Everything in a pot got looked at, Accent Plants as well as this ornamental red Maple in a very large patio pot.

Although this would be considered a patio plant rather than a 'true' bonsai (unless you are one of those nitpicking purists so PLEASE let's not argue semantics here, OK?), the lessons learned are what are of interest. 'Nuff said.

This is the first year where this Maple has produced so much flower - you'll notice the little dangly things running all the way along the branches, right up to the very edge of the extending shoots. Teacher-san took one look and said, 'pot-bound.' Apparently when there is that much flower, particularly when it goes up to the leader shoots, then that's a sure sign that the old root pruners need to come out.

Sure does look pretty, though - a bit like an ersatz Christmas tree. And when you think all that flowering effort is all about reproducing... oh yes, an oversexed red Maple. Oh my, oh my , oh my.

Swiftly leaving that topic... in the background, visible through the Maple leaves, are rows of Accent Plants on shelving propped against a wall. Although this gives them some protection during the Winter, the last couple of years have been pretty hard and we have lost a couple of the more fragile plants. Even among the plants we keep in the cold greenhouse, we've lost some Shohin bonsai and Accent Plants. This coming on after a holiday taken during a very hot May in 2010, where a lot of the smaller trees had dried out. Lesson learned: when you have someone come to water your trees, make sure they REALLY REALLY understand what it is to water bonsai properly. *sniff, sniff*

The Return of the Prodigal Blogger

2011-04-20T11:27:00.000+01:00

Uh, that would be sort of me, I guess. But more disappearing than prodigal, really.

So yes - another hiatus come and gone. My excuse is that I was busy learning a trade. Seriously.

But, in the background, I took loads of pics - stuff done over the summer last year, a visit to a Yamadori collector's place in the Alps, a couple of shows... the trouble will be remembering what I did so long ago, and finding the photos in my archives. Especially as I have officially defected from the Sony Ericsson camp and am now iPhoning my way around the planet. Sort of. Am I happy with the change? Sort of. I could wish for better Alarm Clock apps (being one of those people who want to be able to set a snooze for 04 mins & 26 secs for example. Don't ask me why I want that level of exactitude - I just do). And I am still on the hunt for a good app that will let me download my Lotus Notes diary onto my phone. I did get me a business card making app that I plan to play with sometime soon (which means less time spent on blogging, but that's the way it goes).

So, going back to the issue of prodigality. Lots and lots of pics. Would that equate to lots and lots of posts? Guess I'll have to make lots and lots of time...

WIPs: Pseudocydonia and a Malus

2010-04-25T11:00:00.004+01:00

Well... if you could see them, these are a couple of trees that TOH has been working on for years. Both of them sit side by side in front of our patio doors and are protected somewhat from the worst of the weather. Not that we think they particularly need the protection. It's more a case of finding enough space to fit them, as they both have quite a spread when they are in leaf (and flower, as we just found out). As it is, the trees don't look like much but their flowers do, so that's what you're getting.

The Pseudocydonia sinensis has been a Work In Progress for at least 10 years and last spring was only the second time it was re-potted since we've had it. The first time, it was planted into neat akadama, I think this time some black (Fuji) grit was added into the mix. It must have liked the root intervention work because it's never flowered so profusely before. Either that or it was thinking of flowering big time this year anyway and the root work just shocked it into doing something. Either way there are about 15 flower buds in various stages of opening. This picture was taken a week ago and the warm weather has caused it to move on a bit since then.

It's actually a rather large tree (nearly 3 ft / 91 cm) from the base of the pot so you can understand why I didn't lift it out of its space to take the photo. When the branch work is looking better (which could take years so don't hold your breath) I probably will, as there is an interesting hollowed-out feature in the trunk. TOH discovered that when it was first repotted about 10 years ago, and finding tons of rotted trunk was not the best surprise at the time. We don't know much about the habits of Chinese Quince and this guy has sort of been our guinea pig for the species.

I can't say Pseudocydonia is the Speedy Gonzales of flowering trees but it does seem to be a fairly forgiving tree in terms of neglect (i.e. tough as old boots). The flowers take weeks to open, so you do get a fairly long display season. Getting good ramification is still a bit of a challenge for us, so I can only imagine how long it's taken for the guys who get to show off their Chinese Quinces at the Kokofu-ten, for example.

This Malus has been with us for about seven or eight years. It's possibly a halliana or something similar and is also what I would call a butt-ugly tree at the moment, so it could be a WIP for a looooonnng time. You can see the Chinese Quince's bright blue pot just behind it, and the legs of a couple of chairs as well, through the patio doors :D

As usual, we've lost the label so positive ID is a bit of a challenge. Similar to its neighbour, this is the first year since we've had it that it's flowered as heavily and the flowers are rather pretty (which is why we got the tree in the first place) and a slightly stronger pink than the photo would suggest. If only I could focus my phone properly.

I don't recall ever re-potting this tree, and it is in a rather boring unglazed dark brown pot which will get changed at the first opportunity as far as I'm concerned. Our focus for the past two years has been to get it as healthy as we possibly could, so I've been more cautious with the watering and it also got fed heavily (like way heavy) last year.

Apparently the flowers are scented as well, so I guess I can't focus my nose either. Hurrr.

Small Bonsai, Small Work?

2010-04-18T10:29:00.003+01:00

TOH and I were recently talking about the amount of maintenance needed for shohin and mame bonsai, and this particular case came to mind as being a good illustration.

This is one of our shohin Cotoneasters that has quite a history. It started its bonsai life as a cutting, given to us by a former club member around 1998. TOH put it into a shallow training pot in akadama and then... bear in mind that we were just starting to seriously learn about growing trees in pots back then.... horror. The roots had somehow rotted out and the whole thing fell out of its pot, practically rootless. Emergency situation: TOH wrapped up the whole thing - plant, pot and soil - in a clear plastic bag, stuck it in the greenhouse and left it there to recover. It was a much smaller plant then, the trunk measuring about 3 - 4 inches in length (8 - 10 cm) and already trained as a semi-cascade but sort of in a straight line rather than with the downward arc that you'll see in these photos.

Evidently the plant recovered, our watering skills improved and the Cotoneaster has even been deemed worthy of living in this Japanese pot with a vaguely celadon-ish colour and a lovely crackle glaze. This is one of the earliest trees I practised my wiring on, which is how the downward trunk arc was induced.

But this is one bonsai that still needs a skillful hand with the watering as it is prone to the annoying condition that I call frickenmossalloverthefrickentrunkandbranches-itis. And it is a right bugger to de-moss the trunk, believe you me. And conversely, it can be easy to underwater this one as well, given the shape of its pot.

For some reason or other we've not really paid a lot of attention to this guy's pruning recently. He's not gone out on show for about 2 years now, so I'd say the last time he was re-potted was at least either 3 or 4 years ago. Water still drains freely so he'll just have to let us know sooner or later if his roots are in need of a soil and refresh jobbie.

So anyway, here is said shohin before its first spring clean, note the moss growing on the trunk and rear branches. I think we also missed summer and autumn pruning last year, which is why the branches are rather overlong. The one good thing is the pot is a doddle to spruce up.

These photos were taken about 3 weeks ago; the new leaves had only just started showing themselves so I'd not pruned as heavily as I would've liked, erring on the side of caution. I did thin out quite a few branches and had shortened the rear considerably. The moss was removed with a dry single-tuft toothbrush, which I get from a periodontist (and is also available online). Here we are about three-quarters through the moss-removal + pruning process, the birds-eye view giving a better look at the branch structure:

We are still going to have to work on improving branch lines and acquiring tertiary branch structure. Hopefully the long branches can be shortened even further by this autumn. And I will have to get rid of the old leaves at some point. I'll either be lazy and wait for them to fall off, or I give it a couple of days and see if I'm feeling industrious. Hmmm....

Now I may have implied that this shohin is larger than when it came to us, and indeed today it stands about 6 in / 15 cm high from the feet of the pot. But getting a toothbrush, much less a finger between branches is still not a job for the fainthearted, as sometimes the gap between branches is practically millimetric. And it requires a relatively steady, un-rushed hand to remove the moss without damaging any new shoots. No shoot casualties when this was done, I'm happy to report.

So despite being a small-ish shohin, the little bugger still took over an hour to prune and clean up:

Again with the ubiquitous moss thimble accent plant to give an idea of scale. The sticky-out branch on the upper left will go once I'm sure there are more shoots that have backbudded behind it. I tend to leave a minimum of 3 shoots (not leaves) when doing spring pruning.

At some of the shows in the past, people have judged this tree in the mame category, but really TOH and I think of it as a shohin. I suppose it is smaller than a lot of the shohin that go on display, but it is still way larger than the stuff we grow and consider as mame in our heads. (Please let's not get into the sizing debate here since that is just an old, boring story as far as I'm concerned.)

Because the point I'm trying to get across is that, for all that they are small trees, shohin and mame do require a lot of attention to detail. The upside of their small size is that they are easier to lift, carry and display. They take up less room in the garden. On the other hand, they are a bugger to transport over long distances unless you are kitted out properly. Losing (or having to retouch) your top-dressing can be a nightmare. Cleaning limescale off the smaller pots is not a fun job, particularly when you have a lot of them to display. Then there is the daily maintenance - keeping them alive and watered properly throughout the year does require a keen eye. Over the 10 years or so that we've been growing shohin and mame, we've developed a rhythm and a system that seem to have worked for our lifestyle and growing environment but that has also meant a lot of trial and error. Possibly more of the latter.

Our bonsai are checked twice a day in the summer; on really hot days I will arrange to work from home so I can water thrice in a day if necessary. Most of them are in pure akadama, except for some of the fusspots that like a bit of organic matter thrown in - big trees or small. The shohin, mame and thimble pots are placed in the shadier parts of the garden or greenhouse but on the other hand, I don't run out there to check on them specifically during the day. The day job has to come first, unfortunately.

TOH started growing tiny trees after seeing one of Gill Taylor-Duxbury's displays in the late Nineties, and took it on sort of as a challenge rather than as a desire for respite from bigger bonsai. I sort of picked it up by default. But if ease of life is the primary moving factor, I'm not convinced that specialising in very small trees is the way to go. My choice would be the medium-sized trees as the simpler compromise.

So. Fast forward to yesterday. After a bit of warm weather, this is what the cotoneaster looks like after another clean-up. It's still hanging on to a lot of last year's old leaves, but it really is too much of a pain to remove them all as there isn't a lot of space between branches to get cutters in there.

Now I don't hold any of our trees up as shining examples of bonsai perfection. As a matter of fact I showed these Cotoneaster photos to TOH, whose first words then were, 'Still got to work on that branch structure, but we'll get there....'

Moar Pleiones? O yez, moar!

2010-04-13T20:23:00.003+01:00

Pleiones have started becoming popular among the aficionados of accent plants in recent years, and several members of our local club have started growing and showing them in bonsai pots. When we were members of an Orchid Society over 10 years ago, I got the impression that Pleiones aren't as popular as the epiphytes (or the equally showy Cymbidiums), but perhaps that has changed over the years as well.

For some reason, last year's Pleione tongariro post is one of the most visited on this site, but so far the lazy bugger still hasn't fully come out of bud. Saving grace is that this year I've managed to lay slug protection down before he got munched. Fingers crossed. So this spring, we get piccies of other Pleiones. These two varieties were purchased last year but we had to wait until this spring to get them into these pots by John Pitt.

This pink-flowered one with the red spots on its frilly yellow lip is Pleione Shantung, although we are unsure as to the exact variety. Possibly 'Ridgeway' - but I'm no expert.

We don't know which variety this white Pleione is, unfortunately. It was also supposed to go into the green pot that the Shantung is in, but it was a tad too big. Luckily I had picked this brown one up at a recent show. Unfortunately the splashes of aqua and other shades of brown on the pot aren't visible in this photo.

TOH uses a mix of akadama, gravel and wood bark as potting compost for the Pleiones. We have one variety that lives outdoors (for no good reason other than we keep forgetting to pot it up and bring it into the greenhouse), has now completely outgrown its pot and is in no growing medium whatsoever. It's doing relatively well given its circumstances, but it comes out in leaf much later than the ones that get mollycoddled in the cold greenhouse. Maybe this year it'll hit the jackpot....

Red, White & Blue... well, -ish.

2010-04-13T01:38:00.004+01:00

I have bazillions of pics floating around in my Sony Ericsson just waiting to get downloaded onto this blog, so you'll have to excuse me if the next couple of posts read a bit like a text message.

Here are some pics that I took earlier in Spring but never got around to posting on this blog.

This Japanese Quince (Chojubai) is one that we've had for several years but rarely goes out on show, simply because it's rarely been in flower at the right time. It's one that can go out on display as a shohin (it stands about 5.5 in / 14 cm high) but it can also double up as an accent plant for a larger tree. I've seen Chojubai used in Japan as a companion (or shitakusa I believe is their term) planting to great effect.

Pot is generic Japanese, I believe.

Okay, not quite red. Sort of red-ish (hence the title).

And although most people would say this Japanese Quince is a white-flowering variety, it actually has a sort of a greenish tinge. Not sure about the pot of this one, I think it could be Northern Chinese. This one is still a WIP, and is intended to be used as a mixed accent planting rather than as a stand-alone bonsai. Again it would be in the shohin size, roughly about 8 in / 20 cm high.

Here's a closer look at the white... er, green ... er, white-ish flowers. If they look yellow to you, don't blame me - I'd say it was the screen resolution! Are you saying it's my lighting? Nevah!! :D

This one is a Veronica that came out of a local garden centre; it's a variety commonly used as ground cover for borders. IIRC, the pot is one that I made at our local bonsai club night; we have Reg Bolton over every year to do 2 sessions on pot making. At the first session he brings over the clay and helps us shape the pots; then he takes them home to fire. During the second session, we glaze our pots and he takes those home again to fire. Just a bit of fun, and one thing I'd highly recommend as a club activity.

What is nice about Veronica is the length of the flowering season. I took this pic way before Easter and it is still in flower today.

More on the blue (although I suppose someone would qualify them as blue-violet) are these Grape Hyacinths that TOH picked up for less than a quid several years ago. They completely filled out the pot they were planted in; I think I broke these up into 5 batches. This batch is in a Bryan Albright pot.

And another blue-ish guy is a Soldanella carpatica which we bought in Poland in 2006. This self-seeds fairly freely and we had also managed to break up the original plant into two. This is one of the offshoots.

Yeah, I know. He looks purple, doesn't he? So I got it wrong.

Oh well.

Trees, People, Bath and Rocks: My Day at the Joy of Bonsai

2010-03-22T12:23:00.008Z

Rather than tell a story from the beginning, let me commence sort of a third through the way and wind my way back up to the start.

The GPS (AKA 'That Biyotch' to a friend of mine) took us to Bath via the A303 which led us through some lovely scenery, particularly when we got closer to Bath. Quaint cottages, woodland scenes - all very picture book English countryside, which made the opening vista of the city with its straight lines of limestone architecture seem extremely regimented to me. All the creamy yellow/gold Bath stone architecture under the morning sun as you drive down the hill is impressive - but I guess it is a 'you love it or you hate it' sort of thing.

In my last post I said that catching up with people was probably going to be the priority of the day (second to getting my morning coffee, of course) but actually - despite feedback I had heard on the Saturday saying the lighting wasn't very good - I did manage to get some pics of the trees and accent plants. I could've taken more pics, but to be perfectly honest I was more caught up with gassing with the owners of the trees. Especially as some of their stuff are bonsai that I probably already have pics of in previous posts on this blog.

I first saw this Willow by Simon Temblett at the Swindon Winter Image show two years ago, and he says it's now starting to look more like how he wants it to be. Pot is also by Simon.

Also by Simon is this composition entitled 'Blackthorn Juggling on a Unicycle', which is almost self-explanatory. You also get a fairly good view of the branch wiring in the photo.

Framed in black and floating in space is John Pitt's 'Beyond the Moonshine'; no prizes for guessing who the potter is:

However you can get a better view of the entire composition here, courtesy of @ExtremeWork.

This one, called 'The Lightning through the Clouds', was one that people couldn't resist touching, particularly when they were told the tree wasn't real.

Paul Finch (UK New Talent Contest winner and UK candidate for the 2008 EBA NTC at Vienna) modelled this on one of Kevin Willson's trees. The woody bits are out of modelling clay and the foliage is from bits of fake Christmas trees. An excellent piece of work, IMHO. And in case it isn't legible, the notice to the left says 'please do not touch the exhibits'.

We oohed and aahed over this little accent Contorted Hazel by Russ Farley.

I didn't manage to get the potter's name, but if you do want to know, then you have to ask this guy here. His wife tried her best to edge out of the picture but one day there will be no escaping my Sony Ericsson...

We have been bumping into Russ and Julie at bonsai shows here and on the Continent for over 10 years now, and I've seen their son grow up, in almost a stop action punctuated sort of way, over a series of bonsai shows. Kinda makes you feel old, after a while.

Obviously these two take bonsai extremely seriously and the one on the left is Bob Bailey whose shohin and mame have appeared several times on this blog.

This display of bodily assault could have been a forerunner of the Karate demonstration that afternoon. And that is really all the innuendo I am able to spread on Mr Bailey, even though I have threatened to do so several times over the past years. That said, he has taken quite a lot of stick over the colour of his shirts....

More dirt was being dished about by the Welsh lads; here we have Chris Thomas showing off his moss....

.... and proving he can multitask by entertaining us with a lot of ~~smutty~~ hilarious jokes while finishing up a group planting....

.... which eventually wound up like this:

Another demo here, possibly of interest to those who want to give the root-over-rock style a go: Simon Temblett taking a tube-grown maple (to achieve the long roots) which was destined to go over the red 'pebbles' on the lower right hand side. In the background you can see the other demonstrators at work.

I missed the rest of the demo as I went to have lunch (my next highest priority to my morning coffee). By the time I had demolished a steak and complained about its size (on the small side) to an unsympathetic Mr Bailey, this particular demo was done and Simon had gone on to doing a Tanuki, achieving the bark colour with a solution of soot and water. The finished root over rock maple is on the lower left hand side of the photo, wrapped in sphagnum moss to protect the roots. Over time this will be removed once the roots have settled.

Another of the demonstrators, Serge Clemence, here doing an illustration of what will eventually be the finished image of the tree he had worked on.

We first met Serge at the EBA convention in Poland where he had displayed a large yamadori pine that took the best in show prize that year. That said, Serge was still immersed in plans for refining the tree into the image that he had in plan for it. We saw the tree again at another show a couple of years later and it had acquired a more mature and finished look, aside from being a healthy specimen indeed.

Moving away from the demo area, I managed to grab these pics of the Pitt-boss John (and why is it all my photos of him are blurred? Is my phone trying to tell me something?)...

and his wife Linda...

... who is my partner in hilarity at her husband's expense. Only sometimes. (Like at every show we meet.) But he's a great sport. And he gets his own back :D

And in reverse order (as this was the first photo of the day I took), let me leave you with a minute impression of one of the biggest piles of Suiseki I have ever seen in my life:

Them grey rocks in the middle of the field. Click on the pic to blow it up. That's right: Stonehenge as seen from the A303.

Spring view of another WIP

2010-03-20T17:24:00.003Z

Works In Progress, we haz dem. Big time.

This root-over-rock Forsythia has been WIPping around in the garden for nearly 10 years and has never come out on exhibit, as you can clearly see why.

I believe we purchased it as a bare-rooted item, then stuck it in a generic deep, round 'export-blue' coloured pot for the longest time. Almost two years ago, it got put into this shallow oval that shows the landscape off better.

There's still a major piece of work to do on improving the branches, the crown of the tree and the appearance of the trunk. On the other hand, it's flowering profusely despite the whopping winter it went through. Or possibly because of it? We did get a mega-lot of root growth, as there's a whole load of the little buggers trying to escape the edge of the pot on the right,

As usual the birds had a field day with the moss protecting the topsoil, so we will be back to re-mossing all the trees this spring, once we get a new food processor - the last one we got for chopping moss didn't quite survive a year. I guess like everything else, you get what you pay for...

And BTW, we will be off to Joy of Bonsai at Bath tomorrow, but I cannot promise pics. Partly because my recollections of the lighting in the hall do not inspire optimism, and more because we will be meeting up with loads of friends and socialising may just have a teensy-weensy priority. Or maybe I could do only people pics instead of tree pics? Now there's a thought - I could consider starting a new career as paparazzo, armed with a camera phone.

My chances of hitting the big bucks suddenly don't seem too high. Feh.

Better late than... even later?

2010-03-18T00:59:00.004Z

Well, in the last post I did say I would take pics at our club meeting. And I did.

And I did say that I'd post said pics if the light was good to my Sony Ericsson. And it wasn't.

So rather than put out some over/under/badly-exposed shots for you to go "huh?" over, how about if I make up for it with more pics of the accent plants that are starting to come out in the garden. Some of these were my earliest ~~guinea pigs~~ subjects for last year's posts, so to a certain extent it is interesting (for me at the very least) to see how they've come along since then.

This is a white Hepatica nobilis which first came out in this post. It's only started coming out into flower in the past couple of days and there are at least two more flower buds waiting in the wings. Just to show that everything is late this year, my 2009 pic dates back to late February and the flowers were much further along. This planting is due for a break-up fairly soon, as the seedlings are now in their second year (you can see them in last year's photo).

You get a better look at the pot's colour in this shot, though. I'm not sure if the leaves should actually be there, as they are last year's foliage and are really rather manky looking. Despite the hard winter, none of our established Hepatica (and most of the seedlings) went fully dormant; they just hung on to every last bit of greenery they could.

And only just out by a day or so is what I believe to be a Scilla (possibly siberica), although its flowers are looking a little pale so maybe it isn't what I think it is....

This is in a Walsall pot, about 2.5 in / 6.5 cm high.

Last year I wasn't so sure this plant would make it - the double flowered form Hepatica transsilvanica 'Mrs Elison Spence':

It was either vine weevil or the alpine mix which didn't agree with my plant. I now try to transfer all of our alpines into an akadama mix, which seems to suit our watering style (and our garden conditions) better. For the vine weevil, we use a mix of organic (nematodes) and chemical (Provado) control. Or I feed the buggers to the birds. Either way, I'm happy to report that I have managed to save the parent plant as well. This one apparently tends to flower before the foliage appears, but I will also have to say that it hung on to its very large and not very pretty leaves all throughout the very cold winter we just had. I'm not quite sure who the potter for this one is, so let me do a bit of digging first. In the meantime, if anyone recognises the pot, do give me a shout.

This is one of my experiments at making multiple-plant groupings for a longer period of interest. This is one of the first Snowdrops (Galanthus) that has flowered for me in a pot, so I'm feeling a bit more encouraged to try different plantings. The rest of the composition looks like it will need more summer interest.

Oh, and before I forget - here's the blue Primula from the last post, but just two weeks along and its pompom is all out. Well, almost.

It's Partayyyy Time!!! Bonsai Club night tonight...

2010-03-08T18:46:00.000Z

And everyone's decking out in their finest - at least the bonsai and accent plants are.

And since we've been through an unseasonably cold winter for this part of the world, everyone in the club will be mad keen to show whatever has come out of hibernation. Of course I'm no exception, duh. But being the generous and giving (~~showoff~~ - errr, wait, ignore that) person that I am, I thought I'd give you guys a sneak peek of what I'm taking to the club. And if the light at the club hall is kind to my Sony Ericsson, I'll take home some more pics to show you later this evening.

Here is a shohin Chinese juniper that started its life as an informal upright at least 10 years ago. It wasn't a bad-looking tree then - as a matter of fact, when someone saw it a year after we had acquired it, he suggested we enter it into a very prestigious national show. But we had already decided it would be better off as a semi-cascade, and since then the invitation to display the tree has never again been tendered. Heh. But we still feel it was the right thing to do - if a bit drastic. Achieving the change in shape also meant a lot of wiring (I did say I had gotten a lot of practice in an earlier post), and sometimes Junipers can sulk when treated this way. Because he did get the heavy metal thing going back then. Yo.

He was also moved into this unglazed Walsall pot, which gives Teacher-san kittens every time he checks our trees, as the cylindrical shape is one that he feels is difficult to keep watered correctly. Walsall have since stopped using this clay, so I do regret not buying every single one of these that had come out then.

Here is the detail of the rear of the tree, showing 2 jins which are the remains of rather heavy branches. Had they stayed, we would have wound up with a pronounced lump in the middle of the tree, I bet.

This is one of our larger shohins, measuring 8 in / 20 cm from the feet of the pot. I don't think it has ever gone out on public display - as it has taken forever for the juvenile foliage to sort itself out - but we have taken it out to the club a couple of times. Club nights are more like family to us, they don't really count as public, if you see what I mean.

And here's the detail of the Primula in a Japanese pot. I believe I have the plant's label somewhere, but there's bound to be someone at the club who'll be able to tell me what it is. It will look better when it's fully out in flower, and even better in 3 years' time when it will have filled out the pot a bit more.

I did mention on Twitter that I would be bringing the microscopic Aquilegias, and I am. And on the other end of the scale, I am bringing this Kusamono which is a green Ophiopogon variety, a tall bronzey grass whose label has gone the way of the wind, and some other nondescript grass that is only kept within the planting on sufferance (I just keep pulling it out when I have nothing better to do with my time). Here is what it looked like in summer:

And these are the Ophiopogon fruit which have stayed all through the winter:

I took the Kusamono out of its pot nearly 2 years ago and it has spent all winter outdoors, albeit protected by a whole load of other potted plants around it. Still, it was covered with snow like everything else. One day I will find a suiban which will complement the colours of the planting better than this one. (In fact I do know of one potter who has this shade of blue... :D) But still, this one is the right size, so it will have to do for now.

Unfortunately my Hepaticas and Soldanella are not quite fully out in flower. My double Hepatica 'Mrs Elison Spence' is only just starting to come out and it doesn't look like anything much at the moment. What a bummer.

We are bound to have lots of accent plant lovers tonight, even some people from other local clubs. Will be great to see if they'll have brought their stuff. Maybe we can even start doing some barter. Because boy, do I have some nice stuff coming out... Any takers?

Charcoal in the Growing Medium

2010-03-07T19:57:00.000Z

At our local bonsai club meeting sometime back, a couple of guys had an interesting discussion on the merits of using charcoal as part of a bonsai soil mix. I can't remember what the outcome of the discussion was (probably more concerned about getting myself coffee and biccies, as usual) but this blogpost at Yamadori Passion may interest some of you:

http://yamadori-passion.blogspot.com/2010/03/carbon-carvao-charcoal.html

Have a gander over there. Loads of great photos from his travels. My recent fave is his series of posts on the tools he uses for his yamadori. Good stuff.

Anyone up for a guessing game?

2010-03-06T23:43:00.000Z

Our friend Robert gave us several of these seedlings last year and they promptly went into these thimble pots. Think you recognise what sort of plant they are? No, they are not baobabs.

Okay, here's their big brother. Does that give you a better clue? No, it's not a cabbage either.

Just to give you an idea of scale, I've included the moss accent plant, which as I've mentioned in a previous post is about 1 inch / 2.54 cm high. So although the 'trunks' look chunky in these photos (and I suppose proportionally they are), the plants are really rather minute.

I believe TOH got the two 'square' thimble pots from one of the potters at the now-defunct Southampton Balloon & Flower Festival, but cannot say for sure. The moss planting is in a Japanese pot that we got at the Green Club during one of the Kokofu shows. Absolutely no clue who made the larger round pot.

So a lot of our accent plants are starting to come out of winter dormancy. And a lot of the trees as well. Which will mean moving everything around in the cold greenhouse and making space for the more vigorous varieties.

Oh yes, I suppose you're still wondering what these plants are? They're not a dwarf variety so here's what they'll eventually look like one day; well not precisely like these ones as this is a photo of my flower bed:

Yup, Aquilegias. Don't ask me what colour - I'll either have to remember to ask Robert or wait to see what will happen if they do eventually flower. Which will either be spectacularly great or spectacularly bizarre, as flowers or fruit don't reduce in size...

Not Quite a Starting Line-up...

2010-03-04T12:10:00.002Z

Well, I actually did forget some of the other plants I had put on display at the Swindon Winter Image show in my earlier post. Not that I could've posted them on this blog any earlier due to my recent monitor problems, but better late than never, I suppose. So here we go with the rest of my starting line-up of display trees and accents for 2010 - and then some.

Our accent plants are starting to wake up now and some of the compositions I put together last year are starting to show signs of rejuvenation. So more photos to come in the next few weeks, hopefully. But for now, this photo is the collection of accent plants that went with us to Swindon Show; all but one went out on display:

The Ranunculus ficaria 'Coppernub' (rear upper left hand side) is a slight disappointment to me, as it didn't flower any more profusely than it did last year, although the plant has bulked out considerably. The other guy to the right of him is also a Ranunculus (another lost label jobbie, so don't expect a variety identification anytime soon from me) and still hasn't flowered. Leaves are funky, though. This second Ranunculus is in a pot by Alan Harriman. The lighting in this photo is brighter than last year's so the colour of the Coppernub's Bryan Albright pot is a lot closer to the original.

This picture of a Shohin cascade Cotoneaster frigidus 'Cornubia' was taken before clean-up and show prep:

We've been growing this guy for at least 4 years now, and this Walsall pot is now its second home. It started out with quite a large rootball, hence the slightly over-potted look; however as it only has come out on show when either the flowers or berries are out, then it also has these over-long branches which slightly compensate for the whopper of a pot. Being a cascade, this is a difficult one to give dimensions to, so if I say that the pot is about 4 in / 10 cm high, that should give an overall indication of the size of the tree.

This isn't one in our collection that comes out in public very often (although I have taken it to our local club several times), partly because we aren't 100% satisfied with its ramification. Although the trunk is rather interesting. Here it is at a slightly different angle, showing the trunk line and the berries:

A little later in the year, I'm going to give this guy a massive prune.

As an aside, the winter colour on our cotoneasters was gratifying this year. However, we didn't get a lot of flower and fruit out of our shohin cotoneasters this time, although the larger ones did all right in that department.

Again another shohin that went through the popsicle stage this winter. Here is how this Picea looked on show:

And here you can just about see it on the left-hand side in all its frozen glory.

The pot is a Tokoname, apparently by Bigei. As I can't read the markings, I have no way of confirming this but I'm sure someone will give a shout if it proves otherwise.

And this last one is a shohin Japanese White Pine which will only go out on show if I'm really, really desperate as the branch structure still needs so much work done to it. Plus that trunk line sometimes strikes me as being totally dire.

Another small tree that we've had for several years but really only a WIP for the past two. This one also went popsicle during the winter freeze, and you'll see it on the right-hand side of this photo.

The reason I've got this White Pine in here is to illustrate a couple of things. Rather than buy expensive trees, our bonsai acquisition strategy has been to pay for trees that - by our guesswork - will need about 5 to 8 years' work and fall into a medium (or more) price range for that type of bonsai. We have been lucky with some and they have literally only needed a couple of years before they've been deemed ready for show. We have also acquired dead cheap / unwanted trees that showed their potential in a relatively short space of time. Others, like this White Pine, will need both time and patience - in spades.

But if you are mad keen on getting a 'finished' bonsai to go out immediately into competition (and win), then expect to pay the full market value of that tree. Whatever that may be. Because - in bonsai just like in everything else - you get what you pay for.

Missed a Milestone, did I?

2010-02-28T23:33:00.002Z

Just realised something. As of the 26th February, this blog has been going on for a year.

And why I should think that's significant, I don't know.

Unfortunately I have no stats to show for this sort of thing, as I only started using a stat tool in October. So no Month-on-Month, Quarter-on-Quarter or Year-on-Year figures to show you. Which is no fun really. No Powerpoint slides. Hurrr. What would we do without Powerpoint slides to justify our existence?

What may have changed over the year is the raison d'etre of this blog. While I had originally started it to keep a record of bonsai shows we attend, the reality is there isn't always that much newsworthy (by my definitions) to say. Post photos of the trees on display? A pure line-up of bonsai tree photos is one of the most boring things I can think of to do, and if you're looking for these, then there are bazillions of other websites already doing them. For nothing am I going to run a blog to bore myself to tears.

And while it may be amusing and controversial to do a 'Hello' magazine type reportage on bonsai personalities, there really isn't anyone in the bonsai world that I can think of who is on par with Paris Hilton for this type of 'newsworthiness'. Underwear notwithstanding. (And please - if you do know someone who fits the bill, please don't tell me. Oh. Wait. Hmmm....)

So this blog has evolved into something a bit more like a personal record of events. What have not changed are the tools I use: all my photos are still taken on my Sony Ericsson phone, most of the staged photos are either taken in my kitchen or in the front room. I don't use any professional photographic equipment as I can't be bothered to do any complicated set-up. Little or no manipulation is done to the photos, the most I will do is try to enhance brightness or contrast; again as I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn how to use the software.

So to the old friends who have been on this journey with me for the past year, thanks for sticking 'round. To the new friends who have bumped up my stat numbers, thanks for dropping by. Don't bother looking for the stat analysis, do you really think I'm going to get up off my bum to look the numbers up? Hmpfh.

Looking forward to another year with y'all. Yeee-hah.

Bonsai Streaming by on Twitter

2010-02-28T01:05:00.002Z

Over the last couple of days, I've followed several interesting 3-way Twitter discussions on various bonsai-related topics: the use of colour and glazes of bonsai pots, choosing a bonsai pot, the position of a tree in the pot, soil contour in a pot to complement the flow of the tree, etc. Protagonists of these discussions were @MoKusa, @bonsaibanter and @ExtremeWork. A minor and boring detail called the day job prevented me from joining in tweet streams that sometimes spanned a couple of days. Unfortunately I don't have software that allowed me to copy and archive the streams either.

But, Plan B - I haz one! Iz called a blog! Dis blog here, even!

So here is my version of coming late to the party, but sticking my oar in nonetheless. Mixed metaphors, I haz dem too.

One of the early discussions reminded me of a lively interchange between TOH and myself over the right pot for our Satsuki Azalea 'Kinsai'. We are pretty much agreed on the (approximate) shape, depth and other dimensions of the pot but where our opinions diverge (and boy do they diverge) are on what we consider a suitable colour and texture for Kinsai's new home.

So backtrack a bit to where we are coming from: TOH's visual composition background is rooted in photography; mine is in a traditional Western Art education, particularly painting and illustration; as for the Kinsai, it's coming out this pot:

I'm also coming from the standpoint of a person who doesn't like the colour of Kinsai flowers. TOH utterly loves it. So my choice of pot colour is driven by a desire to mitigate an effect, TOH's goal is to emphasize and provide a frame to that colour. Damage Limitation vs Enhancement.

Most people would say Kinsai has red flowers (and that would be true); but I would like to qualify that this is a warm red, i.e. veering towards orange rather than towards violet. Whether you can see that from the photo will very likely depend on your screen resolution.

My point of view is that our interpretation of colour is very subjective, even though quantifiable (so to speak) definitions exist for various pure spectral colours, for example. So the definition of the colour 'red' in approximate frequencies (in terahertz) and wavelengths (in nanometers) would be a frequency interval of ~ 430–480 THz and a wavelength interval of ~ 700–635 nm. (Source: Wikipedia)

But that doesn't quite tell my brain and naked eye if they should be looking for the red of a postbox, the red of a child's crayon or the red of (fresh) blood, for example. So my brain tends to refer to the crayons of my childhood when I envisage the primary and secondary colours. Because really, who can see all of the 7 colours of a rainbow with their naked eye anyway?

So back to our Kinsai and its warm-hued red spider flowers (because yes, the great majority of its flowers are the thin spidery kind - at least it's doing one thing right) and our colour choice for a pot. My damage limitation tendency leads me to balance off the 'orange-red' with its colour complements, i.e. a glossy two-tone glaze of blue-green. TOH, with a 'if you've got it flaunt it' attitude, is leaning towards a contrast using a matte black glaze. Our compromise? We asked the potter to make 2 pots, one in each glaze and we'll decide come re-potting day by holding each one up against the Satsuki. Not quite the dramatic flair of the wisdom of Solomon, but a practical solution that was arrived to in less than 5 seconds. We've obviously had disagreements like this before.

What we haven't agreed on either is whether a high-gloss glaze will advance visually so much that it would overpower a tree, no matter how strong the visual weight of said tree. My contention is that a balance can always be achieved, TOH feels that would be unlikely and the extreme gloss would always call attention to itself and overshadow the tree. But, until we have the physical evidence before our eyes, we'd never really resolve that one, would we?

Just to make things more difficult, the political question of who the potter should please becomes a tricky one: I paid for the Kinsai but I also gave it to TOH as an unbirthday present. So the tree is technically TOH's but I am also very likely going to pay for the pot. So as far as customer satisfaction is concerned, who is the potter's customer anyway?

That aside, if you are on Twitter and are inclined to follow more erudite discussions on the art, craft and science that is bonsai, then add these guys to your follow list.

PS: What's an unbirthday present? If you can't be bothered to read Alice in Wonderland, there's always Google :D

Bonsai Trompe l'oeil

2010-02-23T00:05:00.003Z

We once had a prominent bonsai professional stay over during a workshop we were running during our club's Summer Show many years ago, and he did his utter best to persuade us to downsize on the number of trees we were growing. While he may have made many salient points, this past winter has also shown me that having a very wide selection of bonsai on hand means that pulling out a half-dozen or so for a winter display means neither headbanging nor panic.

So here is the line-up I dragged out of the garden for the Swindon Winter Image Show, warts and all. My first post on prepping a display for a show is here. The only thing that's changed for me in 2010 is that, due to the really hard winter, we still aren't able to say what trees (and accent plants particularly) will be likely candidates for future shows this year. So you could probably say that this is my 2010 starting line-up.

This shohin Kiyohime maple on rock has been shown previously on this blog and is in a shallow white Walsall pot; over time the white has faded to a very light grey, with a tinge reminiscent of celadon. The tree has come out of the winter without incident. The moss, on the other hand, is way more than manky. Prepping this type of composition is a real pain, as I try to use as much of the old, established moss as possible.

So I took 2 different types of moss, trimming off the back soil / leaves / crud to have as flat a moss 'sheet' as possible. Then I broke it all up into randomly sized patches, some of them maybe only 2 mm wide, others several centimetres in length. Then, using a toothpick, I 'patchworked' the pieces together onto the old moss. The effect I was looking for was an established planting rather than a freshly laid-on topping. The final result is this:

Work still needs to be done to this shohin to improve the trunk line and shorten some of the branches.

And in this post is this Chaenomeles japonica just after Swindon show last year. Fast forward to 2010 and just a few days before this year's show, the moss decided to give up the ghost and crumble off the pot, leaving this:

Again out with the toothpick and the mossy bitty bits. A whole evening spent in a crate indoors brought out a bit more colour in the flower buds. And just so you know, the plant cost a fiver about 4 years ago:

Here's a close-up of the moss 'weave'. You can clearly see the 3 different types of moss used:

This Ivy was dug out of our last garden over 15 years ago and is planted in what we call the dragon's egg (potter is unknown, unfortunately). In this post is what it looked like in the summer last year, and below is how it's come out of a winter in a cold greenhouse heated to 0 degrees Celsius.

Later in the spring I'll try a bit of defoliation on the Ivy so I get some nice spring colour (and possibly smaller leaves). Again, some patchwork retouching had to be done to the moss on this guy.

This Satsuki Azalea (damn if I didn't lose the bloody label somewhere so don't ask me what variety) lives outdoors all year long and had its head buried in snow like the rest of these guys. It's come out of that with tons of new growth as you can see from its back...

...and from its front. How do I tell the one from the other? It's hard to tell from these photos, but the tree actually does 'bow' pronouncedly to you from this angle.

This is one of TOH's earliest Japanese White Pines and it started life as a formal upright. Unfortunately the wrong instructions in a bonsai book led to the loss of both lower branches and it is now a literati. It has also been knocked out of its pot twice in the past year, so it is now slightly overpotted. And in what to me is one ugly, clunky drum pot.

This view is not the precise front of the tree, but IMO it illustrates best how the trunk line runs up and 'bows' toward the viewer.

I'll also have to say that my fave way of prepping a tree for display is straight akadama as it is dead simple. I've now gone off the half-akadama (or soil) / half-moss look as I find it can look rather contrived. So I either go whole hog and do a full moss weave thing or I do pure soil (like when I'm fed up of prepping trees and just want to get it over and done with). I tend to let myself be guided by what the tree looks like before the blackbirds get to it. Hurrr.

Swindon Winter Image Bonsai Show

2010-02-21T23:07:00.004Z

By now there are probably lots of photos and write-ups out there floating on the Web on the Swindon Winter Image Bonsai Show; and a rather precise synthesis done by @ExtremeWork on Twitter. So I'm not going to try and duplicate any effort here. But I will share what photos I took. And tell you what I did (other than stuffing my face).

So of course I will mention the cakes at this point. Top of the list. Because anyone who is in the know will agree that Swindon Show is also about the cakes. As the show is a fund-raiser for the club, the cake sale is one of our favourite ways of showing our support.

After that show of team spirit, the bulk of my time today was spent catching up with people; some were at the Noelanders show last month but most of the local club people I hadn't seen since last year. So it was good to catch up with the Welsh lads again (nope, no karaoke this time) and the guys who got back from Japan, although not to the depth of detail that I would've liked. Also met up with @grumblemouse, and we had a good natter during the day.

I also need to mention that John Pitt got snowed in and didn't make it to the show, so I didn't get my dose of annoying the Pitt-boss which is also part of the show ritual for me. Snow nearly prevented the Walsall lads from getting there,which would've been a right freak-out as they had made the trophies.

Food in general (and Japanese food in particular), being one of the big loves of my life, I always used to spend a great deal of time talking to both Bob of Dai Ichi Bonsai and Ken of Windybanks about food. During this show, that important part of the ritual got chopped down so drastically I didn't even get to grill @AntiqueNetsuke about the nosh during his very recent trip to Japan (nor did we talk about the Kokofu show either). So if I didn't get to do all that bit, you can imagine that taking pics fell way down in my list of priorities today.

Lots more snowdrops in today's show than last year. Examples from the Phoenix Bonsai Group display and from Chie-san's Kusamono display:

An accent plant on the Artistic Bonsai Circle display. As the owner wasn't around, I wasn't able to ask what plants were in the composition but it looks to me like Ajuga, Ophiophogon, Equisetum and a rush.

Bulbs are big at this time of the year. A fine set of Irises was on display at the Phoenix stand (sorry, missed that opp) and some yellow Crocuses were on the Eastleigh Bonsai display.

Here is a Chinese Juniper (AKA Shinpaku) on a rather unusual display table. The owner got it in its raw state at the Westonbirt Festival of Wood - for a fiver. A bit of elbow grease (and just a little bit more dosh), transformed it into an unusual bonsai accoutrement. He reckons a total of 20 quid spent. Not bad...

And more from the same person, a mame Lonicera (about 3 in / 8 cm high) that was dug out of a hedge.

Going up in tree size, here is a Trident maple on rock. If you look closely, there's a dragon nestled in the interior of the cave. Over the years I've seen this bonsai displayed alone as well as with all sorts of figurines inside the cave, possible a tiny beer can even, if I recall correctly. Proof that you don't always have to take everything seriously. But you can if you want to.

And this is the winter image of this Alder. I have heard varying views on this particular tree at this time of the year, and I will confess to having a preference for the tree with its summer foliage on. Simply because I find it particularly impressive then.

And yes, I need to be impressed. So I'm shallow. Sue me.

But as I am of a generous and giving nature (coughing fits at this point) I will leave you with @ExtremeWork's beautifully compact summary that went out on Twitter earlier this evening. My thanks to the author for allowing me to use their text. And if you're not familiar with how the Twitter timeline goes, you'll need to start reading from the bottom and work your way to the top. Otherwise, feel free to read this synopsis backwards.

- Swindon & District Bonsai Society as always were excellent host & made all welcome. Cake was up to usual high quality and met expectations.

- Chie-san had a very nice selection of kusamono on display and was taking bookings for her workshop on 16 April

- Ken from Windybanks had some very nice material and small trees to show and is expecting new stoock imminently.

- Dai Ichi Bonsai had imported Japanese pots and stands on offer with a few very nice Satsuki Azalea.

- Chris Thomas had some fine Larix and his usual collection of accoutrements on offer.

- Andy Pearson had a range of his pots including some unusually large pots from his kiln.

- Paul Goff had a very nice range of scrolls and was gathering interest for the Bonsai Review that he publishes.

- David and Mark from Walsall Ceramics Studio made early calls to check weather in Swindon and arrived with some very nice pots.

- Weather up North seems to have hampered some from arriving. John Pitt (John Pitt Bonsai Ceramics) was redirected with heavy snow.

- Phoenix, Solent, Newbury, Cotswolds and the Splinter Group had good society displays. Artistic Bonsai Circle's trees to their normal high standard on display

- Dragon Bonsai and New Dawn Bonsai had some exquisite trees and some old friends on display to very high standard.

- British Shohin Association and ABBA's displays were well presented.

- A good show of very finely ramified Chinese Elms, Ian's Hornbeam group has recovered well from its trip to the Noelanders Trophy in Belgium

- Some of the really nice exhibits at the Swindon Bonsai Show were the mame There was a good range of varieties & the trees were small.

- Back from Swindon. Bonsai were of the usual high standard. Met lots of friends and caught up on the gossip. Great day of bonsai ...

First Bonsai Re-potting Day of the Year....

2010-02-13T17:48:00.002Z

... and it was bloody cold. Whatever body parts that could've frozen off - did; or at least it felt like it.

Teacher-san came down and we worked on whatever trees we could. It should have been a mega re-potting day but we were slowed down by a lot of frozen rootballs. Several got started on in the morning, put into the cold greenhouse to thaw, then picked up again in the afternoon.

Never realised either what a funny sound a frozen rootball makes when you thunk it (to check if it's really frozen, not just for the sake of thunking, OK).

Anyway, here's one of the smaller guys that got re-potted. A Lonicera nitida (normally a hedging plant here) which is one of TOH's WIPs. This was bought at a club auction for a couple of quid last year. The horizontal jin was shortened by about 6 inches (15 cm) and I believe TOH has plans of re-working the jin at the front to make it look more naturally weathered. This is a shohin-sized tree, probably about 7 in / 18 cm from base of the pot.

The other bonsai we worked on yesterday are a bit too big for me to photograph at home, so if they're ever taken to a show later in the year, maybe I'll post photos here. The long cotoneaster cascade will have to wait until we find a better pot for it, though.

So, on to other smaller stuff.

This is an overpotted Cristata Davallia fern, which I got last year. I was told it goes dormant in the winter but it's held on to its one frond despite the cold.

Here is a group of cyclamen in flower, plus a moss accent. To give an idea of scale, the moss in the thimble pot is less than an inch (2.54 cm) high. The cyclamen self-seeded in the greenhouse about 3 years ago and this is the second year they've flowered. Their corms haven't grown much bigger, nor do their leaves get any larger, or any more numerous.

I'll tell you what I should've taken a photo of, though - TOH's Peach Cobbler, which was an absolute delight. We did linger over lunch with Teacher-san, talking about pots and going over the latest issue of the Nippon Bonsai Association's magazine. Anything to stay out of the cold, as far as my interests were concerned...

Yes I Haz Moar Pot Piccies

2010-02-10T17:31:00.002Z

Haven't blogged for awhile, as I'm still having problems getting Firefox 3.5.7 to talk to Blogger. I can edit stuff, just can't see the finished product. Have been getting around it by viewing these pages in another browser, but that is just a drag. Trawling through Internet fora (forums, whatever) for an answer is also a drag.

So what isn't a drag? Possibly the thought of spring and re-potting? Despite the intermittent snow that keeps coming down my head whenever I go out to check the trees...

I have plans for the round black pot I purchased from Morea at the Noelanders show last month. She was kind enough to send me a better picture than the one I had, so here it is:

... on the upper right hand side of the stand. I'm thinking a certain Satsuki Azalea could go in there, as its pot recently got trashed by the blackbirds. Well, the culprits could have been the neighbourhood cats, but for some reason I always blame the blackbirds. Heh. Go figure.

A Belgian Bonsai Weekend: Show....

2010-01-25T18:49:00.006Z

There are a couple of things that stick in my mind about the Noelanders Trophy XI this weekend; one of them would be the Saturday crush. The doors opened at 10:00 and we decided to arrive late to avoid any queueing. We got there at 11:00; all the convenient parking spots were gone, plus there were still over 100 people waiting outside to get in. Marc Noelanders told us apparently some people had been there since 09:00. I'm totally pleased for him, as they put in so much hard graft into this show. (More on that later.)

I mentioned on Twitter that the Noelanders show seems to have become the unofficial landmark opening of the European bonsai show circuit. I recognised Eastern European, UK, French, Italian, German, Spanish & of course BeNeLux visitors (you do see many of the same faces year on year) as well as the occasional Americans; I'm sure there were other nationalities there, I just don't know them all so apologies if I missed you. Lots of cards and show flyers were exchanging hands. What seems to happen is that people make a point of catching this show to invite enthusiasts from other countries to attend or display at their local shows later in the year. TOH got no less than 3 invites to display our trees on the Continent this year: fitting them all in will be something of a logistical - and financial - challenge. But I'd love to do it.

That said, I know you're gagging to see the trees. So here goes. But my usual caveat applies - these are my photos of displays that I found interesting, for all sorts of reasons; but this is not an indication of my personal preference for or an indication of merit (or not) in the trees, unless specifically mentioned. Most of the time I do try to refrain from any sort of technical or artistic critique; I'm sure the owners are already more than aware of the strengths and limitations of their bonsai.

This is a very large Pomegranate: Punica granatum 'Neji-kan' in a Chinese pot, by Graham Potter. Notable of course were the fruit on the tree.

And another large tree, Lino Pepe's Olive: Olea europaea in an Isabelia pot.

I first saw this shohin Jasmine in a calendar about two years back. This was the accompanying accent for Udo Fischer's display of a large literati Pinus nigra.

A shohin Itoigawa Juniper (about 8 in / 20 cm high from base of pot) by Mario Komsta, in an antique Chinese pot. This tree received a Special Mention. Note the evenness of the foliage.

I think I may have seen this tree at the Swindon Winter Image show last year: a very large Carpinus koreana raft in a Gordon Duffet pot, belonging to Ian Stewardson. A very striking display, this also received a Special Mention.

A Larix decidua - both pot and tree by John Pitt. This is a smaller tree, probably would be in the chuuhin size category.

There weren't as many purely shohin and mame displays this year, from what I can recall. Most of the smaller trees that were there were often in accompaniment to bigger trees. In what I believe was the only mame display: a Lonicera nitida by Ruud Simons.

One of the larger accent plantings: a Sempervivum and moss creation, which accompanied a Pomegranate belonging to Joerg Derlien.

This is a very large Scots Pine raft in a Derek Aspinall pot, by Richard Chambers. Richard will probably remain in my memory for helping us out at the EBA convention last year with a whole load of wire, but that is not why this photo is in here. He also had another Scots Pine in the show (a large literati I think) but maybe I just have a preference for groups of trees...

This Silver Birch (Betula pendula) in a Tokoname pot by Hermann Haas had quite an interesting deadwood feature at the back of the trunk.

A Japanese Yew (Taxus cuspidata) with prominent deadwood by Josef Valuch; pot by Isabelia. It seemed like there were more entries from the Eastern European countries this year, which I personally appreciate as we have so few opportunities to see what's going on over there. I remember the EBA convention in Poland in 2006 and it looks like things have moved forward in leaps and bounds since then.

And of course, I will always mention the Suiseki that Gudrun and Willi Benz go through so much trouble to bring out for our enjoyment. I could have photographed them all as the standard is always excellent, but taking down the details of all the photos is one heck of a drag.

This one is a Colour Stone from Anhui, China.

And this unusual (for me, anyways) piece of geology is a Chalcedony pattern stone from the White Water River, a tributary of the Yangtze River in China.

And everyone wants to know the winners. There were several trees that received Special Mention certificates, but I didn't have the time to go hunting them all down. Just because the attendance was lower on the Sunday didn't mean that it wasn't busy in the exhibition hall. So what I did manage to take were:

Mario Komsta's Itoigawa Juniper in an antique Chinese pot. This took the prize in the Kifu category, which I understand to be a newly created size category, one up from the chuuhin size. (Let's not get into a discussion on category dimensions, I don't agree with precise measurements of trees when entering them in a size category. I will mention measurements from time to time on this blog, but that's just to give an idea of scale.) I overheard a 'big' bonsai artist commenting on this tree - and the detail wouldn't show on this photo - saying that the foliage was both very even and very green, a remarkable achievement given that Mario is currently living in a very hot and dry part of Spain.

The winner of the Noelanders trophy: another Itoigawa Juniper, this time by E. Savini and F. Mantovani. My understanding is that this tree was a favourite among several showgoers. I didn't manage to take a photo of this tree when it was on the main show bench, so it was practically impossible to get up close for a detail shot. The tree is actually larger than it seems to be in this photo.

One thing I've always liked about this show is that there are no restrictions on the public taking photos. Not that Joe Public walks around with professional quality kit anyway, plus the light is really not ideal for taking detail shots. And you can't get far back enough without bumping into another person taking photos. If you are interested in purchasing the show book, go to their website here.

(No, I do not take commissions for plugging things on this blog. Sod off.)

Four years ago, my mate Bob insisted that we come to the Noelanders show; his selling points were the lack of politics, the friendly atmosphere and the quality of the trees. The former is probably something you can never get rid of in a human congregation, but it has never affected me at my level; the latter two are very definitely true and I look forward to going back each year. I've already decided on which hotel to book....

... and Tell (Noelanders Trophy XI)

2010-01-25T16:52:00.019Z

I mentioned in an earlier post that, while I go to all these shows to see bonsai trees and related material, I derive a great deal of enjoyment from some of the people that I have met over the years. So let me tell you about my people-watching last weekend.

I can't go on enough about the number of people that were there on the Saturday. I believe the total show attendance was 3,500 people, the bulk of which were there for the opening. The good bit about the queue was that we were forced to go exploring around the neighbourhood (no way was I queueing for hours in the cold. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt). Found a great wine and beer merchant that also had an impressive stock of liquor. More Japanese, Irish and Scottish whiskies than I have ever seen under the same roof, even taking into account the big boys in Calais.

This year at the Noelanders Trophy, I was privileged enough to grill Marc Noelanders on the logistics of and his plans for the future of the show. As with the UK, the cost of hiring a hall is very high in Belgium. And an impressive amount of work - and expense - go into producing a show of this level. Set-up starts several days before the show and tear-down goes on until the Monday after closing. The expense they rack up is rather gob-smacking but I guess it does show in the end result. I've heard lots of people clamour for a big national show in the UK but I wonder if, when it comes down to it, they would be willing to put up the same amount of commitment, effort... and money.

The Noelanders show takes over the 2 levels of the Cultural Centre in Zolder, Belgium. The top level is the auditorium where the demos take place (which I totally missed this year), and a sales area. Most traders have the same spot year on year, so I just tend to make a beeline for the same people as soon as we clear the doors. But sorry, no photos this time of Walsall Studio Ceramics, Harukaze, Bryan Albright or Klika (to name but a few). TOH and I got caught up for over an hour-and-a-half just saying hello and catching up with bonsai acquaintances. At one point I did wonder if we would even make it to the cafe (also on the same floor) for my regular mid-morning caffeine fix; well, lunchtime actually. The crowd was so dense 4 of us were jammed between sales tables as we tried to make conversation and buyers tried to get a better look at either Walsall's pots or the huge yamadori specimens next to them. Very good of the traders not to mind, really.

Downstairs (when we eventually got there) has two sales areas, a cafeteria, a photography area and the exhibition hall.

This part of the sales area shows Morea Pubbens' work in the foreground. Right in front of the tulips and obscured by the kusamono is a large round black ceramic pot which came home with me. Yes, the big smirk is still on my face.... :o)

Another end of the same sales area, with Windybank Bonsai on one side and John Pitt on the opposite side. At the far end is a sales display of mame and shohin trees.

We also got to comparing photos with Mario Komsta of the past winter - a sort of 'my snowfall was bigger than yours' thing. Mario said the drive to Belgium took him 16 hours. Marc's reply being that of course he had to go and live in the middle of nowhere.... Yes, sympathy is alive and well in the bonsai world :D

I think Mario is best known for a chuuhin Red Pine that was entered in the Kokofu-ten and was also featured in Bonsai Focus. If you ever get a chance, try to catch one of his talks; I attended one at EBA 2009 and thought it was very well put together as he takes you through the development of a tree. Q&A sessions in English can also be rather lively as he has a good command of the language. Mario told us about a bonsai show coming up in Poland sometime in May, I think, at Castle Książ. So if you've got time on your hands and bonsai on your mind, Poland is always worth a visit, especially for the food....

And this here is Václav Novák of the Czech Republic, trying to get in the way of my taking a shot of the Suiseki. And succeeding. Václav had a couple of entries in the Noelanders show, and some of you may also have heard of him in conjunction with the EBA New Talent Contest.

And this here is not a person, but I thought you'd like it anyway. I believe this is one of Marc Noelanders' trees - a pine in what I think is an Isabelia pot. This wasn't an official show entry as it was completely unlabelled (hence the conjecture). Last year he had a similar one, much smaller and tucked away in a little corner; if I recall correctly it was a Juniper, which was what inspired me to try something similar with this rose. As you can see, absolutely no comparison! But give it a few decades.... :D

P could also be for Poinsettia...

2010-01-09T00:31:00.006Z

We aren't so far from the holiday season (well, just a hair's breadth-ish after the 6th January, heheh) that I can't post a pretty pic of a pretty Christmas cake:

This was a friend's gift (completely home made!) to TOH and I've set it up against the new kitchen tiles that TOH has put so much hard graft into sealing.

Ain't it all pretty?

... or it could be for Parallels...

2010-01-09T00:31:00.004Z

No, we aren't out of the woods yet in all the household travails.

The kitchen isn't quite finished, as my pretty toy (AKA the integrated espresso machine) has yet to be delivered. The kitchen suppliers have an ordering/distribution system that sucks donkey balls. Big time.

TOH's software woes had gotten to the point that it was simpler to junk the computer. Exit stage left. Hard-learned lesson #35 of 2009: don't expect a Helpdesk to sort you out, much less hold your hand.

Enter stage right - a new computer which was delivered late in the afternoon today. TOH has spent the entire evening putting the hardware together and is now in the process of loading the software. With multiple pitfalls including being sent the wrong disks. And recovering the data from the old box? The saga continues....

Taking down the old kitchen and prepping it for the fitters (i.e. boxing up all the stuff) was a simple matter of several hours' work between TOH and myself, with the help of all the boxes that several kind friends had donated to us for the effort. A very big 'Thank You' to you lot. Coffee and cake coming your way once I actually get a coffee machine. :o)

Now, putting back the stuff we took out - finding homes for everything, getting things organised... that's taken like flippin' days. Although the bulk of the work is over, I'm still fiddling around, testing out how best to make a well-oiled machine out of one little (OK, slightly large-ish) workroom.

Teardown's a piece of cake. Building / repairing / finessing something so that it works - that's a much harder job. And where am I going with this? Sometimes we charge full steam ahead with our actions without completely considering the consequences. And when the latter has a destructive effect.... well, rebuilding bridges isn't so hot, izzit? That could be someone's hard-learned lesson of 2009, or maybe again they may never learn their lesson.

... or for 'Perspectives'...

2010-01-09T00:30:00.008Z

I can take no credit for this lovely piece of craftmanship, which is @lilmissmaya's weaving final:

And although I was completely in admiration of the juxtaposition of colours, she told me that her professor hadn't seemed to like it that much, with the criticism that the colours didn't shift gradually enough.

I will admit to knowing bugger-all about weaving or the use of dyes. On the other hand, I do know how to recognise when a lot of effort has gone into creating something. And I do know what I like - which may or may not be in tune with what an expert would like. Nonetheless, my view is that the opinion of the beholder - however valid - does not take away the inherent merit of the work.

And at the end of the day, surely - whatever the perspective - what should count is the fruit that the action bears. After all, a criticism is just a comment, isn't it? But then, what effect did it have - did it do more harm than good? Was the end result a learning experience, some sort of epiphany or grand revelation of truth?

And it's not just about making comments, is it? There's the spirit behind the comments. And whether clarification came with them. Or whether they were just a series of terse, snappy one-liners or - worse - insincere flowery platitudes.

No, this isn't about getting at the professor at all. What this does tie up with is all the seemingly disjointed rants that I've been littering this blog with over the past couple of months. Baffled? Oh well, perhaps reading on is the answer? Hur, hur, hur.....

But I would like to thank @lilmissmaya for the use of her photo and for introducing me to her work. Want to see more? Go contact her via Twitter.

... or it could even be for Popsicle Bonsai

2010-01-09T00:30:00.006Z

In this post I showed you pics that Stef took of our bonsai in the summer. Well, scrub that from your mind and replace it with this:

and this:

The big freeze has been upon us, and the garden hose broke just before the snow fell. Which of course happened overnight without anyone knowing anything about it until we looked out the window and saw these:

Frozen accent plants

Frozen shohin Picea, Chinese Juniper and a White Pine

And another frozen Chinese Juniper. All the popsicle shohin have been moved into the cold greenhouse and have started to thaw out. Fingers crossed.

Everyone else (of the bonsai, that is) is sitting outside in the snow. Ah, the joys of the holiday season...

What does the letter P stand for?

2009-12-23T15:50:00.004Z

For the past 5 days, TOH has been having trouble with the Norton AntiVirus Helpdesk. It had gotten to the point that it is so bad it's started affecting me. So of course I had to blog about it. Because yes, I am going somewhere with my (seemingly) disjointed rants.

TOH's computer woes started when a worm got past Norton AntiVirus' version 2. Which necessitated a call to their Helpdesk; a techie comes along, sorts it out and all is supposed to be well. And in a few hours the problems start again. TOH's computer starts running slower then stops dead. So the calls to the Helpdesk start again. 13 calls later, TOH has accumulated 10 priority numbers, spoken to 13 techies, repeated the case history 13 times, and seen the computer die each time. Techies went into TOH's registry and modified it, then suggested TOH upgrade to version 3 and taken TOH's money for it. This is where good faith and desperation can be the undoing of you. Because after AV v3 went in, the shit really hit the fan.

Now several days and daily phone calls later, TOH's computer is worse off than when the first call to the Helpdesk was made. The techies started suggesting it was due to clashes with other software on the computer, so they started uninstalling other stuff. The problem persisted and the case was passed up to the 'elite team' who were apparently defeated by it all. Because in the end, they started telling TOH that it wasn't a Norton problem. Never mind TOH's numerous reiterations that there were never any software clashes with the older version of Norton AV.

The long & short of it? TOH manages to speak to a manager who says the same thing; essentially, it's not Norton's problem. No matter that a virus got past their AntiVirus software, no matter that their support team had a hand in disabling a computer; they simply said, oh well, it's not our fault, guv, you'll have to sort it out yourself now - and walk away.

No mention of apology for the inability to resolve an issue (because they refused to acknowledge it). No mention that they took somebody's money for software that isn't usable or even the offer of a refund. No mention of having taken someone's time up - because most nights TOH was on the phone to them until 03:00 AM, which seriously screwed up my sleep patterns. But that isn't Norton's problem, is it?

I am accepting of human fraility. I can understand not being able to solve every problem in the world. But do you have to pretend it isn't there? Feign having had no hand in exacerbating a situation? Wouldn't it be better to accept defeat gracefully and try to placate the customer somehow? Because turning around at this point and acting like it's the customer's fault is only going to piss them off even further.

And while I may have no problem with placing technical support services in areas where costs are low, I have every issue with Helpdesk personnel who are (a) supercilious, (b) do not listen to and talk over the customer while they are explaining the problem, and (c) do not man up and acknowledge their shortcomings and don't even make any concessions to the damage left in their wake. That sums up as unhelpful and a shitty attitude in my book. I understand that they may be faced with a lot of customers who are barely computer literate, but that does not mean that ALL their customers are in the same boat. And even then, so what? Does that justify giving people attitude? Isn't there a clue in the word 'HELPdesk'??

What they don't seem to realise is that theirs is essentially a customer-facing role. They are the voice of Norton AntiVirus that I have indavertently been listening to for the past 5 days. Most companies may not have a face anymore in these days of remote working, but their employees are still the embodiment of their company values.

And this time, the embodiment of Norton AntiVirus has demonstrated that Norton only wants our money but doesn't give a shit about me or TOH. Symantec, your values suck. Ease of doing business with you? A big fat ZERO.

So in this case, the letter P could stand for.... plonkers? Phucking passholes?

Borrowed Musings, #1: Me, me, me and mine

2009-12-16T17:58:00.001Z

Reading over @bonsaibanter's Tweets (or Twitterings, whichever term you'd prefer to use - most likely neither) reminded me of conversations I've had with Teacher-san on the differences between the philosophies that drive Eastern and Western Art. Of course these are gross generalisations that I put down here, and I'm sure someone will call to my attention that to every rule there is an exception. So, point taken - I'm not stating any rules here.

Teacher-san's guideline is to '...see how the tree wants to grow and work with that, not against it'. His observation was that in Japanese bonsai, the tree is the most important part of the creative work; the artist takes second place. Essentially he is the temporary vessel charged with the care of this particular tree during his lifetime. It's pretty much an accepted fact that - unless he buggers it up completely - the tree will outlive him and pass on to the hands of another artist who will go on to leave his imprint on the tree. And so on ad infinitum.

Western Art tends to be primarily about the artist showcasing himself and his talent, so the artist's work would tend to be a statement of how creative / clever / avant-garde he is. I think this outlook spills over into Western hobbies (like bonsai), especially when there is a clash of me, me, me's. And then it becomes all-out war.

@bonsaibanter wondered why '...the gentle pursuit of bonsai attracts so many negative people. Perhaps it is easier to be destructive than constructive which is a contradiction really seeing that creativity lies at the heart of bonsai. Or perhaps it is merely human nature and this behaviour occurs in all types of hobby groups. Perhaps bonsai just attracts stressed out people who then vent their frustrations on those around them.'

There's a lot of truth in those observations, IMHO. What I do wonder though, is - it's a frickin' HOBBY, dudes! Is it worth ruining friendly relations for? Get a life.

Borrowed Musings, #2: Egos and Agendas

2009-12-16T17:56:00.000Z

This phrase stuck in my head during a talk with another bonsai buddy on the turmoil surrounding British bonsai at the moment. I claim no originality on this turn of phrase whatsoever. That belongs to my mate.

But it does describe what to me seems to be the Number 2 Root of All Evils in the 21st century (the love of money being the Biblical Number 1, in case the allusion slips you by). Especially in places in the West where the social structure can preclude the need for an income for those who wish to milk it in that way. But let's not go down that route...

So where am I going with these musings? Once upon a time, I would've expected that the law of the jungle ended within the workplace; one could then go home and de-stress with a nice cuppa (or a G&T even) and possibly get away from it all with a nice, creative hobby like painting or bonsai. Not anymore. The cutthroat attitude now extends to supremacy in the hobbysphere, I guess. Or must one now reign supreme over everything - the hobbies, the kids, the in-laws, the pets, the golf buddies? Or else, what? A loss of face, a drastic decline in self-actualisation?

So simplistically speaking - could this have something to do with compensating for the loss of status in the workplace? Or similar? Now that could lead to another random musing, like, should retirement be banned altogether as being hazardous to your neighbour's health and well-being? Except that, I know lots of retirees who do bonsai, and not all of them are striving to climb up any status ladder of any bonsai-ic description. Or perhaps psychological profiling should be done before people are allowed to leave the workplace? Sounds like a really unpopular platform to me.....

But... what's wrong with having an ego?

2009-12-16T17:53:00.001Z

Nothing really, as far as I'm concerned.

In fact, it would be really worrying if one didn't have one, I suspect.

But whatever happened to the win-win situations and the not treading on other people's toes? Or the 'do unto others what you would have them do unto you' sort of deals? Don't those count for anything anymore?

Thought #1

2009-12-04T14:15:00.000Z

While organising my thoughts on my RantyRantyRant (should I brand it Triple R?), it occurred to me that 'things' are very easy to break. Like dropping glasses or plates.

More 'nebulous things', like interpersonal relationships, take a longer time to break - these are sort of a cumulation of incidents that build one on top of another. And when the straw hits the camel's back, it breaks anyway. As broken as plates.

Sometimes, broken 'things' are easier to mend. On the other hand, who wants to eat off plates glued together?

But mending more 'nebulous things', like interpersonal relationships? In my experience, this often happens as the result of either a lot of time, an extreme amount of drama, or both. And who in the world likes drama?

* Shudder *

Thought #2

2009-12-04T14:13:00.003Z

So broken 'things' don't always get mended because it's become cheaper to replace them. Unless we're talking priceless antiques.

But what about broken 'nebulous things' (yep, still thinking interpersonal relationships) - since these aren't priceless antiques and since we tend to avoid drama at all costs, do they just sort of get left alone to fester? In the hope that time heals all wounds?

Or more to the point, in the hope that people will forget and move on, as they often do.

My feeling has always been, it's the coward's way out to rely on the shortness of people's memory. Grow a pair and admit your shortcomings, dammit. And fix things.

Interpersonal or otherwise.

And this proves what?

2009-12-04T14:12:00.005Z

That I can string more than one thought together, of course.

Duh.

And as @bonsaibanter told me today, it's all a question about cost and how much we value things.

Interpersonal or otherwise.

The Calm before the Storm

2009-12-03T17:19:00.007Z

This here is an unhappy bunny getting ready to give a good rant. But before I incinerate anyone, I may as well break up the multitudinous lines of text with a few pretty pics.

One of several Camellias in the garden that we will never convert into a bonsai. Why? Check out the size of its leaves and the flower. Not unless the bonsai is going to be 4-foot tall. And we already have one of those (and no, that bonsai is not a Camellia, it's a yamadori Scots Pine). AFAIK, nothing will reduce the size of that flower - no matter how small the pot you put it in, no matter how little food you give it. And if you are starving your bonsai you ought to be ashamed of yourself. (Although I suppose we could get into a technical discussion about whether plants really 'eat' or not....)

And on the other end of the scale, here's a 2-year old Blackberry (Rubus fructicosus) accent plant that self-seeded itself in the garden (yes, thank you blackbirds) and is about 3 in / 18 cm including the pot.

OK, so the lay-out artist in me is satisfied. Back to my fuming and fulminating in my corner here....

How A5 really sticks in my craw

2009-11-21T13:22:00.005Z

Got another club newsletter in the post today, which made a nice light read with my morning coffee. So now that the coffee's gone and the reading content has been digested from cover to cover - what do I do with the newsletter?

I always feel guilty about chucking these things in the bin since I am supremely conscious of the amount of effort it has taken to put a newsletter together. Often the editor works on his own and has to beg, borrow and cajole information out of people just to make enough 'news' to fill a decent number of pages. Often there just isn't enough new material to make a regular journal interesting, which is a constant battle for the editor especially when this is part of a membership package. Often the newsletter is the most visible part of the benefits of being a member of an association, so the appearance of its value-add is even more important.

And not only is there the gathering-of-information chore, there is the laying-out-and-formatting-the-information chore on top of that. Then printing. And postage. Sticking on all those labels. Stuffing into envelopes. Queueing at the post office. All on one person's head. Thank God for admin people, is all I can say (and I did, in this post).

So while I am very conscious of the editor's hard graft, I still am stuck with several issues in various formats (single sheet A4, A4s folded into A5 and stapled together, whatever) lying around my home in various piles. Some of the information is useful (display, grafting, taking cuttings, etc) therefore nice to keep on hand as reference. But accessing reference material at a later date would mean some sort of efficient archival system. Who the hell thinks of that after reading a newsletter with their morning coffee? More to the point, who would even have the time to do that? And for every single club paper they receive? Daunting, dudes, daunting.

But why can't all this go on a website, locked in a Restricted Member Access section if necessary? Then subscribers can just look this all up online without having storage and retrieval issues. Added value too for new members - they now have access to issues that pre-date their membership. Admittedly the work gets shifted onto another admin person (let's hear it for the website people out there) - at least for the initial set-up - but I believe the long-term benefits outweigh the downsides. Keep the club costs down and use the dosh for something else.

I believe there are some societies already doing that; kudos to their governing bodies for being forward-thinking, and kudos to the membership for taking the plunge with them.

And yes, there also are (what is steadily becoming) a minority of people who don't have Internet access and who have no intentions of going down that route. I also believe the club should have hardcopy provision for these people. My belief is that clubs should be a disseminator of information, and if hardcopy is what it takes, then so be it.

But at the very least, let paper be an option rather than a default.

And while I'm at it - to all the club people out there who are sat on their nice cushy sofas enjoying their membership benefits: try pulling a finger out and at least submit photos of your trees (or plants or whatever) to your newsletter editor. Or send in questions. Your thoughts to questions. Whatever. Think they don't need newsletter contributions? Well, when was the last time you asked what they need??? If you've read this far, then you will hopefully have realised there are people out there who would probably welcome your contribution. Or have you even thought about it while reading your newsletter with your morning coffee? SHAME ON YOU.

There. Because I couldn't really go this far in the year without offending anyone, could I? Hurrrr.

Black Ruby: ur doin' it rite

2009-11-16T23:39:00.000Z

At least there's one plant that's doing what it's supposed to in the garden.

This Saxifraga cortusifolia 'Black Ruby' was part of the annual plant swap that me and my mate Bruno have had going on for several years now. Since there is a queue a mile long for this plant's offspring, I've been cultivating it for the past 3 years or so, trying to get it big enough to break up into (hopefully) gazillions of baby plants. As you'll probably have noticed, it's not planted in an accent pot - again hopefully by next spring I'll have a large enough stock plant to have both giveaways and accents.

This Saxifrage doesn't seem to be very popular in the UK, although there are a couple of UK sites that have it on sale. On the other hand, it seems to be more common in Holland, as Stef and his other half recognised it immediately when they saw it in the garden in July.

Either as a function of its size or of its age (or both), this is the first time this plant has flowered.

Flowering time for this particular Saxifrage is September - November time, so for once, there's actually something in the garden that's actually following the seasons. That would just be too much to ask of the Trident Maples for example, right?

... Or is it just that they don't get caught?

2009-11-15T01:24:00.004Z

Amazing where my reading habits take me, sometimes.

Going through an article on the theft of a collection of bonsai trees, I was struck by the author's assumption that the thief was male. Aside from the fact that moving multiples of trees in pots would make more sense if it were a group effort - in which case why couldn't this be a whole misguided Sorority thinking they could fund their University education with ill-gotten gain, for example.

So before I logged off with the S word (that would be 'sexism' of course) in my head, I decided to do some checking on the likelihood of a bonsai thief having the XY chromosome deal. Now I wasn't about to do hours of trawling, but let me share with you what I found out in the course of an hour.

Statistics gathered by the US Department of Justice showed that 'in 1998 there were an estimated 3.2 million arrests of women, accounting for 22% of all arrests that year'. I couldn't find more recent stats than that, so if you can point me in the direction of newer numbers, by all means feel free.

In Psychology Today, The Scientific Fundamentalist blog ran a series of posts dated July 2008 on criminality and men. The bit that interested me, of course, being the motivation behind property crimes of robbery and theft:

...If women prefer to mate with men with more resources, then men can increase their reproductive prospects by acquiring material resources. Resources in traditional societies, however, tend to be concentrated in the hands of older men; younger men are often excluded from attaining them through legitimate means and must therefore resort to illegitimate means to acquire them.

Hmmm.

And female criminality?

... Apart from their tendency and inclination to avoid physical risks and danger altogether, this is another reason that women commit fewer crimes than men. Women only steal what they need for them and their children to survive, whereas men steal to show off and gain status as well as resources. In other words, women steal less than men for exactly the same reason as they earn less than men. Women generally earn less than men do because they tend to make only what they need and usually have better things to do than earn money, whereas men are motivated to earn far more than they need to survive in order to use the money to attract women. Similarly, women steal less than men do because they tend to steal what they need to survive and do not use crime for other purposes, like showing off and gaining status.

OK, I realise I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg here. Nor do I necessarily agree with the views expressed above. And don't take things out of context; if you want to fly off the handle, read all the blogposts first.

There are probably tons of number crunchers out there who can corroborate or disprove what's written here. And the DOJ stats still tell me that there's at least a 1 in 5 chance that the bonsai thief could've been a chick. Still, I'm now curious enough to wonder how things have evolved over the last 10 years. For years women have been encouraged to believe they could do as well as men in all areas of their lives. Has that spilled over into the criminal world? So what would the numbers say - is the disparity still as great?

And no, I don't think it's just because women don't get caught as often as men. No matter how inefficient some may believe the criminal justice systems to be, 78% is just too big a gap to be explained by that; even if the stats are over 10 years old.

Hmmm. Should I only allow women and older married men (or at least co-habiting ones) to come into the garden and view the bonsai? Single, childless young dudes need not apply. :D

On a lighter note, what about what I found on this Forum?

It's because men are, plainly put, the cause of all misery:
MENtal illness
MENstrual cramps
MENtal breakdown
MENopause
GUYnecologist (too bad it's not spelled that way)
and when we have real trouble it's a...
HISterectomy

Yep, found all that in the space of an hour.

Hurrr.

Howling Wind Casualty

2009-11-14T15:34:00.002Z

This accent plant, a hardy Geranium in a Lotus pot was the first (and hopefully, the only) casualty of the strong wind we've been having all day today. We've had this plant a long, long time - it's one of the first accent plants TOH ever put together. The whole thing stood about 3 in / 8 cm from the base of the pot. Said pot has now gone the way of Humpty Dumpty.

I suppose this is where you're supposed to make lemonade when life gives you lemons. I'd been saying for a long while that I'd like to convert this plant into a kusamono ball, but the thought of having to hoik it up out of the pot had put me off - THAT is the hassle with strongly incurved pots.

Well I won't have that trouble now, will I?

Just as well I took photos of the geranium while it was in a pot, I guess.

But being me, I always have to look at the other side of the coin; which is, where am I going to get another cheap Lotus pot like the one that got broken?

Sum Moar Bonsai Trees? I Haz Dem!

2009-11-05T17:19:00.006Z

So it's not quite the most seasonal set of photos. So what?

Call it an autumn clear-out, when I've been going over the e-mails and photo folders to catalogue all the stuff people have sent me over the year. All photos courtesy of Stef, who came to visit us in the summer with Joke, his other half.

This is the staging where a mix of shohin and bigger bonsai live. There isn't a lot of science involved in our placement of trees - more like finding enough space to fit the things in without using a crowbar. However, if something starts looking unhappy, then a new home has to be found. Take the Trident Maple on rock (upper left-hand corner) and the large White Pine on the opposite side of the staging: they've been in the same spots forever and somehow seem to be doing all right, even if they don't really want the same growing conditions. Somehow their little microclimate seems to work for them, and they've been there ever since.

A section of the central staging showing a large collected Scots Pine, some Junipers and whatnot. And my favourite thing in the whole garden - the Pushpins! Which are actually things that prevent the watering hose from bumping and coiling around the bonsai.

A shadier section of the central staging: another large collected Scots Pine, beeches, oaks and maples. The guy at the very top is a triple-trunked Japanese Maple 'Chisio'. Slightly to the right of him is a Weeping Willow that we have been working on for yonks....and we're still at it. Oh - another Pushpin at the bottom right-hand corner :D

One of TOH's experiments - a group of little larches on a slab. The variation in trunk sizes still needs working on (among a whole load of things), so this forest may not go on show for another decade or so. Hurrr.

This group of small Chinese Elms somehow never goes deciduous in the winter, which probably just goes to show how mild our climate is. Ignore the weeds though. One problem with this group is that, although the pot is so large, the whole thing is really quite squat; so any display table it goes on needs to be both wide and tall. Not many of them walking around, and the very few times this planting has gone out on show, we've had to borrow one of Robert's stands. The group started with 7 cheap Chinese Elms and went through around 3 subsequent 'additions' whenever we found trees of the right height and girth. The tallest tree stands probably no more than 7 in / 18 cm high, and we've probably had the group for at least 8 years now. I think there are 19 trees in there now, but it really is a bit difficult to count them...

Nope, nothing to do with my phone

2009-11-03T21:00:00.012Z

A Twitter link from Sarah of Smart Bitches Trashy Books led me to Columnist David Brooks' Op-Ed on Cellphones, Texts and Lovers.

While the bulk of his column may not have a lot of bearing on my particular soapbox (but go read it anyway if you want to be enlightened on what people can get up to with a phone on a Friday night), this particular bit did resonate (emphasis is my own):

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.

This blog goes on a lot about bonsai club activities for a reason - the knowledge I have acquired in this hobby is primarily because we sought out a local club when I started getting interested in bonsai almost 14 years ago. Since hooking up with Teacher-san and a group of very enlightened (AKA geeky) friends, my store of specialist and horticultural knowledge has grown radically. But I would never have gotten there without the baby steps taken in the little club we still go to. So, if I have ever helped anyone out there take their own baby steps in their journey of discovery, then well and good.

TOH and I are inveterate book collectors and the number of bonsai books at home probably rivals the size of a club's library. On top of that, we have videos. DVDs. Whatever. But we have always felt that nothing replaces the ability to ask someone a question, study a tree together and discuss possibilities. To this end, private lessons are fantastic, but not exactly cheap. A club meeting or workshop with more-experienced members is a reasonable alternative, especially for a beginner who isn't sure of how much commitment to make to the hobby.

But the downside to any collective is evident: it's full of OTHER PEOPLE. Which could mean politics. Or personality clashes. Or differences of opinion. Well, if you don't want a repeat of your own family, what can I say?

Don't think that confining yourself to surfing the 'Net is going to shield you from all that, though. I have read many a diatribe on public forums (OK 'fora' if you are a stickler for the correct use of Latin) which make evident that backscratching, brown-nosing and backstabbing are not purely face-to-face activities. (Or back-to-back for that matter. Hurrrr.) I also remember talking to a Spanish enthusiast whose beef with Internet forums was that any tree could be made to look good depending on the angle that a picture was taken. So there's always video. Maybe in a few years' time the technology will catch up with us, but at the moment the time it would take to integrate all the media involved just to do a quick Q&A - it makes my head spin. We do a lot of virtual meetings in my day job and believe me it's got a ways to go yet. (And yes my patience factor is VERY VERY SMALL when it comes to waiting for software to perform properly.)

Nonetheless, I find it significant that, while the Internet has opened up a Whole Wide World to us without the need to ever leave our armchairs, the success of social media shows that we still have a tendency to congregate. Yes, into groups. Only our congregations are not necessarily held together by time or face, but by a similarity of interests and etiquette. We are still appreciative of help (if not necessarily actively looking for it); so what would be more logical - or even easier, for that matter - than the accumulated wisdom of a non-virtual community, if there actually is one to hand?

Bonsai isn't the only thing I do, and from time to time on Twitter I touch on the other interests and related congregations that I subscribe to. And I've made new friends, kept in touch with old ones, learned new things and shared on others. All the same sort of thing that I do at the clubs I go to physically, actually.

Huh. And you thought I'd tell you about what I do with my phone on a Friday night, dincha?

What? Didn't you read the title of this post???

Someone's been busy

2009-11-02T23:55:00.005Z

And it wasn't me. Nossiree.

So here is a photo tribute to all the hard graft TOH has done by way of winter prep in the cold greenhouse where most of the shohin and mame are kept: tidying up and clearing out all the dead leaves and what not, laying down slug pellets and giving a winter prune to the deciduous trees that have done a leaf dump.

Not that it's the best-looking greenhouse in the world, mind. Note that we are in a hard water area, witnessed by all the limescale marks on the shelving and the pots.

Here's what you see of the cold greenhouse as soon as you walk in. Evergreens or those still in leaf have been moved up to the light. Those that have fully shed their leaves have been moved to the bottom shelves.

And to your left as you walk in the door. The fun will be in Spring when everything bursts out into leaf - then it will be Changing Rooms in the Greenhouse all over again.

And on the right, with the neighbours' dead leaves and the grape vine just visible beyond the glass.

And because it looks so striking, here is a close-up of the red maple and primula kusamono on that last top shelf. The pot is Czech (Isabelia?) in case you're wondering.

Of course, there are still the warm greenhouse and the coldframes to go, but I'm just being nitpicky now...

Lee Verhorevoort at Solent Bonsai Society

2009-10-31T22:47:00.029Z

Lee Verhorevoort has been coming down to bonsai clubs in this part of the UK for probably over a decade now and his talks are a mix of care/styling of trees interspersed with his dealings in Japan with growers and specialist nurseries over the years.

Last night's talk was on Junipers although the things that struck me most personally had less to do with the species itself as Lee's insights on the ethos that drives enthusiasts in Japan.

The first thing he started banging on was the health of the tree. Some club members had brought their junipers to be critiqued and he pointed out that all bar one of them had spider mites or juniper scale. One tree had both.

This may not be the best illustration in the world, but hopefully you'll see the yellowish discoloration indicative of a juniper that's being attacked by pests. The colour of a healthy juniper would be more like the bright green tips on the branches.

The owner of a well-infected tree got told to get the tree healthy first before even considering doing any styling work to it. I always thought that tough love never hurt anyone, to be honest. But maybe that's just me.

Touching on yamadori, one difference pointed out was that European collectors will tend to do 'heavy' work (e.g. major bending of big trunks & branches) within the limitations of the material they have collected, whereas the Japanese will just overcome these limitations by 'creatively' adding/grafting branches wherever they may want them. Fair enough. A quick explanation followed on various grafting procedures, with Lee saying that he knew of one grafting specialist nursery in Japan that had done over 200 grafts on a single tree, all at the same time. On the basis that if a certain percentage of grafts doesn't take, there'll still be a lot left to work with. Again, fair enough.

But what struck me was, he went on to say that - if you have trees that have started acquiring value, and you are already struggling to find time to devote to these trees' development, then don't mess around with stuff like grafting. Expend your energies on your better trees and don't spend time 'playing' if it's to the detriment of your higher-value bonsai.

A bit like the 80-20 rule, where you spend the bulk of your time and resources on the 20% that will bring in 80% of returns.

Another thing Lee pointed out was that Japanese bonsai enthusiasts tend to believe that, in 10 years' time, their trees should look 10 times better. They expend their time and effort in species that lend themselves to achieving this result. A contrast with many British enthusiasts who are less targeted in their approach and less precise in the choice of growing methods used to achieve this end.

Most important point of the evening for me was Lee's insistence on REFINING a tree. The work of styling can sometimes be instantaneous, but it is the day-to-day work - the endless routine of correct watering, feeding, pruning, caring for the health of the tree, etc - that matters more in the long run.

A lot of information was disclosed over the period of a 3-hour meeting, so I've had to condense into a few sentences what I gleaned over this time. I've tried not to misrepresent anything Lee has said in these paragraphs, so before you go flying off the handle over any perceived disconnect, do try and bear that in mind.

Other than that I preferred the cream-filled biccies to the chocolate chips.

And while this pic may look like acting out 'drilling for oil' in a game of Charades, it's actually Lee explaining about grafting on a yamadori.

Keep digging deep, guys :D

If you are interested in finding more about Lee and his nursery in Kent about a half-hour's drive out of London, this is the place to go.

Running your Bonsai Life on a Handshake

2009-10-29T19:36:00.004Z

Chatting online yesterday with @bonsaibanter had brought up an interesting point where the hobby of bonsai in the UK is concerned.

Our discussion touched on big bonsai shows, and @bonsaibanter was of the view that these '...demand a good deal of labour and I wonder how sustainable that is in a volunteer based organisation'.

Now there's the rub.

Most bonsai clubs/associations are run by people who earn bugger-all from the work they put into it. In general, clubs and societies will have started out as a group of like-minded people wanting to share time and resources around their interest. Things tend to go upwards from there, especially if there is already a centralised body that's able to facilitate things for them like speakers, show insurance, resource directories and so on.

And this happy little group of people will continue meeting in a backyard and work on their trees, and their reputation will grow, and more people will come and join them. So they'll move to a larger venue where more people will hear about their happy little group which is now mushrooming like a monolithic blowfish. (Talk about mixed metaphors...)

Which is all well and good until administrational demands kick in, involving the dreaded F-word 'finances' and the other dreaded 4-letter word 'work'.

In my experience, of the number of attendees/members in hobbyist societies, only a very small fraction will volunteer to go onto the steering committees and face the administrative grind that keeps said happy little group alive, functioning and out of trouble. And - again in my experience and especially in artsy-fartsy hobbies like bonsai - the majority of people involved in steering committees tend to be shite at real-world skills like administration. Or possibly they just won't have the experience to be 100% efficient. 'Tend to be' being the active qualifier here, of course.

What about the rest of the club members?

Well, the bulk will probably be people who are of the middle-of-the-road persuasion, willing to chip in if co-opted but preferring to stay out of doing any more work if they can help it. Their primary focus is getting on and developing the skills of their hobby. There's also a smaller group that's primarily in there to socialise. Acquisition of skills is less of a priority than the actual fun & fellowship package. Then there's the artsy-fartsy lot who like to shine. They'll be the ones who'll always want to front giving talks and schmoozing up to 'big names', because their nature is to look for the spotlight. They may accept a figurehead position, but heaven help you if they actually want to run something.

Because, let's face it - the good administrative talent will not be spending their free time doing more admin. They'll already be earning the big bucks at their day job, doing nitty gritty that a lot of people suck at. But for their free time? Very few will be willing to put in the same hours or effort for zero amount of remuneration while staying in the background. Admin is neither fun nor glamourous, peeps. It's just that the people who're good at it have figured out how to do it faster and more efficiently than the rest of mankind.

But the number of people who excel at anything, who are truly GIFTED and TALENTED at it - be it bonsai styling, horticulture, arts or admin - they are few and far between. They probably have the temperament to match their talent, but that's the risk you run with anything. There are also lots of people with monumental ego and bugger-all talent, which is all by the bye.

So if your club is lucky enough to have one or several of these suckers who are willing to give up their free time to do your admin, I'd really suggest you start thanking your lucky stars. And figure out how to drag more of the same in. Because the downside of volunteer work is they can give you the finger and sod off anytime they want to. The upside of course being that you get their time and effort for free (just in case you still haven't figured this out by now).

We are lucky in our little local bonsai club. Many of the members are retired professionals who no longer have the over-arching need to prove anything to anyone, several are very knowledgeable in niche areas like horticulture and styling, and there are also a lot of willing hands to go around. However, when we lost our Treasurer, a Committee member's wife had to be co-opted into doing the role even though she's not a bonsai enthusiast. But she is both faithful and efficient at what she does. Not all societies are as fortunate in having as much talent to hand within an active membership of possibly less than a dozen people.

Lots of people still associate bonsai with big money and cash cows. Wake up and smell the coffee, dudes. The hobby's heyday in the UK is about 10 years past and the market has since matured. The leisure market is full of competition, and in times of recession the average customer isn't going to be chucking his hard-earned cash left, right and centre. No matter how big your UK bonsai club is, it's still going to be dinky small fry in comparison with the gaming industry, for example, which is far better at being enticing. So running a club like a backyard operation will bring you backyard results, and if you aren't good at leveraging whatever freebie resources you have... well then, over time backyard starts turning into backward.

You get the picture.

The people that win in an overcrowded market are those with a lot of savvy... but I'm sure you've had enough of me banging on about marketing and savvy, haven't you? :D

Well if you haven't, and if I haven't posted on it in the next couple of weeks or so, you're just going to have to remind me. Hurrr.

What? Disagree? The Comments box is open...

Autumn Colour, yet again

2009-10-28T19:37:00.020Z

Looks like more autumnal pics are coming out of the garden after all.

We're still having this mixed sort of weather, with sun one day and rain the next. The temperatures are still rather mild, which means that a lot of trees are still green and growing while others are starting to let out the ZZZ's.

Here's a pic I took of this Toad Lily (Tricyrtis) in the summer. You can just see a bit of the maple in the edges.

And here it is again in the autumn, flanked by a fern and the same Japanese Mountain Maple. Whether the Toad Lily should still be in flower in October is anyone's guess.

And this little guy is a Field Maple (Acer campestre). The contrast between the yellow leaves and the little red Walsall pot is nothing if not charming, if I may say so myself. It's been in training for about 2 years now - still a long way to go in the ramification area, though. The planting is about 5 in /13 cm high from base of pot.

And this is a shohin Cotoneaster which hasn't got a lot of berries this year. It stands around 6 in /15.2 cm from the base of the pot. We've had this guy a long time. The pot was purchased at the 2007 EBA Convention in Belgium and is by a lady Danish potter whose name escapes me and whose website I forgot to bookmark. Slapped wrists!

I'm not one for naming my trees (sorry, just not my thing) but this guy is an exception - given that his pot looks vaguely like a Viking boat. So Bjorn he is, when I can be bothered to remember.

And although I don't give names to my bonsai, all my compost bins have names. Go figure.

But that is another post for another time. If you can twist my arm. I dare you.

Another day in the life of...

2009-10-23T00:59:00.014+01:00

Or shall we say the continuing saga of the travails of a bonsai grower? Here's an update on all the plants and stuff you've seen so far.

The grapes in this post are still hanging in their bunches and aren't quite ripe yet. We are near the end of October, you guys. Hurry up and get a move on. If this rain continues, all I'll have are big bunches of mildew hanging on that pergola.

The rose in this pot got knocked over by the guy doing some work on the garden. Pot and bonsai are intact. Phew! A yamadori Scots Pine suffered the same fate and its Northern Chinese training pot is now Humpty Dumpty.

This buttercup and a couple of his cousins think it is spring (I told you this weather is screwed up). As they are now out in leaf - alright, they are sheltered in a cold frame - I suppose they are going to stay that way until the REAL spring arrives (that's 2010 to you).

As mentioned in the earlier post, the seven-lobed maple is now denuded. Billie the fat bonsai cat has been upstaged by a kitten and is establishing territory and the ground rules. Neither feline is mine.

The Cyclamen we use as accent plants self-seed every year in the strangest places - into the gravel inside the greenhouse, under the leaf litter on the bonsai staging, everywhere. This year it's between the patio paving slabs. I've dug up a couple (of Cyclamen, not the paving slabs - doh) and put them into thimble pots, a bit like these ones here.

The blackbirds are still uprooting all the moss and liverwort they can find. Between them and the cat crap all over the flower beds, it's enough to make one consider violence. Grrrr.

More Bonsai Autumn Colour (among other things)

2009-10-22T13:46:00.019+01:00

Like you could trust the great British weather.

It all started so good this Autumn, being cold & dry - as the seven-lobed maple will attest. Then a couple of days ago, it started to go downhill, with the rain coming in and the temperatures actually rising. So all I have in the garden are either bonsai that are still green & growing, or stuff that's decided to go brown, crispy and drop off.

The shohin and mame in the greenhouse are of course doing their own thing regardless. I've got a couple of shohin maples that have gone into wonderful colours, but their ramification looks like crap. So, no piccies of them for you. Live with it. :D

On the other hand, will these do?

This is a mame Japanese Bush Clover (Lespedeza), which stands about 6 in /15.2 cm) from the tiny feet of its dinky Tokoname pot. I've been growing a few Bush Clovers for a couple of years now and this one is the smallest. I think it's been in this pot for at least 5 years now. And the pot is a bloody bugger to clean. What you cannot see is the whopping thick wire (under the pot's base) which has been used to hold the fine anchoring wires that keep Mr Lespedeza from being blown out of his home. This is because the pot is so small, it only has one large drainage hole. Hence the fat wire running across the hole. Still confused? Tell me and I'll draw you a picture. Sheesh.

Now this guy is more recent; I probably acquired this shohin Crab Apple about 3 years ago. It stands about 11 in / 27.9 cm from the base of its pot (which BTW I think is an Erin but cannot say for sure. Have tried looking under the thing and nearly lost all the topsoil.) Anyways, it went into this pot last spring, and the ramification is not there at all yet. Its saving grace IMHO being three crab apples hanging there - but as I picked it up off the bench to take the photo, the one little bugger fell off. So I have stuck it in the photo as a prop. Waste not, want not; I've always said.

So, not a lot of good things among the bonsai & the kusamono to take pics of so far. And yes, where blame is attributable (especially onto something as nebulous as the weather), I will jump on the chance to do so. After all, the fine art of whinging can only be maintained by practice, right?

Harrrrr.

Hiding a multitude of sins

2009-10-04T22:33:00.012+01:00

Aside from the seven-lobed maple under the pergola, the first bits of autumn colour have shown themselves in the garden among the accent plants. Among the first to turn was this Thalictrum:
And then of course there's this Astilbe (one of my finds in the Alpine nurseries of Austria):

And the multitude of sins that are (hopefully) being hidden?

The pots (especially the first photo) are sh*tty dirty. So NOW you notice. Feh.

Bonsai vs Grapes: The Garden Wars

2009-10-03T02:34:00.012+01:00

So what exactly did the summer bring me? Trouble & strife in the garden, is what. All under the leafy shade of the pergola where several bonsai maples, a couple of yews and rather a few Satsuki azaleas were quietly minding their own business.

Which of course the grape vine was doing as well.

Except, when the interests of the two groups collide, then we have - the vegetative Clash of the Titans. You got it.

After all, some would say the whole of Nature is just one big fight for territorial dominance. And as the photos taken a few weeks ago show, this corner of the garden was no exception.

The Kiyohime maple is visible in the top photo, and a few seven-lobed Japanese maple leaves (we are still trying to identify the variety) are barely visible in the foreground.

One of the yews is in the rear of the photo. And the big ole grape vine is just protecting these guys from the wind and the scorching sun. Not that that's stopped the Kiyohime from leaf burn this summer.

The grape vine was planted about five years ago, and it started seriously producing fruit in abundance last year. The second photo shows the other side of the pergola, where the grape bunches are a lot fuller, given the lack of competition for light, space or air.

Third photo along just goes to show what a little good weather can do for ripening fruit. Although, the Med we are not... yet.

The freakish sunny weather that hung around for most of September and into the first days of October has seen a lot of late spurts of growth in the bonsai and kusamono.

Most of the maples in the garden are still in full leaf. The seven-lobed maple was the first to go into glorious autumn colour and is now starting to lose its leaves. All the other maples have ignored it and are doing their own thing, i.e. growing like crazy. A few lazy sods like the chaenomeles and wisteria have just rolled over and are now doing the plant equivalent of snoring their heads off.

Bonsai shows have slowed down a bit in this part of the world. Our local societies have done a few appearances in conjunction with local craft & trade fairs - which I feel is a very good thing. Better to bring the word to the general public rather than preach to the converted.

Last photo shows the seven-lobed maple as it started to turn into its autumn colour. There's still a lot of work that needs to go into this tree before it's even remotely show-ready. The ramification is nondescript and the crown of the tree is blah. So all it has to recommend itself at this point is a few weeks of fiery display. Of course, it keeps getting bombarded by falling grapes, which sort of cuts the autumn display time down by quite a bit as well.

Nothing like getting clonked on the head by some rotting fruit to get your status in life in perspective, is what I say.

So what's in store for the grapes? Not wine, in any case. For nothing am I rolling out the oak barrels to tread on these suckers barefoot. But apparently they are quite good eating grapes, so there you go.

Oh, hai.

2009-10-03T01:42:00.004+01:00

Yup, it's me again.

Back from a few weeks' blogging inactivity. Like, a lotta weeks :D

Which could be explained by a summer holiday, except that - as I mentioned to lilmissmaya on Twitter - in the UK, summer is something like 4 days in May, 8 days in June & 6 days in September. Except that our Indian Summer has seen fit to make a liar out of me.

September has given us almost 3 weeks of continual sunshine & warm-ish weather. October is here and the freak good weather is still on a roll. The forecast for the beginning of this week isn't fantastic, but... that's just par for the course.

Too much of a good thing and all that.

So, didja miss me? HARRRR.

What I like, what I really....

2009-08-09T23:14:00.021+01:00

... really like at all these bonsai shows I go to - if I'm being very honest - is not so much the trees, as the wonderfully quirky personalities I have met in the the past 15 years.

Lots of the people I like and talk about on Twitter and on this blog would not consider themselves as 'big names' in the British or international bonsai scene. But many of them have been growing and displaying trees longer than I have; many of them have a lot of specialist knowledge in both horticultural and unrelated areas; and many of them are able to convey that knowledge with passion and humour. And many of them are great for just standing around and chewing the fat with.

Unfortunately I haven't sought out their permission to tell you of what each of them have told me in the past weekend - for example - so no names named, OK? Let's see... the juicy bits started during the lull after lunch. Things went quiet so a bunch of us just gathered around to chat. I think we started with someone receiving a proposal of marriage from two (yes, plural!) inebriated young ladies; then on to cross-dressing, which led to gay bars in the area. For some reason that went on to the feasibility of doing a bonsai demonstration with scantily clad assistants (don't ask), then on to nude sculpture, which led back to the gay bars (we have one-track minds). Which of course went on to the television programming that the BBC lays on us - whether for good or ill - and to the TV license fee that we have to pay over here.

Not bad - from the ridiculous to the sublime, isn't it? Or not, I guess, depending on how you feel toward paying your TV license.

And no, it's not all scandalous gossip, unfortunately :D

The rest of the day was spent discussing how to correctly ascertain if one of my needle junipers is a rigida or a communis (verdict - check the big Hilliers Encyclopedia), interviewing the holder of a 6th dan in Iaidō (oh my, oh my, oh my; not many of them walking around) and receiving a wonderfully insightful description of historical vs modern-day usage of netsuke, inro and ojime. Not to forget coffee and cake, and of course, lunch. Far be it from me to attend a bonsai show and starve. *shudders*

Not bad for a day's (non)work, right?

Sussex Bonsai show at Hove

2009-08-09T22:07:00.015+01:00

Okay. At this point of the year I am definitely starting to feel blasé and all-showed-out. We've been going since the Noelanders show in January and the end of the bonsai show season couldn't come too soon for me now.

But here I am once again, having done the 1.25 hour trip to Hove, saikei in hand for the International Saikei Association's display at Sussex Bonsai Society's show.

Several bonsai/horticultural clubs from the South turned up for this show: Chichester, Sutton, Solent, Swindon, Crawley and Celtic Knot (Wales). Apologies if I've missed any other clubs - I'll admit to being a mite distracted by Antique Netsuke's wares that day.

Unfortunately I've not got as many pics from this show as I'd normally have, since the lighting within the hall was severely testing the limits of my Sony Ericsson phone. We've been through this before, right? If you don't know what I'm talking about, feel free to go over the Archives. Attribution of blame not being the object of this post, here is what I've got and that's it, dudes.

So here are several views of the display hall, taken from the balcony above. To the left of the island displays are a couple of trade stands, with more of the same - and some club stands - towards the rear of the hall.

All the island displays belong to the Sussex Bonsai Society. Again, more trade and club stands are visible in this photo below, towards the rear of the hall (to the right of this display). Lighting was too dim for me to be able to take pics of those stands.

Here's a view of the rear of the hall, with the trade stands as a quadrangle in the centre, and the societies ranged against the walls. Unfortunately all the natural daylight was up in the tiered seating in the balcony.

And this is the view of the other side of the balcony, where the demonstrations were being held. Just beneath are another set of club stands, with another island display from Sussex Bonsai.

I did manage to take some individual pics of the bonsai and suiseki. The photos below don't necessarily mean they were what I would have considered to be the best in the show. In fact, none of the photos I post in this blog necessarily mean that, unless I specifically indicate a preference. But, if they are here, it is because I believe there is something worthy of interest. Whether positive or negative, I leave that up to you.

Above is a damson in fruit - the only one I've ever seen as a bonsai. Below is the detail of the fruit, which are the size of small plums. This was in the display of Sutton Bonsai Society. The owner wasn't at the show when I took this pic, so I don't have much more info than this. Tree stands around 2 ft / 61 cm from base of pot.

Below, in one of Sussex Bonsai's island displays, is a cotoneaster planted in a large driftwood. Getting a pic was very much trial-and-error as this was on the floor. The only way I could have focused the phone properly would have been by prostrating myself fully on the ground, and not even for this blog am I doing that!

A shohin cotoneaster from Sussex Bonsai Society. Noteworthy to me is that, with a black background and a black base, you could almost make a bonsai appear to float within a void.

I think the Welsh lads should be given a medal for driving all the way down to shows over here. Celtic Knot's was probably the society stand most fortunate in terms of lighting. Here are the suiseki they had on display.

And the one that brought me the most amusement, a sort of stony gangsta-rapper look with shades:

Willow WIP still In Progress

2009-07-31T09:38:00.019+01:00

Back in February, I posted a picture of this Willow in its winter image, which really didn't make much of an image at all.

Which is why this is very much a WIP.

Back then I also called it a 'Study in Squiggly Lines', which it still is - particularly without any leaves - although there is now some filling out of what will be foliage pads.

The first photo is what I think will be the rear view. The munched-on Hosta (a large variety that self-seeded in the garden) is just visible at the base of the tree.

The biggest challenge so far has been keeping slugs, snails and caterpillars off this planting, which I've only managed to do with minimal success. Watering isn't much of an issue, although I do need to remember to get the other side of the base, otherwise I wind up with a brown spot of dry moss.

The second picture shows what I intend to develop into the front, with the hosta and a primrose. Of course, all three plants could develop into huge monstrosities which would totally ruin the image I'm trying to create. At which point it will be a total return to the drawing board and start from scratch. Or I could decide to only bring out the planting at the times of the year when it's looking its best.

This is now the start of this planting's second year. I don't remember what colour the primrose is, although I vaguely recall putting it in. I have a feeling it's one of the pink ones, which hopefully will go well with the lavender hosta flowers.

Another challenge with this planting is the balance: the whole thing tends to tip over, partly because the base of the pot (by Petra Hahn, BTW) is rounded and partly because all the weight is towards one side. Any prospect of flowering is therefore viewed with some trepidation. The plant distribution was done deliberately (yeah, right), however I cannot say that any consideration of the laws of Physics was involved. Newton, I am not.

Like a lot of things in the 'craft' side of bonsai, this project is a live-and-learn, trial-and-error sort of deal. It may very well be that in two or three years' time, this project could be subjected to total revamp. Or it could become something better that I ever thought it may be. Then again, I'm not really holding my breath for that one.

The Continuing Saga of the Pear-shaped Bonsai Kitty

2009-07-26T14:37:00.014+01:00

Yes, Billie the fat cat is a continual source of amusement for my infantile side (as if I had any other).

Here she attempts to make herself comfortable in a glazed bonsai pot while supremely ignoring the photographer. Who in this instance is not myself.

Still, one does wonder whatever was going through the cat's mind when it decided it wanted to fit its remarkable posterior in this little pot.

Pushing one's luck has also become something of a national sport in certain areas of this country (often in the proximity of felines with sharp claws). So here is Billie being subjected to another photo opp, this time with the expression normally associated with 'get out of my face before I jump down your throat.'

The results of this encounter between grumpy cat and the tempter of fate remain a closely guarded secret. Nonetheless, you may rest assured that no animals or teen-agers were harmed in the making of this blogpost.

Photographs courtesy of Graham Laidlaw.

All the Pot's a Sphere (well, almost)

2009-07-25T11:13:00.020+01:00

One of the bonsai on display at Humbees last weekend was this rose: bought from a garden centre and planted in a pot commissioned from John Pitt.

The idea for the pot came from one of Marc Noelanders' bonsai that I saw in January this year, although his was a perfect sphere. I hadn't wanted the hassles of properly balancing the weight of the plant in order to keep the whole thing upright, so this pot has a flat base - nice and simple solution.

The quirky bit about this pot is it actually has a feature built into it for anchoring the plant with wires, as one should do with bonsai. Yup, Mr Pitt thought of everything.

In this photo, said feature is invisible to the naked eye as it is inside the pot, just above the drainage hole and directly opposite the opening. All very clever actually, but my uncomprehending questions, loaded with innuendo (don't ask - I refuse to explain), caused a great deal of hilarity among the women and made Mr Pitt threaten to take the pot away from me.

As usual, this pic has been owing the Pitt-boss for several months now, but my excuse is that it wasn't worth photographing until the rose was actually in bloom, right?

What Joe Public doesn't really get to see...

2009-07-25T01:58:00.019+01:00

... is the set-up and tear-down of each show. And why should they? Ruins all the front-of-house mystique, doesn't it? For that matter, would you really want to see all that back-of-house stuff?

Well, since you're still here reading this, then the answer must be 'yes', right? Read on, then.

Day before the show and the polytunnel that Humbees had set aside for our use looked like this. The staff were accommodating enough to help us set up (and make endless cups of tea & coffee), laying out pallets and sales benches to be converted into bonsai display:

Below is the other end of the polytunnel ('twas a big bugger, wasn't it? Camera was at about the level of the lady setting up the palettes in the pic above.). The big challenge of the day was rendering the gaps in the lower tier of the staging suitable for display. So a whole load of 2x1 wood was wedged in - using brute force & ignorance - between the gaps. The 2x1 'bridges' were only good enough to use for the lighter, smaller plantings, but at least they did the job and we didn't lose display space that day. The one let-down was that the cloth tended to sag over these bits. Oh well, learning curve. That will be addressed next year, we're told. Yay!

Hanging out the backdrop cloth for a couple of stands had to be curtailed as we had run out of safety pins(!). My job for the rest of the afternoon was to get the biccies and coffee, plus some more safety pins. A trip to the supermarket later and I had bought enough biccies to feed an army and completely forgotten the safety pins. We made do with ordinary pins in the end. And while the pre-opening set-up had only involved a few people, more hands the next day meant quick work of the remainder of the preparations.

For how it all looked after that hard graft, see the following posts.

And here we come to the end of the show, when all is in the process of being broken down and packed away. The shohin display stand has been stripped of bonsai and accents, all the clubs have removed their trees and safely stowed them in their vehicles; now everyone is pitching in to take the display cloth down and help set the polytunnel back to rights. To the right, with her back to the camera, is Collette Harrison of Bonsai Trees Southampton. Both chairmen of Wessex and Eastleigh are in this photo: Eastleigh's being the arm packing away a bonsai table, and Wessex's being the person behind the crates walking to the door. Solent's chairman did drop by in the morning but had to get back to their other show venue, thereby missing out on the wonderful lunch. The sausages passing him by was the biggest blow, apparently. Was it the camaraderie between clubs that led us to put together a decent doggy-bag for him? Nope, it was too many left-overs from the spread that Lynn had brought over. Harrr.

The ethos that governs our club has, for a long time, been that of informality and, dare I hope, friendliness. The standard of our trees has developed (for the better) over the years. I've heard critiques of clubs in general as being cliquey and difficult to penetrate. It may perhaps be true of larger gatherings desiring to attract members of a certain status. I've never been to one of them, so could not say yea or nay either way. Not that I would care.

Somehow, this display of organised chaos in a polytunnel, with people walking around munching on biccies and coffee, some pruning their trees and others just lounging around and chatting - well that does blow the elitist image to bits from the get go. Just as well no-one tries, I guess.

The Jack Bellinger Cup

2009-07-25T00:10:00.026+01:00

The Jack Bellinger Cup has been running for several years now as an inter-club competition, in memory of Jack Bellinger and sponsored by David Glew. Originally it comprised Eastleigh and Wessex Bonsai Societies. More recently, its scope was widened to include Solent Bonsai Society. The competition involves each society putting forward a panel of 3 trees, representative of the best they have to offer that year.

As I mentioned in a previous post, tiered display staging always poses a problem for me when photographing trees on a stand, so in some instances, I only took a single photo in an entire panel. Third picture down in this post gives a view of the Bellinger entries, and hopefully illustrates why I balk at photographing individual trees displayed this way. Therefore, taking a stab at equitability, I've only included one tree from each society's entries. As I wasn't walking around with a tape measure in hand, all dimensions given are as best as my memory serves me.

Solent Bonsai Society included this larch group in their panel of three. The tallest tree would be around 2 ft / 61 cm high:

Of the panel of 3 trees from Wessex Bonsai Society, here is a white pine in the region of 22 in / 56 cm high:

Eastleigh Bonsai's panel included a Japanese Ivy which was already covered in an earlier post.

This year's judge was Collette Harrison of Bonsai Trees Southampton, and the Cup was awarded to Solent Bonsai Society. Congratulations, guys.

I would've liked to include a photo of my personal choice (simply because I could :o), which was Robert's Itoigawa Juniper. However it was on the lower display tier - which precluded my photo opp - and getting it off the stand to the photography area would have been too much disruption for me. So I will have to content myself with a mention (a bit like waving candy in front of someone's nose, isn't it really). If I ever get a chance, I promise to update this blog with a halfway-decent photo.

The ups and downs of an informal show

2009-07-24T16:20:00.026+01:00

Being hosted inside a polytunnel has given us a lot more display space than in the past years, but it's not without its little challenges. Still, the venue is relaxed and sets the tone for the entire show.

Weather that day was on the variable side (that being the norm for a British summer) with a nippy wind blowing. Note the skirting of the shohin display table billowing in the breeze. Possibly not a sight you'd see in a hall, but not something glaringly incongruous in a plant nursery. Right next to the shohin display is the Wessex Bonsai Society stand, with two of their contingent that had come down for the day. Note the billowing of their sails as well. Way down to the right is Solent Bonsai Society's stand.

And this had to be a definite upside: the lunch spread that Lynn put out for all of us. The salads were contributed by another club member, but the lion's share (and how) of the work was all down to Lynn. As she didn't want to be included in the pic, I've cropped out a bit of her - but not all :o)

The use of a polytunnel also gave the room for everyone to gather around and enjoy a very relaxed picnic lunch. The display on the left is the Jack Bellinger Cup competition; the order of the trees (in panels of 3) is: Solent Bonsai, Wessex Bonsai and Eastleigh Bonsai. The Cup resides with Solent again this year. Display on the right is Eastleigh Bonsai Society. Another challenge was 'seamlessly' converting plant sales benches into bonsai display stands, something that's being worked on with the proprietors for next year, to avoid a few kinks in the overall presentation.

Like all things, I guess, practice makes perfect. Generally, small club shows are an occasion for socialising among club members, and also a chance to meet up with Joe Public. To this end, I sometimes wonder if these shows shouldn't have a 'warts & all' type display as well as the 'look how pretty' section. In previous venues, we had an area where club members could work on their own trees, thereby giving the general public a chance to ask about the why & the wherefore, and how it gets to the 'stonking tree' stage. Perhaps we'll move back to that format again as time goes on.

Credit where credit is due

2009-07-24T15:47:00.006+01:00

Before this gets lost in the miasma of posts on the show day at Humbees, I'd like to thank Robert for the loan of his stands for these photos.

Most of the bonsai you'll see here were lifted off their display stands and put on spare tables provided by Robert. Some of the shohin and kusamono were part of larger compositions that would never have fit into a Sony Ericsson's depth of field.

Nor do I think the individual clubs would have been too thrilled at me taking apart their hard-put-together displays in order to filch photos of their trees for this blog... :o)

Robert was also kind enough to lend his display tables to other clubs, and I'm sure those concerned wouldn't mind my mentioning that as well. All part of the fun of a more informal club show.

Studies in Ivy

2009-07-24T14:30:00.021+01:00

Finally, down to the first set of heretofore unpublished photos from the show at Humbees of Marwell last weekend.

I'm surprised at the number of pictures I actually managed to take, testament to the quality of the light that day. As all I take with me for photo opps is still my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, if either the background or lighting don't cooperate, then I don't push the issue. Experience over the past months has shown that the end result isn't worth the effort of trying to compensate. Still, I feel the need to break things down into chunks and avoid a conga line of a post.

Looks like a lot of ivy in pots came out that weekend. Here we go with a sample, in decreasing order of size.

This first one was one of the 3 trees put forward by Eastleigh Bonsai Society for the Jack Bellinger Cup. The marvelous thing I found out from Robert is that his bonsai only has a single - and very long- root which has been wrapped around itself over a period of years. Here is the rootwork detail:

And here is the entire composition (well, I didn't really want to include the accent plant in the pic, however I couldn't find a way of cropping it without losing the balance of the branchwork). From the base of the pot, I'd figure it's around 22in / 56cm high :

Down to shohin level, this 8-year old Ivy was grown from a cutting and is in a pot about 4.5in/11cm in diameter:

Even smaller is Robert's mame ivy in a John Pitt pot. The whole planting looks very delicate, thereby calling for steady nerves and patience to set on its base. Giving an idea of scale is a bit difficult, as the pot is a modified crescent and the ivy cascades out of it by about 4.5in / 11.5 cm. So take the width of the pot as a reference point, being about 3in / 8cm:

Although I said I took a lot of photos, I really only managed to take about 10% of what was on display. Space limitations at club shows can constrain the display to tiered staging, which in turn often means photographing trees with other trees encroaching from behind. I balk like crazy at taking photos where the background is too busy and detracts attention from the tree. Taking the compositions that you see here off the club stands, bringing them to the photo area and then putting them back on their respective stands took most of the day, so I guess you'll have to catch the show next time to see the length and breadth of the clubs' offerings!

Design = science, horticulture = art?

2009-07-22T10:05:00.010+01:00

Don't blame me if we never get to last weekend's show report - someone had to ask an intelligent question. Not to be outdone, I have to try and pretend to give an equally intelligent answer.

So here is Sage's comment from the previous post, which sparked this off:

I was at the meeting getting a bit of design advice and a bit of horticulture advice. Everyone was giving me pretty much the same design advice, and every person had different horticulture advice. Design = science, horticulture = art?

I can only speak from my experience, but would be interested to hear from anyone who has a dissimilar (or not) point of view.

On the surface, I would have assumed it would be the other way around. But isn't talking horticulture to a certain extent a bit like talking to doctors - every time you see a different specialist you get a different answer. And yet, we all view medicine as a science; and science, because it's - well - science, has to be an exact and well-defined thing - like maths, right? (If anyone mentions fuzzy maths at this point I will shoot them, OK?)

Let's just take the growing medium bit, which has nothing to do with design. Everyone has their own mix which they will defend to the death and beyond. A good friend who has been doing bonsai for over 20 years told me the story of 2 British bonsai old-timers who, in the 1990's, got into an argument over the perfect soil mix. The argument put a big dent in what had been a long-standing friendship and I believe they never really made it up, although after 10 years they did start acknowledging each other. One of the old gents has now passed away, so it's just as well that breach had been mended.

Every serious gardener that I know has their own understanding of how the horticultural universe rotates and, while they are generally free with dispensing their knowledge, I think if one combined all the various growing techniques and applied them all to a single plant, the poor thing would be dead within a week. I actually do know a person who flits from bonsai expert to bonsai expert, asking for advice on said person's trees. Said person is perpetually dissatisfied with the trees' development. Which IMO is only to be expected of the trees, after having been subjected to a mishmash of what are probably contradictory techniques over several years. My take is this: if experimenting with different growing methods, confine a single set of teachings to a single tree, and never mix-&-match trees & teachings unless you are totally sure of what you are doing (and even then I wish you luck). So if you want to test whether the pine candle-plucking vs the candle-breaking method produces better results, do one or the other on a specific tree - and follow it from beginning to end (e.g. watering, light, feeding, needle stripping vs cutting, etc). Doing a bit of one with a bit of the other is my idea of a recipe for disaster.

I personally solicit advice only from a very small number of people, each one having a different horticultural specialisation. I have known these people for years and have seen their work develop over time. You could count these people on the fingers of one hand; none of them are considered 'superstars' of the British bonsai scene. This isn't to denigrate the Brit big names at all, some of whom I've known for yonks and have been down to speak at our club several times. (Our club can tell you stories like you won't believe... which is beside the point here.) Anyways, it's about proximity and access to information - I've identified the gaps in my skills/experience, decided what sort of specialist knowledge I need to fill these gaps, and chosen the best people I know who hold said knowledge and with whom I'm in constant contact. While I do listen to new theories that come along, I only put these to the test when I've heard glowing reports from someone that I trust.

And, all things considered, it's all a bit situational, isn't it? What works in Japan where they have longer growing seasons & high relative humidity will not produce the same results in the UK climate. Which is why I still stick to Alex Kennedy's satsuki growing methods, even if newer books have come out (but have been written for a climate like California's, for example). It's not that one's wrong, it's just that is what will work best under a given set of circumstances.

The same goes for the pruning-to-maximise-auxin-and-cytokinin-effects school of thought. The knowledge of plant hormones and their functions has been around since the early 90's AFAIK, but it's only in the past couple of years that I heard of it in practical application to bonsai. And I know of bonsai old-timers/big names whose eyes just glaze over when anything this technical is brought up. The basics are fairly simple to grasp, all it takes is a certain open-mindedness, I guess.

Design is probably a bit more limited by the existing material: the tree's existing shape, the habit of that particular species, placement of existing branches, etc. And, if you're like me, I go for the solution of facility: what's the most pleasing style that's easiest to achieve within the shortest period of time? I'm not the type of stylist that will drag out the rebar and bend a 6-inch thick trunk over a period of months. Although I have a great deal of respect for those who have achieved spectacular results in this way.

Searching back in my mind, we've had club members bring a tree along for styling critique and then been offered 2 or 3 options by the resident 'experts'. The subsequent consensus from the rest of the club has generally been towards the result that is easiest to visualise with the mind's eye. The tree's owner tends to gravitate to the solution that sounds the least drastic. Whether this is just the culture within my club or a reflection on human behaviour, I don't know.

That said, how much is influenced by the classic tree styles that we associate with bonsai? Perhaps it's this that subconsciously drives how people design a tree. Then again, sometimes a tree is so obviously growing in a particular way and its potential is so easily identifiable - it does happen with raw(ish) material now and again. If this is you, then you are a lucky, lucky person; especially if you got the tree for a song. It happens. And the rest of us just go green with envy.

I will leave you with TOH's description of bonsai as an art, a craft & a science, with horticulture spanning the latter two, i.e. the craft being the real-life interpretation of the science. In a simplistic example, the science bit would tell you the plants will die without water but doesn't tell you exactly how to water them within your garden's specific conditions. The craft bit will be taking the knowledge of the plants' vegetative characteristcs, an understanding of your garden's 'microclimate', mishmashing all the above and eventually not killing your plants by either over- or under-watering.

Display is another matter again.... but I think I've waffled enough about that already, right?

OK, so the photos of the show at Humbees are delayed even more than ever. They're coming, they're coming.... sheesh. ( Personally, I blame Sage :D )

When brown is not brown is not brown...

2009-07-20T11:38:00.022+01:00

Okay, so maybe I got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. Or maybe I'm just a hard taskmaster. Or even a perpetual grump. Or all of the above. Does that surprise you? If you've been dropping by regularly, are you here because of the rants or because of the pretty pics? Be honest now...

And to be fair, negativism on its own, without any means of redemption, is just one big let-down. May as well watch the evening news. So where I can offer what I believe to be a light at the end of a tunnel, I will do so. Beats watching the Beeb, right? Must be worth more than what we pay for our TV licence anyway.

That out of the way, let's get on with the gripes.

In a previous post, I talked about what I'd look for when deciding whether or not one of my trees would be good enough to put out on show. This post is all about the opposite - what I so do not want to see in a bonsai display.

Having been to several international shows for at least the past 8 years and local club shows for even longer than that, there are some things that have started to wear me down, making me more and more fastidious (AKA bloody nit-pickety) in my appreciation of bonsai display. So here I come to my BIG PET PEEVES when it comes to presentation of trees. No holds barred, OK? Tune out now if you are of a tender disposition.

Putting out an unfinished product. Unless we are dealing with a display which shows bonsai under development, I really don't believe trees with obvious signs of 'Work In Progress' should be put on show, especially when the show is about the best you have to offer. Defoliated branches sticking out, guy-wires big enough to support a cathedral, enough wire to deter even Houdini... you get the picture, right? My answer to this is: leave the poor tree at home to get on with the business of growing. Have enough trees so that you can rotate those that need a holiday with those that are primped within an inch of their lives. Then do vice versa next year.

Messy, dirty-looking topdressing. This merits a big I HATE YOU. Get rid of the weeds, dudes. And unless you can sympathetically marry any adventitious plants into the overall composition, get rid of them too. It's generally obvious when things have self-sown themselves into the soil and you just can't be assed to get rid of the buggers. (OK, I have seen some get lucky - but they are a MINORITY.) And if the soil is looking tired & unhealthy, full of the ugly bubbly algae, bloody do something about that too. Cover with moss. Possibly fine akadama. Or do you need new glasses? Whatever.

Distracting topdressing. As opposed to the above (which is soil that hasn't been primped), this is soil which has been well laid out but screamingly calls attention to itself. The purpose of the display is to make people view the tree as an integrated whole. I've seen bonsai on show where my attention kept being drawn back to the topdressing, either because of colour or texture. Go for something discreet, not the highly colourful stuff. Having pink kitty litter floating around the topsoil is so tacky - integrate it into your soil mix if you must, but do you really want to shout out its presence to the whole world?

Moss plonked on the surface of the soil. Okay, so the diatribe above has made you start reaching for the moss. Please shave off the crud under your moss so that it lies flat. Then please, please, please do not set various bits of moss like individual islands on a sea of soil. That so does not mimic the look of an old, established tree in its natural setting. Again, all the bobbly, moundy moss islands become just as distracting as colourful topdressing (see above). If you have ever actually combined the two effects, I believe we should send some sort of bonsai fashion police out for you.

When the pots and display table do not marry themselves to the image of the tree. Like I said, brown is not brown is not brown. Just because a tree trunk is 'brown', and the pot is 'brown' and the table is 'brown' does not mean they go together. Any colour in real life will run the gamut of warmer to cooler tones, depending on the pigments/glazes/tints/whatever used. But, as with clothes and artwork, using disparate tonal shades together is so unharmonious. And so detracting from the overall image. On top of that, a low/squat tree really needs to be set on a higher display table. Looking into the tree is so much better than looking down on the tree. Bite the bullet and invest in a proper table if you are serious about displaying your tree to perfection. If not, why are you even reading this?

Accent plants not in proportion to the tree. I know there are practically volumes and volumes written on appropriate size ratio of tree to accent, whether flowering accents should /should not be used with a flowering tree, placing of the accent in relation to the bonsai, etc. And I give ratshit about it all, to be more than honest. If there were a way to instill an immediate comprehension of composition (lines, shapes, appreciation of space, rhythm, etc) to bonsai enthusiasts, then I would have gone on a crusade a long time ago. But 4 years of art school have shown me that this is not something that is learned by osmosis. Or by a single club talk. So, the simplest guideline I can give is to remember that the tree takes centre stage. The accent should complement the tree and never steal attention away from it. Too small or too large an accent and the overall effect is incongruous. My solution is to keep accents of all sizes and do a mock-up before putting a bonsai out on show. Yes, you will probably get there by trial and error. Also, remember to stand back when viewing the overall image.

Farking lose the scrolls, OK? Unless you have a decent enough backdrop that will hold the scroll without sagging, and unless you have an environment that immediately calls to mind the intimacy of a REAL tokonoma, forget it. It just screams putting a scroll out for the sake of putting a scroll out. And why in a Western/British/European show we have to try to be Japanese is beyond me. And if you're going to pretend to be Japanese (or perhaps you just want to pay homage to what you believe are bonsai's Asian origins) - then do it bloody right or not at all. In which case, do the research and find out what Japanese tokonoma display is all about. You may decide never to put out a scroll with minimal forethought again after that.

Having gotten this far, someone is bound to tell me that, in nature, some of the above really does happen. Bobbly mounds of moss do happen to lie around mature trees like islands under the sun. And leaf litter and assorted crud like dead squirrels lie around trees on a forest floor. And my answer is this: bonsai is an art form as well as a horticultural undertaking. Consider it as horticultural sculpture in the round. Part of this calls for the principle of perspective. Everyone knows that trees are big buggers and that bonsai are smaller versions of said big buggers, but in pots. As such, viewing a bonsai is a similar experience to viewing a real live tree from a distance. And from this vantage point, fine detail will be lost (e.g. mounds of moss and leaf litter) to the naked eye. No one has vision that good. So the various elements that go into creating the overall image of a tree or group of trees from a certain distance have to work together in harmony. There's a certain amount of conscious visual training that needs to happen before someone can automatically do this sort of mental juggling, which is probably why the detail work behind this is often overlooked.

Another principle is what I'd call artistic licence. Which sort of goes hand in hand with the perspective thing. When creating a landscape painting, for example, the artist can't include into the painting all the things he sees with his naked eye. He has to discard bits that will render his landscape too fussy (thereby ruining the illusion of distance) and include the bits that give his landscape character. The choice of what goes into the landscape and what doesn't is all up to the artist. The same goes for bonsai. To wit, some deadwood work is an idealised version of what happens in the wild, even though it may not be to everyone's taste. We probably have diverging schools of thought as to whether bonsai can be treated as a pure art form or whether it only really works when a tree looks like a tree.

Teacher-san once told me that bonsai is all about illusion and telling a story without words. Viewing a bonsai should paint a situational picture of the tree in the viewer's mind: is it precariously perched atop a mountain gully? Is it standing majestically in the middle of a field? Has the tree been buffeted by wind and storms? Let me tell you that dirty, weedy soil so does not make me think of any of these scenarios. It just makes me think of dirty, weedy soil that someone couldn't be assed to clean up. Oh, was that the story without words you were trying to tell me? My bad.

To be fair, I have seen this in big shows as well as in small club shows. I have seen judges overlook this sort of thing and wondered why. I suppose that is a reflection of what is important to them in a bonsai. Not everyone will share my opinion, I accept that. But the teeny-tiny advantage I have is that I have this blog - and you've been sat there reading it as well :D

Yes, yes - I promised a show report on our club show at Humbees of Marwell last Sunday. It's coming, OK? A bit of patience never hurt anyone.... sheesh. (Har, har har.)

A Feast of Accents

2009-07-19T22:56:00.028+01:00

Accent plants and kusamono bonsai, that is. Given their size, some of these below are designed to be shown on their own, as the central figure of a display. In Japan, kusamono bonsai is the primary bonsai display material during the summer, while the trees are left to get on with the business of growing.

Starting it off with a little drama; Hosta 'Fire & Ice', about 8 in / 20 cm in height (excluding the flower spike). Always a joy to see a hosta that has managed to remain slug-free, whatever the time of the year:

An arrangement for drier conditions: Raoulia and Saxifraga stolonifera planted (with great patience) into aquarium rock. Planting about 4 in / 10 cm in height:

I believe this one here is Thalictrum kiusianum, whose origins are the mountains of Japan. Unlike its taller cousins, this variety is a little tuft about 3 in / 18 cm high (excluding the flower spikes):

This is an Erodium with an unidentified variegated plant (that eventually goes woody) in a striking Ian Baillie pot. Diameter of pot is about 6 in / 15 cm:

A study in greens and browns, this smaller kusamono has two types of grass (one a Japanese Acorus that has more to do with diva than herbaceous) and Viola hederacea. Pot is about 3 in / 8 cm across:

For some reason, this year, Robert's Sempervivum (normally tiny) accent plant came out with the longest flower spike ever:

Standing a little over 1 ft / 30 cm high from the ground, the rootball of this Japanese painted fern kusamono lifts itself about 5 in / 12.5 cm out of its pot:

One of Robert's miniature Hostas, in a small (2 in / 5 cm diameter) Walsall pot, perched rather creatively on a flint rock:

Rather a large planting, this kusamono is Hakonechloa grass and Astilbe just coming out in flower. The actual base of the planting is only about 10 in / 26 cm across, but with the astilbe in full leaf, the whole kusamono overflows a tray which is about 15 in / 38 cm in diameter. From base of the tray to tip of the tallest flower spike is nearly 18 in / 46 cm:

All the above were on exhibit at our club show at Humbees of Marwell, courtesy of various members of the society.

Positive ID needed for Satsuki Azalea

2009-07-03T15:58:00.017+01:00

This is a project born out of Chie-san's kusamono classes; in April she put together a Satsuki azalea in a kusamono moss ball and the result has always intrigued me.

At this point I feel I should clarify terms: I tend to use kusamono as a catch-all for anything and everything that isn't a bonsai tree but not what I intend to use as an accent plant. I suppose technically I should be calling this a kokedama, but what the heck. On with the show.

Another thing I should clarify is that I don't really want to go into a step-by-step 'how to' of creating this. Partly because it's a dead bore to write and also because it's so easy to miss things /get it wrong / leave things open to misinterpretation.

So my best advice is, if you're dead set on making something like this and are in the UK, either contact Chie-san or Windybank Bonsa i about classes. If you are not in the UK, please feel free to start headbanging here. :o)

I got this satsuki from Windybank at the Capel Manor show, unfortunately the variety is unknown. If anyone recognises it, please drop me a line.

So ignoring the crappy pot, this is what I had to start with:

No root pruning was done; the actual root ball once I took the plant out of the pot was really rather small. I also had to wet it quite a lot, otherwise the keto mix wouldn't stick to the kanuma. Sticking the keto on was a total pain in the neck.

Here is the finished product, as seen slightly from behind. Sticking the moss on to the keto was just as big a pain in the neck, as the slightest pressure on the keto tended to create fissures. Another problem was the weight distribution. Until the bottom of the sphere flattens out, the planting tends to tip over. If you look closely, you can see the little black ceramic disk I use to prop the kusamono up. Here then is the detail of the moss ball from the rear:

As well as needing to stand the moss ball up on its own, I also had to tip the whole thing over without damaging the satsuki, in order to moss up the bottom of the sphere. The most expedient way being to grab the whole thing by the trunk and work one-handed. Wear clean gloves when you do this, is my advice.

This is the view of the planting from the right hand side:

At the moment, my idea of the front is going to be roughly about here, showing just a bit of the trunk and the downward curve of the cascade:

And just in case this will assist in identifying the variety, here is the flower detail (colours leaning more to the vermilion rather than the pinks):

Despite what I've read elsewhere, there are still loads of bonsai traders in the UK who are selling satsuki azaleas that are way more developed than mere cuttings, and at very affordable prices. Links to some of these guys are above.

Another thing - IMO, the flower size of this satsuki is way disproportionate to the actual size of the trunk; were this a bonsai tree, we'd probably all be looking for ways to fix this. But with satsukis, all sorts of shortcomings get excused because of the flamboyance of their flowers. Several people have told me that in Japan, it is because of this flamboyance that satsukis are not held in particularly high esteem by pure bonsai connoisseurs. Whatever. I knows what I likes and I don't cares.

Real Bonsai Kitty (AKA Cat in a Bonsai Pot)

2009-07-01T01:36:00.006+01:00

We interrupt our normal broadcasting to bring you this utter bit of fluff.

This is Billie and, no, she is not a bit of fluff - she's too damn fat for that.

Together with cardboard boxes, one of her favourite places for a nap is in a large bonsai pot. This pot is about 27.5in / 70 cm long. And it suits madam just fine. So much so, she has even condescended to share her pot with a pile of suibans.

No, Billie is not my pet. But she is obviously not a maltreated kitty as she is evidently pear-shaped. Billie has a brother named Ben, who is beautiful but hasn't got two brain cells to rub together. Nor will he sit still and pose for the camera. Those of you who have been to Bonsai Trees Southampton will know of Billie and Ben.

That done, we now return to our normal programme of moaning, huffing and snark. Thank you.

(And why there are still so many people out there who fall for the Bonsai Kitten thing is beyond me... it's an old, old hoax, dudes! Can we get all irate and bent out of shape by something else now? Pleeze??)

A Sunday at Capel Manor

2009-06-28T23:06:00.016+01:00

Getting myself to the Bonsai Traders Association's show at Capel Manor in Enfield (J25 on the M25) on my own turned out to be a bigger production than I thought it would be. Not just because my Tomtom and I have different ideas of how the English language should be used when giving directions, but the stupid cow also has a crap sense of timing. Whatever.

Anyways, this was the first time I made the journey to Capel Manor while awake, and I have to say it's no less tedious when driving. It seems like the M25 is just one perpetual set of roadworks that just keeps getting recycled from one junction to another.

I make a big deal of underlining that I was on my own by way of explanation as to why I only have a few photos to share with you. Simply because I spent most of my time having to explain to practically every other person I met that TOH had double-booked and couldn't get out of a commitment that involved fishing hooks and trout. In the end, I should've just had a sign made. Or passed out pamphlets (and asked for donations :o)

So here we go. Photos from the show.

One of the many pathways winding round the Capel Manor gardens has made a feature of discarded exhaust pipes. One of many ways to recycle with whimsy, I suppose.

And this must be the prettiest Virginia Creeper I ever did see, courtesy of Mike & Nobu. The lighting probably doesn't do it the justice it deserves; the pot (by Alan Harriman, I believe) is unglazed reddish-brown with black, which would probably look quite good when the bonsai is in autumn colour.

One of the accent plants in this display (again by Mike & Nobu) is this geranium kusamono, which incidentally is sitting on a suiban, without the benefit of any pot to hold the soil in. The picture doesn't give an idea of scale; I'd say the plant is about 8 in / 20 cm across.

In Swindon Bonsai Society's display, Bob had a lovely shohin Yakushima rose. The week before, it had been covered in blossom, however the flowers only last a day. I decided to take a photo (seeing that Bob can't be bothered - right, Bob? :o) while there was one bloom left.

Here's the detail of the Yakushima rose, which somehow reminds me of a white/pale yellow potentilla.

The best part of the show was all the banter and people taking the mickey. I should've gone round taping conversations rather than with a phone masquerading as a camera.

TOH's defection to the fishy side also meant that I wound up having to do more schmoozing and less shopping. That didn't stop me from getting some very delectable pots and a satsuki azalea that will shortly get converted into a sort of nearai kusamono. Photos, do I hear you say? Possibly....

Setting the record straight, again

2009-06-27T12:40:00.012+01:00

Following on from my indignant reaction to the "shallow root system = a tree's ability to hold out in freezing temperatures" statement.

So here is the skinny on how cold dormancy works, i.e. what a deciduous (in this country, used to refer to trees that shed their leaves in winter) tree does to prepare itself for winter beddy-byes.

Actually cold dormancy; the process by which a deciduous tree prepares itself for winter is quite an interesting topic in a geeky sort of way.

Its starts with the absorption of chlorophylls which exposes the autumn colours we are familiar with. Then as nutrients are absorbed a whole range of other processes begin including cell wall hardening and increase in respiration as sugars are stored around the plant. It would seem that the tree has shut down initially but far from it. Then as daylight and temperature decrease there appears to be a timing mechanism that prevents the tree from emerging from winter too early. It would be disastrous for the plant to produce leaf just to be lost to a frost so the tree needs a degree of certainty that this is not going to happen. So a substance in bark and stems called phytochrome detects light levels, as these increase along with soil temperature and as long as at least 300 hours of low temperatures has passed, the tree will emerge in Spring. Amazing stuff.

There. Before anyone else starts spewing a whole load of crap.

Thanks to bonsaibanter who is a fantastic source for horticultural facts. (Get the hint? Keyword = FACTS.)

Stop talking rot... pleeze??!

2009-06-26T15:57:00.008+01:00

OK - so the Internet allows freedom of speech and circulation of information. Fine, I accept that.

Ergo, my freedom of speech presumably also allows me to call a spade a spade when I see a spade, right?

Via Twitter, I see a lot of links to sites that promote bonsai in some way, shape or form; some of these sites are (thinly) veiled commercial sites, others can be more overtly so. Whatever. That isn't my beef. I have no problems with capitalism whatsoever.

What I do have a problem with is when statements are made that are erroneous, misleading or just plain crap that has never been verified for accuracy.

For example, this statement:
Temperate bonsai trees are able to hold out in freezing temperatures because they have a shallow root system.

So I check with a friend who has a horticultural degree, here is the reply:
Your intuition is correct the statement is tosh.

Cold hardiness and separately, Cold dormancy, are dependent on a number of factors which does not include shallow roots.

I will take it that the author is commenting about Cold hardiness rather than dormancy.
Trees have a number of physiological and morphological adaptations to cope with winter; shedding leaves, cell wall hardening, wood substructure as an insulator, morphology of vascular system, morphology of evergreen leaves, storage of nutrients, movement of solutes into/out of cells and probably others that I cannot recall.

One interesting adaptation is that of pines. These have a tracheid vascular system (long and narrow cells) as opposed to vessel elements in deciduous trees.
These cell help reduce transpiration losses as well as being structurally stronger in cold conditions.

So, if you are a newbie to bonsai looking for help/advice/whatever - be warned. Find a reputable source of information and, even then, check your facts.

So I'm not the equable, tolerant person I should be. And apparently it doesn't take a lot to wind me up (so you've noticed??). But, sheesh, give me a break. In fact, give the rest of the world a break.

'Kthxbye.

Whazzat? Show-worthy? You're having me on...

2009-06-13T12:37:00.008+01:00

Well maybe it's not the best English, that's what. But the sentiment is there.

At some point in our lives, especially if we've just been to a bonsai show, we start thinking to ourselves, 'I've got trees in my garden that are as good as those in the show.' And I think it's just natural (for most people anyway) to want to share what we've created; as a form of self-expression, I suppose. I personally don't view it as an ego-trip (although it's likely there's some of that as well, as I alluded to in my previous post).

Anyways, this isn't about the 'why' of putting a bonsai tree out on show. It stems more from a question by Andrew Nicoll e as to what I would look for in my trees before I considered them worthy of being put out on show. So again, this is only what pushes my buttons - there is no intended value judgment on other exhibitors whatsoever. (Let's get that straight right here, 'Kthxbye.)

So, on with the show-worthiness. First thing I'd look for is a tree in good nick: unhealthy-looking trees on a show bench do not appeal to me at all. So they not only have to be healthy, they have to look it as well. There's one white pine in my garden that's in excellent health but hasn't been out on show for years, simply because the coloration between new growth and old on one side of the tree is way evident. Nothing wrong with it, it's just that the colour discrepancy looks... un-pine-y.

Health OK? So on to the style bit then. I actually don't have a lot of trees that are in the classic bonsai shapes as we know them; most of my stuff is what we would call 'self-styled'. (Many being classic styles that went wrong and were recovered over the years through a you-live-and-learn process.) But just because they don't correspond to a pattern doesn't mean I can blithely ignore the guidelines of bonsai styling. Well-developed ramification and the amount of space between branches; the choice of pot to complement the overall image; branches crossing one over the other and shoots or twigs sticking out upwards or downwards - these are some of the things that can either add to or detract from the quintessential image of a natural tree. And I guess this is what the styling guidelines are about: helping one achieve the look of a mature tree as it would be in nature; that in the first glimpse of the bonsai - no matter what the shape of the tree - the viewer immediately believes this is a snapshot of a tree within a particular situation and habitat.

Nor can anyone afford to ignore the rules of composition (I can feel the soapbox coming on here...). Notice I use the term, 'rules'. There is a certain amount of leeway whereby one can stretch the guidelines for styling bonsai - but not by much. One can disguise bar branches and get away with even numbers of trees or trunks; if the overall image is not distracting... brownie points aren't lost by visual deception. But stomp on things like visual weight, perspective, rhythm and proportion... not only do you need big balls, you need a heck of a lot of talent to get away with it.

And I'm so very sorry - but there aren't that many who are that talented (having the other requisite physical attribute does not compensate whatsoever). Believe me.

These guidelines weren't arbitrarily set by a specific group of intellectuals who didn't have anything better to do. They will have evolved over time and been codified as understanding of an art or craft developed. I have no problem with bending rules. Not taking any risks is the shortest way to boredom and stagnation. What I do have a problem with is when people break too many rules so that the execution looks like crap, then try to excuse it by saying, 'just accept that it's different' and 'it's my own particular style'.

By all means create your own style. But first learn what the basic conventions are before picking and choosing. There is a whole world of truth to the saying 'you have to learn to walk before you can learn to run'.

And as a testament to my own... ahem... thick skin

2009-06-07T21:00:00.025+01:00

In a series of posts, I waffled on about the ramifications / consequences of entering bonsai shows and competitions (you can check out what I said here and here).

Having thick skin always helps, having a sense of humour is good, too. But understanding where our little hobby sits in the grand scheme of life, death and the cosmos is probably even better still. (If that was too subtle for you, then get a load of this: it's just a frickin' hobby, OK? It's not the end of the world if judges don't give you any prizes or if nobody likes your trees. You like them, that should be good enough. There.)

I wasn't actually there when this happened, although it did involve my trees. The story was recounted to me by fellow members of the Satsuki Azalea Society, during our display in 2007. I had left the stand to go off for a coffee and a satsuki enthusiast was viewing the display with his friends while providing them with some commentary on the finer points of the species. They get to this Gyoten and he tells them, "This one is beautiful."

They go along the exhibition bench, see this one (another Gyoten - but I still want to believe it's a Kaho) and he says, "This one's lovely."

Further along is the ballerina (Kaho-no-Hikari I think; anyone recognise this pic?) and he says, "That one's good too."

And when he gets to this one, he tells his companions: "And that one's just shite."
Harrrr!

Had I been there as the situation unfolded, or if he had said it to my face point-blank, perhaps I wouldn't have been as amused as I am now.

Still, I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to their own opinions and setting out one's trees on display does make one a target / recipient for said opinions. I myself have been as forceful - and more tactless - in the expression of my views (as many regular readers will know by now).

But life's too short to take everything to heart. My take is, if you can't take the heat then flippin' stay out of the kitchen.

We will be back at the Satsuki show next weekend (I don't get a lot of free weekends in June, really) and these trees will not be shown this year as they haven't been as heavily in flower as in 2007. Part of the beauty of bonsai is the temporalness of a tree's perfection - enjoying a moment in time and never knowing when and if it will revisit you with as much bounty as previously.

When vroom, vroom meets bloom, bloom...

2009-05-25T14:57:00.029+01:00

Marketing clever? The RHS has often seemed to me like one of those aircraft carriers: monolithic and unable to change its course at the drop of a hat. Yet once in a while, they can actually respond in a manner that seems almost timely.

In a previous post I pondered the implications of the RHS' recent vacancy advert for a person to head their Membership Development. According to their ad, the RHS is 'undergoing a major transformation... with a focus on growth and cultural change.' I did find it significant that, within the text of their ad, the RHS linked the increase of their membership very closely with their funding.

Recently, at their most prestigious flower show, the RHS had elected to allow James May to display a garden without a single plant in it. Which caused no small amount of talk, dare I say it. But controversial talk is better than no talk, right? And as the plasticine garden is actually part of a greater TV series that Mr May is running, then Chelsea will be talked about even after the gardening show season is over, and to a potentially wider audience than purely horticultural folk. After all, Mr May is better known for shifting gears rather than rolling wheelbarrows. Not too bad going in the awareness stakes, is it?

I can understand the backlash from the gardening community. Just as I can understand those who say it was a breath of fresh air. However, honestly, the light bulb that went off in my (jaded) marketing brain was that of concepts beloved of all marketers: Greater Publicity. Increased Budget. Better Funding.

Pundits opined that ticket sales were down (apparently not selling out as quickly before the show) and less exhibitors (the Great Pavilion seeming not as full as in previous years) were supporting the Chelsea Flower Show due to the recent hard winter and the pervasive credit crunch.

Perhaps that could have been the instigator. Perhaps the Membership Development exec needs to get on board really quickly before they run out of quirky non-garden talking points. Or perhaps Mr May's crusade to wean children away from the dreaded Xbox just found its perfectly virtuous alliance?

Have I just hit the nail on the head here? Is this why the BBC gives so little air time to bonsai during Chelsea coverage? What does it take to be controversial enough for you lot, then? Or do we have to jump on some bandwagon associated with: (1) Better Funding. (2) A-List Celebrities. (3) Do-gooder Causes. (4) Better Funding.

Note: The picture above was taken on the Sunday afternoon before the opening day. Getting close enough to capture the detail of the work was a relatively insurmountable challenge, given the amount of people working and filming the activity.

Chelsea, what's Chelsea?

2009-05-20T01:20:00.008+01:00

The Great Spring Show, this most flamboyant of the Royal Horticultural Society's many flower shows, is held every year on the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, London - a retirement/nursing home for former members of the British Army:This picture was taken with the Great Pavilion to my back. The pathway is blocked off from show attendees during the week.

Long before the opening of the show, the heavy machinery comes in to build the large show gardens synonymous with the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. My understanding is that after the show, everything on the Royal Hospital grounds must be put back to right within a fortnight - which would also explain the cost in building these showpieces.

Another thing I hadn't realised is that some of the most-photographed people in London are actually the Chelsea pensioners, when wearing their distinctive scarlet coats. This lovely gentleman told me that they're always being asked to pose for photos but they never get to see them. Mr P hasn't really gotten to grips with Blogger, so I've promised him I would print out this post and send it to him:

Gold. Yes.

2009-05-19T09:57:00.005+01:00

Yup, it's official, folks.

Congratulations to the Federation of British Bonsai Societies who garnered a gold medal for their display at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

And the same goes to all those who worked long and hard to get their displays up. Chelsea always represents a big effort on everyone's part.

Sneak Peek: RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009

2009-05-18T01:37:00.005+01:00

A cold, windy, rainy Sunday was the last day for build-up activity for this year's Chelsea Flower Show. Early afternoon London traffic was pretty dismal as well.

We had a couple of things to deliver for the display of the Federation of British Bonsai Societies, so this looked like as good a time as any to give you all a preview of the stand.

This is what it looked like when we arrived, tools still scattered around and the front row of shohin trees still to put up:
Labels still had to go on, pots needed to be given another once-over and then a last-minute check for even the most minute debris on the gravel.

And this is how it looked after all the primping had been done, tools put away and coffee cups in the bin.

Several of the RHS judges and the Moderators with their clipboards were walking around on the Sunday afternoon, inspecting the stands.

The guy next door with his man-eating fishies

2009-05-18T01:02:00.007+01:00

The piranha in the stand across from us were being kept under wraps to give them time to adjust and de-stress. Still, the nice man next door agreed to peel back a corner and give me a look. Little buggers then swam off; you can see the rear end of one of them by the greenery.

And here they are after the black-out cloth was removed. For din-din, these guys get frozen whitebait. Nope, live animals do not get chucked in there at Chelsea Flower Show.

And on the water/underwater theme, the Cayman Islands Undersea Reef Garden has to be seen to be believed. The blue glow and the movement from the reflection of the water give it an eerie but arresting look:

And this here is their mural. Check out the detail in that!

Moochin' round the Great Pavilion

2009-05-18T00:43:00.013+01:00

While a lot of the hard building is now over, there are lots of areas at Chelsea that were left unfinished, presumably for final touches to be put in just before judging. So here's a quick tour around the Great Pavilion as people were working on their stands. I took lots more photos than these today, however, for your sakes and mine, some of them may have to wait till later this week to get posted - if at all. Peeps, not all angles are flattering, get me?

Anyways, on with the tour. In no particular order.

Ken Muir has to have - IMO - the most fragrant stand in the entire Pavilion. Imagine standing beside them the whole day, smelling the strawberries, thinking of whipped cream...

They're lovely people as well. The guys were giving me the most ogle-worthy poses until I told them this was going on my blog called Rent-A-Man-dot-com. Harrr. Look, can you see a bloke in this photo?
The flower-arranging ladies have what looks to be a whoppingly massive stand, although it's hard to tell who belongs to what when the signage isn't all out. Here is a fraction of the display - some very intricate floral hats:
I check these guys out every time I come - the auricula display:

And to finish, here is a lovely hawthorn at Bushukan Bonsai's display. They were still wrapping up as we were leaving, so to see the final product, I'll have to wait until Friday when we are back.Judging is tomorrow, Monday. Wishing everyone the best.

No. Wait. To end this post - I want me one of these. Seriously. Precious.... my precious....

Another newbie: Lipstick & Golden Jubilee

2009-05-16T12:35:00.002+01:00

Although I've been growing the plants for over a year now, this accent composition was just created this spring: Fragaria chiloensis 'Lipstick' and Agastache foeniculum 'Golden Jubilee'.

Both plants came from the same alpine nursery in Austria.

I've always liked playing with lines and colours, and what perhaps doesn't show as well in this photo is the marked difference in the shades of the leaves, plus the contrast of the shocking pink flowers vs the almost-yellow leaves of the agastache. And the pink tones of the strawberry are echoed by the stems of the agastache, complemented by the reddish-brown colour of the pot. (Pot is by Walsall, BTW.)

The Golden Jubilee looks very much like a coleus, so I had to look it up to check if it was of the same family. Internet search shows that 'A. foeniculum is a herbaceous perennial with mid-green, lance-shaped leaves that taste and smell of licorice. In summer, it bears spikes of lavender-blue flowers that are attractive to butterflies and bees...' and that it is '... neither Anise (which is Pimpinella anisum, not even in the same Plant Family) nor Hyssop (which is Hysoppus officinalis), although the scent is the same as Anise.'

As for the strawberry, apparently F. chiloensis will produce large, edible berries. Hmm. Wonder if they'd come out the same shade of pink?! Imagine that on a pavlova.

Can we have a surfboarder pleeze?

2009-05-12T01:47:00.031+01:00

And that question set the tone for the evening. David Penny was guest speaker at Eastleigh Bonsai Society and started off doing a coastal scene for his saikei (Japanese tray landscape) talk. The coastal theme naturally sparked off requests for little figurines which included sharks, surfers and sunbathers. As opposed to clay figurines of fishermen and temples. Nope, not for saikei, folks.

However, the trees dictated the mood of the planting, and said coastal landscape morphed into an alpine lakeside. Still, requests for a surfboarder to replace Jaws were nixed in the bud. Or so David likes to think. (The seeds have been planted and the germination of an idea is starting to take place. Be very, very afraid...)

It was a relaxed evening, full of banter and one-liners. Note how at the start of the evening, the seating arrangement of the room was orderly; people comfortable in their chairs and enjoying a cuppa as the talk started:

The whole club really got into it as the evening progressed; no-one hesitated to get up close and inspect the planting:

Ah, but what was the general consensus on the finished product? Note the solemnity with which David's planting is being analysed. Or are they just waiting for the surfboarder to materialise?

Everyone weighed in, drawing closer and gathering in groups to discuss the merits of the evening's entertainment. It was now musical chairs all around:
The whole place became Paparazzi Meets Changing Rooms, and every electronic device that remotely resembled a camera came out. Here you have the first line of photographers, with several behind waiting to take their turn:

And here's the front runner of the second batch of digital-imagery-makers taking their turn to record the moment:

And just so that you know what everyone was queueing up to photograph, here is the coastal scene/alpine lakeside, albeit without the famous surfboarder:

All that primpin'

2009-05-09T01:48:00.010+01:00

All my Twittering and blogging about preparing trees for show had prompted Andrew Nicolle to ask me what it takes to get a regular-sized tree ready to go on a show bench. Show veterans will all have their own styles of dressing trees and their particular methods for doing these, so all I can tell you is how I do mine.

Only a certain number of my trees go out on exhibit at any given year. Maples generally only get shown in their winter/early spring image as I feel they are at their best when the branch structure is visible. Most of my trees stay home to either get on with the business of growing or recover from successive years of going out on show. Others are victims of marauding caterpillars and bored blackbirds. A certain degree of laziness makes me tend to choose those that are easier to prepare than others. So those in glazed pots are big show favourites.

Towards the end of January I have a good idea as to which trees will be in top shape for Spring and are ready to go out for the Swindon Winter Image show, which kicks off the bonsai event calendar in the UK. Work commitments make showing abroad difficult, except for the EBA convention since that's in the calendar years in advance and we take the UK entries over anyway. With regards to the evergreens: I keep my junipers outdoors so they are still in winter (that drab olive) colour at this time; on the other hand, my pines are generally OK for show this early in the year. By early March, all the conifers are good to go. Deciduous trees are chosen according to how much their new buds are swelling in Spring. Oh, plus flowers and fruit later in the year: Prunus mume, chaenomeles, crabapples, forsythia, lilacs, Japanese bush clover, cotoneaster, satsuki azaleas, not to forget all the flowering accent plants and kusamono.

Limescale is removed from pots (and their feet), even the undersides of the pots are cleaned. Vinegar is a good one for removing limescale. Then the pots are given a coat of camellia oil, which is by far the easiest to work with that we have found. When we first started, only vegetable (cooking) oil was available, but that used to go sticky and then there'd be dead flies and stuff sticking to the pots before the end of the show. Way yuck.

The surface of the soil is prepped by removing ALL weeds. Liverwort, algae, oxalis, dandelions, grass - all gone. I sometimes think some people will try to get away with using weeds as a companion planting, however that is a ploy that very rarely works. Give it up, dudes.

I cover my soil surface with either very fine akadama, moss or a combination of both. I try to 'weave' the moss patches into each other, overlapping them (a bit like you'd lay turf) and pushing them into the soil. That way I avoid the look of 'fresh blobs' plonked on the soil - if this makes any sense. The look I'm going for is that of moss that has been there forever.

On the other hand, I remove the moss from the tree trunks and branches. Anything dead or crispy is stripped off. I also choose pines where the new & old growth are roughly similar in size. Generally, I find that conifers that were show-ready in one year tend to carry that quality over for about 2 or 3 years in a row. As I'm in a hard water area, limescale is a problem with trees kept in the greenhouse. I use Leaf Shine to deal with this (only on broadleaf trees!), sprayed in spurts from a very great distance so as not to inadvertently damage any leaves. I've been told cotoneaster are not partial to this product; so far my long-distance spurt/spray method has worked for me.

Time spent on doing this depends more on the condition of the tree/pot than the size of the bonsai. I find larger specimens easier to clean, despite the greater surface area. 'Mossing up' stuff takes forever to do properly, so rock plantings are not something I jump on with alacrity. Very tiny pots are quite difficult, unless you have small fingers and lots of concentration.

Here's Reg prepping his beech before the 2007 EBA at Ostend. This tree has probably seen all the big shows in the UK, and a few abroad, I'd guess. Note the bottle of camellia oil and the fine akadama in the tub beside it.
Like I said earlier, these are the techniques that work for me. There may be better ones out there, and if you think you have any worth labelling 'Best Practice', let me know!

Ageism in Bonsai

2009-05-07T00:38:00.004+01:00

Yes, in some things, age matters. Take the case of Freckles & his mate here.

Freckles aka slug bait is a Viola sororia that came from one of the local garden centres. A couple of quid it cost me, at the time. If anyone recognises the pot, I'd be grateful if you gave me a shout. I got it at the Ginkgo show in Belgium in 2003 or thereabouts. Freckles went into the pot about a year later and has never been out since, despite the numerous attempts on its life and well-being. 5 years have given Freckles a bit of maturity, presumably which is one reason he took second place in the Accent Plant class at last week's Open Competition.

On the other hand, this kusamono planting was made last year at Chie-san's kusamono class - she holds one or two a year at Windybank Bonsai. This composition is made up of brunnera, the Japanese Hakenachloa grass (beloved of so many accent plant compositions) and a fern or two. The suiban is Japanese. So although this planting is a year old and the plants have all bedded in, it still has a ways to go before it acquires the character that Freckles has.

At this point, I feel obligated to defend my reputation. In relation to paying the correct amount for the number of entries in the Wessex Show's Open Competition, it seems I had overpaid. I believe at the time I was filling in the forms, I wasn't sure if I was going to do a 3-plant display or a 4-plant display in my 5-tier composition. I opted against 4 as it isn't an auspicious number to a lot of Asians - no sense in freaking anyone out.

No matter, as the Wessex Chairman tells me I can't count anyway. Feh. What's worrying is most everyone agrees with him.

A testament to your what???

2009-05-06T18:51:00.004+01:00

Well yeah, and that wasn't even the best part of the discussion. What discussion? Check the previous post.

(Things heated up after this part of my argument below...)

'All forms of gardening are about the gardener's testament to his own cleverness. After all, in most cases he'll have taken a plant out of its natural habitat and manipulated the environment in order for that plant to flourish. If that isn't a sign of his talent, what is?'

(Wait for it....)

'Yes that covers ALL aspects of gardening - even mowing the lawn is a demonstration of your cleverness as a gardener.'

Now that was the bit that sparked off debate for some reason. Cutting the grass as a statement of your own personality / creative intelligence? Let's see; the hypotheses set forward were:
- It's more about our obsession with tidiness than any true artistic skill.
- It's a desire to conform to the general look & feel of the neighbourhood.
- It's an effort not be seen as less influential or upstanding as the neighbours.
- It's a reflection of personal aesthetics - some people go through the trouble of putting stripes on their lawns and others don't even bother.
And so on....

Yet aren't all the statements above 'me, me, me, me' statements? I know I don't get my lawn tended to for the visual pleasure of the folks next door.

After all, how many people would take on an endeavour with a view to this being a monument to their own stupidity? Personally, I don't think there are a lot who would admit to that, but just in case you actually have done it, would you raise your hand? Pleeze? In an effort to edify the rest of us?

Go on, you know you want to....

To compete or not to compete?

2009-05-05T20:58:00.008+01:00

Or even, to show or not to show?

Sitting with the Show Judge after his work was done, we started musing on the inevitable reactions that come after the judge's decision is handed down. Most people take things with good grace, and then again, sometimes things can get a bit iffy. I should know - I'm surrounded by people who have been required to judge bonsai for at least the past 5 years

The Show Judge commented that perhaps people who take things too personally should refrain from entering into competition. And my little breezy reply so hit a chord with him, that he asked me to put it in a blog post. And of course I did.

So why do I show my trees? Or even enter them in competition?

A long time ago at a club talk, I remember Reg Bolton once saying that joining contests is one way of determining how much progress you have made with your bonsai, a concept which I embraced immediately at the time. I've won some, done indifferently in others, and will probably still continue to show my trees and compete for a good long while to come.

However, things have changed and my benchmarks for progress and attainment of bonsai nirvana have moved somewhat. And perhaps I'm older (wiser doesn't come into the picture) as well.

There are times when I've refused to compete when I didn't agree with the rules, but I don't recall ever contesting the judge's decision. Simply because that's the way things go - why accept participating in something beyond your control, if you're going to fight the result at the end of day? Doesn't seem like a load of fun to me. And if I didn't think the judge was competent, then why would I bother competing in the first place? Bloody waste of my time, IMHO.

So yes, I'm very laissez-faire about that bit of it. 'Cause as far as I'm concerned, once I've put up my little tree or accent out for show/competition - that is the end of my achievement. Showing my bonsai is my testament to my own cleverness, that's all it is. I put the little thing out there, on its little stand, and say, 'look at how ingenious I am.' If I get a prize for it, that's good (well actually, it's another thing that gathers dust but hey, there you go). And if I don't get any awards - well, I've had my fun anyway. It brings warm fuzzies if people tell me they like my stuff. They must think I'm clever, too. (Harrrrr.) But if no-one notices, well, that's just too bad, isn't it? I should be old enough and ugly enough to take it. Does it make me any less of a person if I don't get kudos for my cleverness? Gaahhh - what planet are you from? *Barf*

But yes, I put a lot of thought and effort into putting the best display I possibly can. I would refuse to insult a paying (or non-paying for that matter) public otherwise. Conversely, I would feel insulted if I were in their shoes and be forced to look at something sub-standard. And yes, that really is how strongly I feel about it. But do I expect a medal for it? Gawd no, get away from me, you fool. Is it a ruthless drive for perfection? Probably. But my standards are my own and I wouldn't dream of forcing them on anyone else. It takes all kinds to make a world, and I need to learn to accept that, just as a lot of people out there probably could do as well.

Rare jewel - a Gertude Jekyll garden

2009-05-05T11:03:00.009+01:00

Monday was Open Day at the Gregg School in Southampton, a fundraiser by the Friends of Townhill Park Gardens to help support the ongoing maintenance of the school's heritage. As the local bonsai society having a long association with the school, we support their Open Days by putting up a small display. A bonus is that it's a great venue with coffee and cakes to be had. (Of course I have ulterior motives.)

But I digress. The schools gardens are more than noteworthy. Alas, my history of the place is sketchy, but here goes with what little I can remember. So don't jump on me for any inaccuracies, OK?

Lord Louis Swaythling engaged Gertrude Jekyll to design the gardens in 1912. The estate was sold in 1948, with eventual degredation to the premises resulting over time, before the school took over what was left of the property. The restoration to the garden started in 1977. The house is a Grade II listed building, so any changes are strictly controlled.

At what would have been the old house's main entrance and courtyard (now a parking lot), stands this magnificent cedar. Imagine this big guy as a bonsai:

Or even this horse chestnut situated along the drive, which is so old (and so very ginormous), the bottom branches have to be propped up. But what a magnificent sight in spring with all that blossom:

Very few of the 400 gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll are still in existence today. Here is a view of the main path, with the apple orchards to your left. At the bottom are the Herb Garden and the Italian Garden.
In spite of the cold, these students were gracious enough to play us a couple of blues and jazz tunes. The 7-man band hasn't been playing together long, and over time a musician or two leaves on graduation.

The bonsai display was just behind the jazz band, but as the school's gardens are not easily accessible to all, I think we can have a break from the trees now and again, right?

Commercial break for unseemly gloating

2009-05-04T22:05:00.009+01:00

'Scuse the lack of self-restraint a moment, peeps.

This is one of the added bonuses of driving all the way to the EBA convention in Arco, Italy in a Land Rover.

This vigorous climbing rose was growing in practically every garden that we saw in Arco. So what better souvenir to bring back from our first trip to Italy?

The best bit is that it only cost A FIVER.

Yes, a fiver and 4 years in the ground. It now covers most of the wall, frames the window together with the pyracantha, and comes down on the other side of the window near the front door. Oh, the blue flowers below it are aquilegias.

One of the uppermost shoots has found its way into the loft and will have to be pruned. But that will have to wait until later in the year when the blackbirds have stopped using the nest that is somewhere in the pyracantha. So after the yellow roses are gone, we have the white pyracantha blooms together with the white & blue clematis in mid-summer. Then come the red berries at the end of the season, which the birds feed on all throughout the winter. Not that they leave the moss on my trees alone for all the good things I do for them, ungrateful little porkers.

All it takes is time and a cutting

2009-05-04T20:56:00.009+01:00

There are many people who have made a significant contribution to the development of British bonsai; some of them don't carry labels like bonsai master and their names are not necessarily by-words in bonsai books and mags (although photos of their trees are). Of these, there are a few bonsai people I really have time for; Terry is one of them, partly because we share similar views on what a decent fried breakfast should be like.

Terry has 3 (yes, you may commence weeping) Siberian Elms, 2 of which he started from seed and this one here which started life as a cutting from the guys he grew from seed. This was back in 1989.

In those days, Broadband & the Internet were nowhere in sight, books on bonsai were unavailable, bonsai pots had to be fashioned by drilling holes in trays, and so on. Think of the Wild West or something. Lack of available bonsai pots led Terry to take up pottery at evening classes, and to this day many of his trees are in his own pots.

The advent of the now-defunct 'Bonsai Today' magazine was the moment of enlightenment in Terry's bonsai life. Which pretty much sums up how we all feel when opening a book with Japanese trees, I guess. Most of Terry's foundational knowledge has been through trial-and-error, and he's had to revise a lot of his learning along the way. And he will admit that he has still room to grow ('scuse the pun/innuendo).

So, do not despair if all you have is a single stick with leaves. I remember Terry telling me the story of how he started and it's very much like that. But you will need time and patience. Terry once vowed to give it all up if he couldn't manage to keep his scrawny twigs alive. And we are so glad he persevered instead.

If you want to see more of Terry's trees, look here. There are histories of several trees, which makes for very informative reading. If you want to catch Terry in person and get to interview him like I did, you'll have to come down to one of the shows.