Unboxing the third load of pots from Japan.

 

Amazing Japanese artists, Copper Water Can

The oops Juniper 2025

 This small juniper was purchased for a specific purpose. The purpose was to use this in a Tanuki project. The trunk it was to be affixed to had some very sharp coil bends in it.  While wrapping the whip into the groove, I was able to wire the whip as I went. All went well until at the very top I had to get the top third of the whip thru part of the coil. This amounted to bending the whip pretty hard ...and snap! Right in half it went. It broke just at the point on the trunk where I had removed all the foliage to facilitate getting the whip in the groove with no branches.

Oh well move on to something else with the thing. In looking at the whip, I found that it looked rather cool and might make a pretty good stand-alone tree. People use procumbens for beginner bonsai classes for a reason. You got to be a pretty bad artist to not get "something" out of a one-gallon shrub.

I made my dead wood first. I always begin with what I'm not going to use and decide if I can make jin out of it. If I can I also determine if it fits the design and will it add something to the design or detract. If they detract, they are kept very short and close to the trunk, if they fit the design and can help tell a story, I can leave them a little longer.

At this point I have started the wire. Now I don't know about you, but I wire trees. I mean wire trees, every little branch, even on big trees. People always tell me, "Man I wish I could make trees like you do, I mean you always get a good tree out of nothing." Well, that is achieved with wire. If you do bonsai, and you ain't doing styling till a tree is 100% wired, then you are just lazy. All bonsai should be wired. Even the trees in Gafu, Kokufu, Shuga, Taikan, and Omiya shows are wired. You can see it in the multitude of videos on you tube. When I say lazy, I don't mean you are a lazy person, I just mean you are rather lazy in your thinking on what bonsai is all about. It is about art, and you can't make art till "you" have control of the tree. That can only be achieved thru the judicious use of wire on "every" twig. People do clip and grow, and that is the tree being in control, not the artist. Thru clip and grow one can achieve an outline, but there is no artistry in that.

OK, I've said my peace. Thank you for listening.

Once I had the tree wired, I had to figure out how I was going to get the root ball from a one-gallon nursery container into a 4"x3"x1.25" pot. That's not much of a pot. 

So, I started cutting...and cutting.

Make sure you cut away all the roots that grow above the bole of the tree. The bole is the transition zone between the part above and below the dirt. Soil line if you will. Nursery plants are always planted deep in a nursery container because they are mass produced and care is not taken in how they are planted; there is no root pruning or decisions made. Just pull it out of one container and plant it up in the next size up mashing in a big wad of potting soil. Sometimes the tree will be planted two or three inches deeper than it needs to be.

Typically, these junipers are propagated by cuttings. Of course, the cutting gets started too deep, then it up pots for a few years and then we get this one big root which was the original cutting and now it looks like a tap root. Now people that propagate tell me that cuttings don't have a tap root because they are not started from seed. You only get a tap root due to genetics of the seed sending down a tap root to anchor the seedling. So, if that's the case, what do we call the long root on the cutting that is pushed into the soil three plus inches, ensuring it stays anchored and not blow over in the wind, and gets in my way when I decide to repot and have to cut it off like a tap root. I still call it a tap root, because it served the same purpose as God grown trees.

OK I said my peace again. Thanks for listening.

So now I get the beauty shot. Nice basketweave Bigei pot and it fits perfectly.

The tree finished out at just a smidge over four inches from the soil.

Itoigawa Juniper 2025

 

Soon we learn the fate of this juniper.....

This Itoigawa was bought at Ed Clarks nursery in Lindsey. As you see the photos you can see the price for this tree on the can. This was spring 2023.

Some views of the material looking around the tree.

Holding up the foliage so the taper can be seen.

I always begin by pruning back some of the longer whips that won't be part of the composition just to get them out of my way. While I look at each branch, I make a decision if it's going to be cut back or left long for jin on the ends.

As I work around the tree, I make all the jins on the branches that are left on the tree but are not used with green on them.

So now with more thinning, and jinning we can start to see a tree emerge.

This whole trunk, the end of the main trunk will not be used in the construction of the tree, but it is too good to just remove it, so I jinned it.

This next view shows very well the whole end of the main trunk being jinned. One can only do something like this if the tree has other branches that will complete the tree.

A large whip has been wired and is being bent around and over the jinned trunk to help make a new apex on the tree.

Here we have the finished tree in 2023. It is planted in second generation Yamaaki. When I posted this on Facebook a mention was made about the jin on the left hanging straight down, but somehow it seems to carry the eye around and helps complete the loop.

Near the end of summer of 2023, the tree started to decline as the bad fertilizer was working this tree also. I did an emergency repot into this larger Yixing container. It proved beneficial for the tree as it began with new buds in the early Fall. Look how much it grew.

This is the photo after the repot.

This is after a cutback in 2024.

Now we are in 2025, and this is the tree just before the work. Basically, just a repot into a smaller, but more formal Yamaaki signature pot with eggplant stamp.

This is the tree today. I have work to do with it as I am changing the apex a little and enlarging the jin on the front base of the trunk. There is another small jin on the trunk that I am connecting to the current jin. I have to be careful; Ed built these junipers by leaving the wire on the trunk and allowing the tree to engulf the wire. Doing spiral jins on this type of tree with wire embedded in it can be deadly if you screw it up. So, I am happy with my puzzle piece on a part of the trunk that I know has no connection issues with pipes that supply what the tree needs. New picture soon.

The King and Queen 2025

 The Year is 2010, fifteen years ago. So much has changed since then. The collection was at the Clark Center for Japanese Art, The Hanford Bonsai Society was going full blast and I was Vice President. The second Toko-Kazari (Tokonoma Display) is in full swing and judging is finished.

The reason I bring up King and Queen, is from a display presented by Boon Manakitivipart. He didn't place but I thought the unique blend of trees in the display were something that I had never thought of in that way. The bold pine, stately and masculine along side the maple, soft, flowing and feminine. Being a red variety helped a lot. 

So I thought maybe I could combine the aspects of two of my trees, a pine and a maple and put together my own King and Queen.

First the pine. The tree was purchased from Ed Clark recently, and I could hardly wait to get it home to start working on it. I looked pretty stupid to fellow drivers going down the freeway with me holding the tree and spinning it around trying to find my front and where I was going to prune first. This is a pretty hairy tree.

The first cuts were made on the material. I find that the only way I can work on a Clark pine tree is to cut the needles. They are so strong and so long that small wiring is impossible.

The photo above shows the apex and what I was going to use to make an apex, basically three small branches. Those three branches were hooked to a fairly long remnant of last year's candle. It just way too long. 

So, I cut the top off and started over with some small branches below that junction. I liked the outcome much better than the original plan.

Let's move on to the maple.

The maple, Trident Maple, was purchased from Mike Saul at the Fresno Bonsai Swap meet in 2010. Over the years the tree has been pruned and wired.

In 2012 it went into this pot I purchased at a nursery in Cambria California. It had a very unique glaze that cratered during the firing process adding an element of texture to the pot.

Later, upon finding out how difficult it was to clean the nasty calcium stains on its surface I opted for a smoother glazed surface.

Upon deciding that I would turn this composition into a Shohin project, I started by identifying which parts were to be removed or shortened. I started by removing the bottom of the cascade branch. It was an unsightly "wye" anyway, so the bottom was removed. The branch covering the lower portion of the trunk was drastically reduced. To get it into a proper Shohin sized pot, the root mass would have to be reduced. Several years ago, I sustained some massive squirrel damage to the far-right side of the trunk. It was this area that I would inspect when removed from the pot. Sure enough, most of the rootage on that area had dried up and was no longer servicing the tree. I just lopped off a portion and did some rough carving on it and managed to get it into this Iker pot. This pot was the result of an exhaustive search for two months to find just the correct pot that would work for the tree. 

The tree was affixed in its new pot and received its first picture.

Today I composed the picture. Backwards as usual. I will begin working on a new photo soon with a different backdrop to capture the maple in a better light. I have a couple Shohin size scrolls on order to complete the picture and can update this thread then. I worked on the bump in the back and reduced that as well as a overall cutback of heavy branching and thinning.

Kyudo En The Walk Around 2025

 I mentioned the fertilizer incident and the killing off of half or more of my collection. During Covid, I guess in an effort to stay in business, manufacturing was doing what ever it took to keep up with raw materials. Making fertilizer with things like urea, humates and quality ingredients was hard to do just sourcing them as well as transportation. So to stay in business they used what they could get and what they could get was chicken shit. Lots and lots of chicken shit. Now the fertilizer I had always used was organic, but with urea from cattle, not chicken shit. That stuff is hot and just burned my trees up I thought some might even catch fire. 

So now I am starting over. Mostly I am not replacing the big trees I lost, some California junipers, other junipers like prostrata and shimpaku. I lost big pines and so many of my best Shohin which really were devastated with the small pots and hot fertilizer.

So as you look thru this photo log of trees keep in mind that most of what you see has only been developed in the last four years.

I don't know how this big trident made it thru. I am so happy it made it.

The East side of the Shohin bench.

Some new species for me, Kinzu kumquat, New princess persimmon, and a pyracantha with yellow berries.

Some small material in development on the back side in the shade. Here I am working on gardenia and Asian jasmine.

Out back I have pines in the ground. This is starting year four.

I have a couple raised grow beds that were not being used so I am using them to grow stuff on the ground but in cans.

A couple of Satsuki Azaleas, one in an oatmeal glazed Yamaaki on the left and the other in a two tone Heian Kosen. Two really nice top shelf Mame pots.

The west side of the Shohin shelf.

Moving south, we come to the group of benches and this monster resides there. His name is Gordo.

I mentioned that I was not replacing and large trees lost, I lied. In looking at my collection I was happy with what was left. It was pretty good but mostly deciduous. I needed a good large juniper, so I bought this thing. A very big Itoigawa with a 5 inch base and a trunk 3 inches across a foot above the dirt.

I have stuff everywhere being grown out for Shohin material. Someday it will come in handy. Yes those are little pines, first year I grew from seed. This year I transplanted them into individual tall pots. Next year they too will go into the ground.

I dug this crepe myrtle out of Lisa's yard after I moved in.

A couple chunky tridents to develop.

In all two Californias died and three made it thru. These two and a small one, Tripper, made it also. Tripper gets a new styling next week. That should make for a cool blog entry. These two also need a haircut.

Layer underway here. Will take this off in Feb. This is the best time to leave a layer on due to the fact that the tree right now while not growing on top is growing roots like crazy. It does this cause all the sugars in the tree go down to the roots for storage, and as it runs out of room for all that sugar it makes more roots to compensate.

I built this lift up work station at the end of one of my benches. When not in use it folds down flat against the end of the bench out of the way. I'll talk more about this after repotting and show how it works.

I just finished cleaning this pot last week. It is by Housei Souin. A very old pot and I am willing to bet probably the only existing one in America. It is made of Shudei (朱泥 - vermilion clay)

This one by Bigei needs a cleaning also. You don't see many by Hirata this big. There is no patina just calcium. The one above did have patina but the calcium stains had encapsulated the patina and just made brown calcium.