Czech Yamadori

Slowly getting there.  Still some root work on roots and fine tuning of the crown.  The rest should come with time... Badly needs some blossoms/berries though  Winter 2015 Summer 2018  Autumn 2018 Heght: +/- 38 cm Width:  50 cm

The autumn has its indisputable charm.  Well, at least if do not have an  arachnophobia.   For those who does I have this birch. Height:  85 cm

At the early dark times of our small garden I have scattered few reasonable sized  granite stones  there.  ( Reasonable sized = few hundred kilos of weight ).   At that time I was in love with the water so the selection of stones has reflected that.  Large stones well smoothed by the wild watters of White Elbe upriver.  In last few years hand in hand with the  growing number of my yamadories I am trying to blend the character of the garden with/around the potted trees.  Due to that some of the stones have lost their solitary status and I have put on their top some of the potted trees.  The stability of such arrangements  was always a bit of problem - strong gusts of wind, cats and probably some other living creatures that occupy this place during night hours.  I have never spot them at the daytime but I believe there are stone martens, racoon dogs, hedgehogs... ( at least if I can read the marks in the snow well - sorry I am not the chief  Black Wolf). So doing some wood work on ot

One of few trees that I have collected this year.   A nice feminine wild pear with a resonable aged bark ( it is supposed to have a feminine look isn't it ) and gentle movement of the trunk.  Nothing very special as you can see but still worth the effort of collection.   What makes me to take my camera was the great colour of the leaves.  Wild pears present themselves with a nice  reddish colour of their leaves in the early autumn.  Well, not all of them at the same time.   The smallish tree on the bottom right is another yamadori wild pear collected in spring 2017.  Still nicely green and working.  Above the pear there are A. ginnala and P. mahaleb also in a full working mode.  A nice article at https://www.kaizenbonsai.com/blog/ about autumn colours.  You may not take all the presented argument on their face value but its  worth to read. 

I have sat with a great local potter and bonsai artist Martin Ašenbrenner in front of this tree last September trying to find a best suitable pot to get this little tree  to another level.   Finally,  we have agreed on the size and possible colour of the ceramic glaze.  +/- to be fair.  Martin has a wood fired kiln so the outcome of the colour is something that you cannot planned 100%.    Unfortunately the pot was  supposed to finished only in May so I have decided to move the tree to some of my pot I have on hands.  Not a good fit in terms of sizes but still better than the plastic one. Summer 2017 As discussed in one of the previous posts  related to this tree the outline of the crown is missing important part in the right hand top quarter.  So to tackle this flaw was the main plan for 2018... Summer 2018 Right, so this is how it looks in the middle of the summer.   The empty space has been filled - now we need to get there more quality.   But that applies to the

Some of my trees are styled into something that is at least in my mind close to a classical bonsai shape.   It makes life easier in terms of its design and  it takes less time to maintain its shape.  And what is even more important for me - the inner branches get a fair portion of a daily sunlight without the necessity of leaf pruning. Winter 2017 Summer 2018 Pruning and wiring.   As a matter of practice,  I have taken a few pics after the initial styling just to make sure that my eyes are not cheating me.  This time I have a feeling that the top section of the tree is too heavy... Well,  apart from a fact that I need to get it more rounded and I would need to pull one of the branches on the right slightly down..  After a small correction of the top, cutting of few leaves here and there... Front Back (before the correction of the top)  

No TdF cycling today and  the deeply buried thorn in my right palm prevents me from most of the bonsai activities - so a good time to share  another piece of a dead wood... Right, so what we have here is "a typical bonsai".   The size of both jins is too big and there is too much dead wood. A single narrow live vein that feeds  an airy crown.  Something you may find on a junipers, but not really on a deciduous tree.  Unless the tree has started a countdown to pack it... But despite all this there it is.  And  I do like it.  It is not a bunjin but I have tried to style the crown into something that reflects my  vision  how I see the bunjin-gi during  my day dreaming procrastination.  The narrow live vein is the only vital line that connects roots to the leaves.   Cliffs heated by the sun, scarce water supply, biting frosts.  All that is deeply embedded in the face of this little tree.  Would you expect a flourishing crown of foliage on a tree that lives in such biotype?