Winter colours

A little yamadori hawthorn put on its best ever display of autumn colouf for me

hawthorn hacking pt2

so it was out with the saw,nothing better than styling a tree with a saw!

I think the future will be a semi cascade,with the 2nd pic as the front.

This tree will bud like mad next year,and may be ready for a fial pot in 2yrs time

Hawthorn hacking

This is a lovely little tree i collected last year,i was looking at it yesterday and deciced it was time to remove the unwanted parts.This was a rooted branch of a much larger tree.You can see the hole where it came from.

This tree has everything going for it,size bark movement age health,a good reminder of why we collect.

gong to gingko pt5

The night came the kids were kissed goodbye the car was loaded pleasentries exchanged with the loved one etc!

And that was it then,easy st now pick up Ian reload the car at Tonys pop over to gingko show some trees drink some beer talk a load of crap drink some more beer spend a load of money make new friends from all over the world have some lovely food come home feeling drained....

Gingko really is special,but i think its right Danny is holding the show every 5 yrs instead now.It was holding bonsai back,people were rushing just to get a tree in at each one,i may be guilty of getting caught up in that as well,i think things may just move at a slower pace now,the correct speed for bonsai.There are shortcuts to succsess,but there the longer road to getting it right.My route has changed now.

going to gingko pt4

So finally after working on the foliage for a few days,i came up with a final image.Then i made what i now think was a big mistake....The leaves were a little light in colour,so i put it in my garage for 2 weeks to make the foliage darker.This works beautifully on all of my other tree's but this ended up a little unhappy a few days before the show.Never mind you live and learn....

going to gingko pt3 and a half

going to gingko pt3

The end result was lovely,then came the downside,branches all over the show from being all wrapped up and gingko only one month away....This was 2 weeks later after letting the tree rest,and some of the disorder reordered!

going to gingko pt2

So me and Tony had decided the only way to improve the deadwood was to sandblast it.This had possibly been done in japan,but on too high a setting and a lot of detail had been lost.This was a first time for me,so i let tony guide me and take over as and when he needed to.Sand blasting is a artform all of its own.

I had taken some wood off,tony insisted on more coming off,so we went for it.

going to gingko pt1

This really started at the gingko 2005 when i met steve tolley,and arranged a visit to his nursery,gingko 5 was a great exhibition,i was kicking myself that none of my yamadori would be ready for ten years when i stumbled across my lovely little itoigawa which featured on here earlier,it had came from kawabe.Now the pressing thought was how can i make this better,if your going to gingko you want to impress,not an easy thing amongst so many great trees.So here it was before work began again.