Saruyama Blog

Belated Happy New Year

2012-01-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

It has been almost a month since the last post and I have finally pulled myself out of the funk I have been in...and I don't mean the George Clinton type. I have been questioning the sanity of my current "lifestyle choices" of late and have come to some conclusions...one of them involved getting rid of a tumble dryer that cost more to repair than it is actually worth, another is to move. After two years of procrastination I am moving to a place where I can live with my trees and create a working space.

My new years resolution is to travel less and not rush around simply for the sake of it. Having just paid my tax bill, I have been closely over the accounts. I seem to work to keep Shell, Ryanair and several major airlines in business. As a wise man said to me last week..."you can make more profit by doing nothing and saving more".

I have spent the last week working on some very exciting material, although many people wouldn't think it. A field full of 10/15 year old deshojo maples which have been dug up and ready to be a bonsai. They have been growing fairly naturally except that the roots have been undercut every other year and so nebari has been created on the vast majority. There will be a few of them on the market soon through various bonsai outlets, keep your eyes peeled for raw deciduous material. I will have a few to work on and I am looking forward to the next 15 years. ...because thats how long it will take.

This coming week is to be very exciting and now I have shaken the monkey from my back and jumped back on the horse, I will try to keep updated. Next weekend is the Noelanders show, the biggest pan-european show in...all of europe. Myself and Willowbog Bonsai, with the help of John Armitage will be taking over a number of displays for clients, friends, fellow professionals in what I can only describe as trying to recreate Kokufu style display in Europe. What do I mean by that? A level of professionalism, attention to the finest details and an effort to make it enjoyable for the enthusiast so that all the stressful work is taken out. I am incredibly happy with the response we have had from people willing to support us when they are going anyway, it is an extra expense which could be avoided but there are people who share my sometimes blurry vision. For that I am grateful.

Noelanders will be great, first time for me as I am always in Japan at this time of year. It will be Kokufu judging shortly and to be honest, I am glad to be away from it, it was a difficult new years conversation with the Chief, me with a slight hangover and him drunk..."When are you coming?...oh. Can't you come next week? Oh. Alright then...". I will be there immediately after Noelanders and moving house but that isn't soon enough apparently. The show will be earlier this year and with the colder weather in Japan, hopefully the Ume flowers will be perfectly timed.

Speaking of colder weather, thank god this cold snap came just now...a week later and most trees would have started to wake up...which could have been a disaster.

Anyway...a new year, some new resolutions and a new plan for the month. Lets start as we mean to go on...

Oh forgot to mention this...

2011-12-13T03:28:00.000-08:00

For any bonsai enthusiast out there who wants a Christmas present, I recommend this book. It is kind of by the Chief in that 95% of the pictures are of his trees and the majority of the text, which is expertly translated into English (not by me), was ghost written under his guidance. It features trees by month, history and culture and is a good read.

It is a superb book and cheap as chips, in fact this retail price is cheaper by £4.50 that the wholesale price which we can buy it at in Japan. Go figure...

In the UK, you can get it through the Book Suppository for £18.73....For those in the US, buy through the evil Amazon or support a local book store, Bill Valavanis or myself. Both Bill and I can get the book signed by the Chief (but not in time for Christmas)....that is the only thing we can offer that massive monopolistic empires can't...well that and a cheeky grin.

Other good books include this one and this one.

I earn nothing from this promotion other than a sense that we cannot compete against capitalism. I suppose to destroy the machine, you must be part of it...

Once Again, Merry Christmas everyone

Its not all doom and gloom

2011-12-12T02:49:00.000-08:00

Many thanks for the messages of support and condolence, I just want to point out that I am not, nor ever have been on the verge of insanity/packing it all in, just being my normal cheery self. Some of us were born to always look on the bright side of life, others were born to chew on life's gristle in a steak and ale pie.

Life isn't as bad as it may seem...i did get to work on a tree this weekend, or at least supervise the work...and when I say supervise, I was watching the snooker final whilst grunting approval. It's a tree that I last worked on about a year ago. I am not sure of the future of the tree, it never seems to change much or get any thicker. I think the 11 and a half months of darkness may have something to do with it. Anyway here is a before

and after

I personally prefer a bunjin styled tree but...'tis the season for goodwill and peace to all men, especially Mrs. Saruyama who styled the tree and so I kept my mouth firmly shut. Not sure if it will look best in a round John Pitt pot or an antique square chinese one though...

Merry Christmas and happy styling

Sometimes...

2011-12-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

Only sometimes...I question everything, I am the first to admit, then when you catch me in a mood like this I can be tiring, even embarrassing..

What a week it has been...the van has clocked up a few miles, I have seen a good number of friends and there was Armageddon at home. A swing from high to deep, all in the course of a single day...my very own black thursday.

As a warning, this week I have mostly been listening to 80's music, particularly dark and depressing stuff so there will be some influence here. My apologies.

I had promised that I would get back to working on trees this week and I did manage some, but more importantly than that I managed to see a few friends and catch up. Some things are more important than little trees in pots, not much admittedly, but health and happiness are.

On Wednesday I managed to get up to Willowbog Bonsai to drop off some trees and to see the resplendent Mr. Snart. A man after my own heart we sat and complained about the state of everything and had jolly good fun doing so. I did a little work up there, but not much as I was interrupting Peter's day off which had been allocated to sitting and thinking. The results can be seen here on the Willowbog blog, which, unlike this organ, is regularly updated. I worked slightly a few trees for sale which is something I enjoy doing. Not pushing them towards what I consider to be the only future but giving options to those who then purchase them. When working from a commercial point of view it is important to think of all the different possibilities that a tree can have, for example what somebody who likes ultra compact modern Japanese style trees would make, or what somebody who likes more free flowing "naturalistic" trees would prefer. In many ways this makes you question your own tastes and preferences and keeps you on your toes, rather than falling into a rut of always making the same style of tree. That doesn't apply to trees made for myself though...my rut is deep there.

After an evening meal of the highest quality (behind every miserable bonsai professional there is a superb woman who sees the potential in inferior material ;-) I fell asleep on the sofa as is my modus operandi. Awaking the next morning, the beginning of Black Thursday, I set out in pitch black over the sullen misty moors along winding roads and snow covered passes. It would have been a beautiful drive if there had been daylight and it wasn't raining and blowing a gale. As it was I survived. On to the M6 in the torrential rain I pulled in at the first service area I could and bought a coffee, it was here that I realised a certain age of my life had come to an end. Unshaven and looking ruggedly bald in my normal way, one of the ladies behind the counter gave me a special smile which would have brightened my morning had it been the attractive twenty year old blonde who completely ignored me. Sadly, I have graduated onto MINLF territory.

Anyway, moving back to more important matters, I made it John Pitt's place and got down to business. I had kept a few trees at John's which I had picked up before going to Japan, some well established European yamadori. I worked on one which I think has an outstanding future. Sadly that future will be at least 20 years away but it is one of the few scots pines that I think will make a genuine bunjin tree...but for that to happen, I will need to starve it for a good number of years and just keep plugging away with the scissors

Before..

After...

Now, you may think that I have done nothing to it, that it looks messy and untidy, that it needs wiring and pads need to be created. If I wanted to create an instant image then maybe so. For this tree, I am in for the long haul and have decided to try for something which takes time and patience and not wire. In order to create a true bunjin tree, there must be a lack of artifice, a natural feel which stems from experience of suffering and severity. That can only be created with time and patience. It won't be close to being ready until the branches have started to develop bark and the needle size has reduced after being grown in a tight pot without repotting for at least ten years. Watch this space as they say.

Speaking of experiencing suffering, my already long day took a turn for the worse as I got a phone call from home saying that the gale force winds had lifted my poly tunnel up, flipped it over and it was threatening to take flight. My little brother, bless him, was holding onto it and trying to remove the plastic from the frame. After going to the planned Christmas dinner with the Ashfield Bonsai Massive I made the long drive home fearing the worst. It wasn't until I got close to home that I felt the wind, coming off at the junction, I was blown halfway across the road. Wearily making it home, I assessed the damaged...which was surprisingly little. The electrics were all messed up, the under soil heating cable has pulled out and snapped, the poly tunnel a mangled mess, a pane of glass or two broken but seemingly none of the trees were damaged in anyway. Thankfully there was no frost and the temperature stayed above freezing but the wind was horrendous. Behind the house is about two miles of flat farmland without a wind break in sight. The first wind break was the polytunnel it seemed. Despite the frame being firmly staked and pinned into the ground, weighed down with bricks and everything I though necessary, clearly nature played this trick on me...she is too rough and I am too delicate.

After a few hours sleep the clear up operation began in the dark...as the frame was mangled, it was impossible to unscrew and so I literally pulled it apart with my bare hands whilst thinking of alternatives...I considered burning every tree and then doing a Reggie Perin. Sometimes life has a habit of just kicking you full square in the knackers. No matter how hard you try, somebody or something just comes along and pisses on your bonfire. Here I was, all cock of the walk with my super high-tech polytunnel and mother nature just laughs in my face and says " that serves you right for wiring so many trees and thinking you can make them more beautiful than me...what are you going to do about it now baldy?"

Despite what you may initially think, at times like that, doing bonsai is a god send. The whole point of bonsai is to enjoy nature...even though she is a harsh mistress. Without the severity of the winter we would not enjoy the freshness of the spring, without the eternal struggle against the elements then there would not be beauty such as this...

One must take the rough with the smooth and accept that with one hand, nature giveth, and with the other hand she slaps you in the face and causes chaos in the garden.

A day spent tidying up the glass greenhouse and maximising space in there allowed me to find a home for everything that was small enough and delicate. Other trees which can survive outside were buried in the now non-heated bed and covered with the plastic from the poly tunnel skin. Whatever will be will be. Miraculously, the delicate light bulb from the glow lamp survived and I was able to put it up and the trees didn't even skip a beat...or at least I hope not.

A few problems with the heater and thermostat were sorted out that evening as temperatures plummeted to minus 5. Let us pray to any god that is listening that the glass greenhouse doesn't get blown over in the winds next week. If it does then...I don't know what I will do. Always remember that there is only so much suffering a tree can take before it dies rather than turn into a bonsai. We walk along that knife edge everyday.

After sorting everything out, the drive down back to the warmth of my long lost bed was uneventful, except for the depressing disco in the van...The Smiths, the Cure and Depeche Mode on a constant loop, with me seat dancing to stay awake.

"Let us have a black celebration, to celebrate the fact that we have seen the back of another black day"

Merry Christmas

A long month....

2011-12-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

And so a silent November has drawn to a close and those following me may have wondered why no posts...well one thing my mum always told me was "if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all". That is not to say that life has been terrible or there has been nothing good happening but sometimes life just conspires against you.

To say I was busy was an understatement...arriving in Japan at the start of November I, along with the long suffering younger apprentices spent two weeks, day and night preparing the garden for the arrival of all the international visitors for the 11th Aspac convention which was held in Takamatsu. During those two weeks I managed a day and three hours of working on trees. As per usual no pictures were taken but I did manage to continue working on a Needle Juniper that I had saved from death a while back and had repotted earlier this year. It was good to see it growing well again and the customer made a special point of bringing it in for me to work on which was a high point. The rest of the time was spent building a pond and reworking the garden.

The Takamatsu show was good but very tough. We had a trade stand and had to be down there to set up from 7 am. It was an 11 hour drive through the night of which I drove 9 hours...needless to say I wasn't in the best state of health when we arrived. The car was loaded up with what we estimated to be half a million dollars worth of stuff in there, just pots and stands etc, no trees...although we did come back with a load...so crashing was not an option. The Chief, in true Chiefly fashion flew down and arrived the next afternoon after we had set up the stand...and nervous that the arrangement was not to his liking, I awaited his arrival with dread. He turned up with a smile on his face and just said "Yeah, looks good...we won't sell anything though". For those that don't know him, he can be a great motivational speaker.

Picture of the Aspac crowds, courtesy of S-Cube. You can find more here on the IBC forum

As it turned out though, we did sell stuff. Quite a bit actually. My personal tally was higher than expected and if I had helped to sell the $250,000 pot on the neighbouring stand to a Singaporean gentleman then I would have trumped the Chief...not that anybody keeps score. Sadly/Thankfully the expensive pot stayed unsold, not that I did anything other than translate...the buyer had been studying pots since before I was born...

The show itself was good in the sense that I met up with old friends, made some new ones and I managed to survive the onslaught of the Chinese. They arrived in their hundreds on several tour groups and it was an intense experience. It is difficult when there is no common language and the only words I know in Chinese are "expensive, Ming Dynasty, No problem, brown noser and delicious". You can imagine the quality conversations that went on there.

Hanging out with some of the younger members of the bonsai community was a highlight and I also got to spend some quality drinking time with my senpai Akiyama who is at this moment in time, enjoying his second Prime Ministers award at the Sakkafu-ten, pictured below. Sadly I couldn't stay in Japan for it, but the time we had together, drinking and talking about Bonsai was great. There are some people in life who understand implicitly exactly what you mean when you say something and he is one of them.

Akiyama's prize winning tree...been in the family for 30 years. I had the privilege once to touch it.

Anyways after driving back to Tokyo (six hours drive this time), I also managed to go to Kyoto which was disappointing in many ways, the autumn colours were poor and the Taikanten was a little underwhelming. Once again though I managed to chat with a load of Bonsai people and learnt some stuff. I also managed to pick up a scroll very cheaply that is an original from 1704 which is great. One day it will make an outing...until then.

One of the reasons that I felt unmoved to write was due to the raging egos that have been dominating my life for the last month or so. All problems in life seem to arise from the presence of other people, especially those who are unreasonable and think that they are the most important person in the world. I often wonder if it is a disease specific to Bonsai, like Sphaeropsis Tip Blight or it is something which affects the world at large...I turn on the TV and see X-Factor and realise that there is no escaping it. For Sphaeropsis there is a cure, broad spectrum fungicide (ideally two or three varieties) applied monthly throughout the growing season, ; but for rampant ego related problems?

For the rest of the month I will be getting back to what is important in Bonsai...concentrating on my own trees, my own people and trying to enjoy Christmas. Noelanders is just around the corner and preparations for that are going to be in full swing.

Apologies for the depressive tone of the blog, its not all bad, it's just the black monkey visiting but as a great man once said..."Inside every bag of sh@te there is a speck of gold, it might just be the wrapper off a Caramac, but it's there"

Satsuki a-go-go redux...

2011-10-21T13:30:00.001-07:00

Following on from the previous post, here is a before and after.

The tree is a kaho or gyoten of considerable age, estimated at 80 years which makes it a granddaddy...but it was in very healthy condition. It had been repotted earlier this year, pruned then and again at the end of june. Both times had been half for balancing the vigour and half for creating the style. The work now was to take that balanced vigour and use it to redevelop some serious problems.

The apex had two major branch structures in so one was removed and the remaining apex spread out as much as possible. There is still a gap on the top left but it will fill out. The pointing branch on the left was accentuated and other branches lowered and spread out. The second right branch was bent severely (for an azalea) and so i used raffia and 6mm alumi wire. When wiring satsuki, go big or go home on wire thickness....the thicker the better and wire it loosely. As previously mentioned a much more clip and grow style approach is being taken but that involves some wiring.

Once again poor camera shots but it is an attempt to do before and afters, even if it is just daily work. I realise this is what people want to see and there are a good number of professionals out there who do it and get a lot of love for it. I have been thinking about this for some time because i consider the work done here to be nothing special, like a lot of other published stuff. Still there is value in it so enjoy...

I guess this kind of pine styled azalea grown in a typical way into a triangle outline is the kind that was being criticised on the forum posts, and there is admittedly a standard shaping to many azaleas but therewithin lies a different aesthetic and appreciation of details rather than purely form alone. While the shape may be regular the quality and distribution of the flowers, the construction of the branching structure, the lack of scars and the overall health of the tree offer the possibility for appreciating technical and horticultural prowess as much as artistic ability.

A lack of obvious artistic input does not immediately mean the work is worthless as a bonsai. If judged on different criteria then it has value. The devil is in the details.

Anyways after a knee shattering flight i am in Birmingham for the weekend. Will be workng on a tree i demo'ed on earlier this year so maybe get some pics of that as well.

Satsuki a-go-go

2011-10-20T02:20:00.001-07:00

Once again it has been a while, but there you go. I have been mostly busy with work, here and there, did some more work in Poland. I have pictures somewhere when I get around to it...and now I am in the US. I have been working on Azaleas at a large collection, if not the largest collection outside of the motherland and it is a difficult task to get through them all. The work at this time of year is corrective wiring and pruning back vigorous shoots, thinning out the new growth since the summer pruning.
Due to the sheer number of trees here and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, I have had to modify normal techniques to fit with the client's situation and try to use a less labour intensive styling method. By that I mean no fine wiring. With Azaleas however with patience, long range planning and superb horticultural care then this is possible. I have the first two, the client provides the third. Since I begun to thin them out and they were repotted in the spring, they have responded very well and we are succeeding in keeping them in shape with mainly scissors alone. For many trees the styling has been done in stages so as to keep the tree from stalling. One common problem with azaleas and bonsai in general is that too much gets done at once and the tree cannot recover, so like an engine with a faulty clutch, it stalls. Ideally the engine should always tick over at fairly high revs, so even if you know a branch needs to be cut off, if it needs hitting back hard, then do it in stages, cut half back, wait for back budding, let them harden a little, then cut back and you get even more branching. That way in two years you have a finished branch structure whereas cutting back hard initially would cause a stall and you end up stationary.

Make sense? If not then apologies. It does in my head at 5 am.

Anyways, I saw this post on the interweb where Satsuki are described as kitsch and almost always styled as Pine Bonsai. (Note to all, this is not in any way an attack on the author, just a comment in general) Now, regular readers will know of my love hate relationship with Azaleas but they are very very misunderstood from a western perspective. It is a shame to see that people do not have the same, albeit a strange and slightly trainspotteresque appreciation of them as they do in Japan. The fact that they are just called "Satsuki" and all lumped together when in fact there are over 800 varieties used in Bonsai, each with their own special traits and growth habits shows a lack of understanding...but the same culture and mentality doesn't exist in the West (thankfully in some ways) so I guess I am barking up the wrong tree...speaking of which...this is an azalea styled like a pine

Apologies for the photo, it was taken by me, using an ipad...not exactly fit for purpose and the ipad has a terrible camera. Plus I was in the middle of a days work which is more important.

This is a Kinsai which was half dead so when I repotted earlier in the year , I ripped all the dead wood off it, changed the planting angle, put it into a John Pitt pot and reduced the number of branches. Most of them are unhealthy and may possibly die and so not much effort has gone into it thus far. I pruned it back a little more this time, did a little deadwood work and wired a few branches but no more than an hour spent on it. It recovered well and looks ok, but once a tree has started to die back, then on most varieties, it is a question of time. Kinsai is borderline, if the tree is healthy then it can survive with deadwood, if not so vigorous then the rot has gone deep. I am still hedging my bets.

The wood was cleaned up and treated with wood hardener and lime sulphur but the work on it is all natural. It is pretty cool actually and the best dead wood I have seen on an azalea. I hope it survives. Still, a few years enjoyment is better than none....but it is contrived and styled like a pine so I guess there is no value to it whatsoever?

Last day here and then I am off to Alabama for the weekend. Looking forwards to it....always fun in the south....kind of like the north in England.

Paris by easyjet...

2011-10-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

This was supposed to have been posted on wednesday but the wifi cut out on the bus...

Yesterday was a very long day just for two hours of work...and when i say work, i mean having lunch. Earlier this year while at the Chief's I met an American professor/artist who lives in Paris and was exhibiting in Tokyo. He was brought to the garden and I showed him around, explaining a little about bonsai and display etc. We hit it off well and briefly discussed doing a show in Paris at the gallery space he curates in the university. After an email conversation i decided to go and see it and discuss in person.

It was a last minute decision and as there was no immediate financial reward, i was looking to do it on a budget. However i wish that i had stumped up the extra £25 to go on the train because the 3am start to drive to Luton was not pleasant...nor was the 2hour delay, half of it in what can only be described as a cow shed next to a service road. The huddled masses of budget cheapskates watched on as a Servisair baggage handling truck drove around a corner and about ten bags flew off the bag of a dangerously overloaded flatbed truck. With no regard to the watching passengers, the driver threw the bags back on and carried on slowly. Might want to rethink the perspex wall there...or just keep us in the warm until you are ready to let us on the plane. Apparently the delay was due to "technical reasons"...two hours later we took off and flew uneventfully to Paris.

The £25 i saved by flying was now put into single figures because of the cost of a bus ride into town. Didnt figure that into my sums did I? I made the meeting on time and we discussed the space, what could be done and of course, Health and Safety. We ent most of the time however eating sushi (naturally in Paris :-) and discussing the joys and hell of living in a foreign culture.

After finishing, i had 7 hours until my return flight, so i walked for 30 minutes, looked at some big buildings...took a picture or two and then texted my mum to check if there was an earlier flight home. There was one at 6 so it seemed like the best thing to do and i went straight to the blemish on french architecture that is Charles De Gaulle airport and asked the easyjet people to change my flight. It is a little publicised service but they will change the return section of the journey free of charge. This is the second time i have used it and it saved me 4 hours of trudging around Paris on my own, or sitting in the terminal...so i deleted the mental letter of complaint i had written earlier and sat down for a well deserved sit and a cup of coffee.

Returning back and doing my sums, i saved nothing...it cost me more in terms of stress and hassle but was it worth it? Watch this space.

Today is ryanair to katowice...hell in a handbasket. Well the time there is good, just the flight is hell.

On a further note...today, monday, the news is out that cold winters are due to the sun...which is having a rest.

They seek him here...

2011-10-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy few weeks since the lazy summer, just getting back into things. I have picked up a few new converts to the cause and seen some positive signs for the future. Maybe there is light at the end of the polytunnel after all.

I had some workshops in Cheshire and up in the wabi wastelands of Northumbria recently, held up at Willowbog. I don't take pictures myself as I have a tendency to lose or break expensive electronics, so I will point in the direction of a site where you can see them....Bonsai Eejit. It is a good blog as well, so I suggest following it. I wish he had photoshopped this picture though...

Baldness as well all know is a sign of great virility.

Anyway, the workshops all went well and I think most people went away knowing more about Bonsai than they did when they started, which is the main thing. I have a slightly different approach to workshops than many others, sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.

Friday and Saturday were spent at the EBA event near dusseldorf in Germany. There were some Japanese over promoting Omiya and the possible world convention in 2017 there. I was asked to help out, but I ended up just sat chatting with John Pitt and Dave Prescott for the most part. There were some good trees and some not so good trees. One which took my breath away was a potentilla grown from nursery stock over 35 years. Absolutely awesome. I didn't take a picture but believe me it was great.

The trip was good for networking, I met some new people, including the chief of the French Association who was a great bloke. From the sounds of things, French Bonsai is on a very sustainable upward curve...I am going to try and get over some time. I also had chance to discuss the plan to take over the trees of around 8-9 people from the UK to Noelanders and display them in a similar way to the professionals do at Kokufu. The organisers of the show were enthusiastic and open to the idea. It is the future....i've tasted it.

If anybody in the UK wants to display at Noelanders but doesn't want the stress and hassle of taking it over, or needs help prepping the trees, then get in touch. Minimal fee is being charged as we need to get the UK back on track and pushing forwards.

I have also been fixing pots, a couple of pics here...but I'm only half way through because I broke the cheap diamond burrs I got off ebay and almost set fire to my kitchen with a propane burner that was a little on the powerful side. I will get it finished in snowy december and post it up.

Off to Paris tomorrow. I have to take the camera...otherwise there is no point me going.

Winter Protection

2011-09-27T09:29:00.001-07:00

After the devastation of the last few winters, it is essential that bonsai enthusiasts in the UK take precautionary steps to protect their trees from the harsh winter that will be coming. It may snow in October and we are likely to see some very low temperatures. Lots of factors are causing climate change, man made and natural, however what is certain is that if we have another harsh winter and trees are unprotected then we will have a lot of dead trees on our hands. I will admit that over the last two years I have lost close to £10,000 worth of trees. I cannot let that happen again. This happened because I didn't prepare for both the weather and my absence from the country during it.

Having learnt my lesson the hard way it seems perverse to me that many people are unwilling to invest a little time, effort and money in creating winter protection when they may have spent lots of it on their trees. Bonsai is a continual investment, if that is lost at any point, then all the previous work and effort has been wasted. Just for the want of a little extra spending, everything goes to waste. The same is true for soil, pots, fertiliser etc.

Bonsai are more susceptible to the cold as the roots in a pot will freeze much easier than those in the ground. The earth retains a lot of heat and only the surface layers of soil are seriously affected by the frost. In a pot, the entire root ball can freeze and cause fatal damage to the tree. This must be avoided....but how?

Trees must be protected from cold soil temperatures, over watering, and wind. To this end, for the few trees I own, I have constructed a small poly tunnel, in which there is a heating bed to maintain soil temperature above freezing, a fan heater to keep the air above freezing and hopefully settling on the tunnel itself. All delicate trees will be buried within the heating bed which contains a heating element attached to a thermostat which will activate the heating once the soil temperature drops below 3 degrees C. The idea is not to keep the trees growing but rather to stop any damage. The lack of air flow through the poly tunnel will also keep moisture loss to a minimum and so I cannot imagine that any water will be needed over the winter.

Poly tunnel frame, ground prepared for the bed etc. My mum wasn't overly pleased.

Constructing and choosing the materials was relatively easy. A little though was required to find the most cost effective way but carefully searching the internet and recalling some long forgotten physics helped.

The poly tunnel was purchased from ebay for £90, 4m x 2m, with careful packing it can fit a good sized collection. The heating element and thermostat were also purchased from the internet at a price of £80. A cubic metre of perlite and expanded clay was delivered to my door for £120. We had some old fence boards at home which helped but timber to build a bed can be acquired for £30. A fan heater £20, plus RCD breaker and extension cable for £10. The electricity used over the winter will be minimised through setting the thermostat as low as possible. In total, around £400 spent to safeguard the current financial investment and six, seven years of work and some future masterpiece trees....even if I do say do myself.

The bed was constructed and the path of the 25 m cable planned out. It was just as planned. The walls of the bed are old fence panels fixed together and held in by posts. It isn't the most permanent of structures but it will last the winter

A very thin layer of perlite was spread out over the base of the bed and the heating wire set out. On top of this, about 15 to 20 cm depth of perlite. If the temperatures were much higher, then over heating would be an issue, however we are aiming at minimal temperatures, just keeping it above freezing

I chose Perlite as the medium for the heating bed as it came out on top in several important factors; specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity and price per volume. It requires less energy to heat up, it retains heat and moisture incredibly well and is cheap. I will reuse it for my potting mix for freshly collected trees, whips, sick trees etc. I am a firm believer in Perlite for certain situations and having a cubic metre next spring is not a problem, I will keep the bed for problem trees I think. I topped off the perlite with a layer of expanded clay, slightly more expensive but heavier and larger particle sized, offering another layer of insulation and stopping the perlite from blowing away either from the wind or the hosepipe. The only issue with Perlite is the dust that comes with it, breathing it in is not a good idea, so I opened a hole in the bag, stuck the hosepipe in and made it damp. The hosepipe was used to stop any more dust from flying up when pouring out as well. A dust mask is advised.

All the trees in, some are buried in the bed pots and all, other stronger trees are left unprotected but will be wrapped when the weather turns.

You may notice that the deciduous trees are still in leaf and it is incredibly early to be preparing, however I am away almost all of October and there have been long range forecasts which predict snow soon. Better safe than sorry.

Heater and grow lamp. Heater is not pointing towards trees, on the lowest frost guard setting and on 1KW rather than the max 2KW setting. Lamp is above pines, junipers, yew and rosemary trees Still a considerable distance though, at most 1.5 m, closest is 1m

One other feature I have included which I have used every year in the smaller greenhouse is the grow light. A 250 W system which gives artificial sunlight, as close to the normal spread of wavelengths from the sun as possible. Why do this? All deciduous tree which lose their leaves do not need sunlight whatsoever and could be kept in a pitch black garage until close to spring time. Those evergreen trees which still have leaves are slightly different and require a little sun to see them happily through the winter. The idea is not to keep the growing throughout the winter, but just to keep the engine at idle and not stall. Once spring begins and we have natural sunlight, the trees start off quicker and grow much better. Mediterranean species and Japanese pines and junipers are not used to the grim Northern winters and so a touch of sunlight is essential for happy trees. It is not essential to keep them alive, but just to keep them happy I would advise investing in one. Prices start from £80 for a small system. I run mine on a timer, giving around 3 hours of sunlight a day, from November through until end of February. At around 1 Kwh of electricty per day that is roughly 15 p a day, lets say tops £20 a winter. The bulb has a tendency to blow or need to be replaced every four months, so thats another £15 a year. I'm still well under the £10k and years of work I threw away over the last few years.

Protect the electrics...the big white box is the ballast for the light. The other box is the thermostat. They are splash proof but use a safety RCD at the main socket just in case. With a 250 W heating cable, a 250 W light and a 1 KW heating fan, there is a lot of potential power going through there.

In conclusion...the basic rules for winter protection are to:

Keep the roots from freezing, expanding and dying. This is achieved by insulation and minimal watering. Regulate water intake, bury or wrap trees in something...even snow is better than exposure to wind.
Shelter from winds, especially the cold north winds
Allow the trees to go dormant. Do not over heat the greenhouse and keep the trees from going dormant.
Get as much natural sunlight as possible. Ideally supplement with grow lights.

Please give more consideration to the winter...even if it is just burying the trees in the ground, you don't have to go too far...just act now before it is too late.

Autumn is here...

2011-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since the last post and I have been up to a few things, including another outing. This last weekend saw an interesting event in Crawley, namely Bonsai World 2011. It was the first time it had been held and was a good weekend, I got to meet up with the usual suspects and catch up, have a chat and look at some trees. There were some lovely trees on show, some at a high level, others not so, but all well presented and everyone had fun with it, which lets face it, is the point of doing bonsai. It was a well put together show and congratulations to all involved.

In an unusual turn of events I chose to put on a display, a favourite tree of mine was just about ready to go and it seemed appropriate to get it out. Although not quite in colour, there is a hint of red coming through there and it is perfect for the season as we are just about to start autumn and soon the leaves around us will be on fire...not literally I hope. The tree I displayed has previously been seen at a never to be repeated exhibition up North a couple of years ago around the same time. It is a sadly not often seen variety outside of Japan and one of my favourite trees...this Sumac or to be a bit more specific, Rhus succedanea.

It is potted in a Shidei or purple clay Chinese pot from around 100 years ago, there is no seal but it is a Meiji period design. It has been well used and has developed a good patina around the whole pot without sustaining any significant damage. It has taken on quite a shine which does not come from oiling the pot up before exhibiting which is something I am not keen on. The black lacquered board it is displayed on is the same one used in my Joy of Bonsai display a while back. I do have other boards, including a bamboo one I did think of using but it seemed slightly unseasonal and also clunky. The simplicity of the black rectangle appealed to me...and both Apple and Samsung apparently.

Only one person asked me why I didn't use an accent or a scroll, and the answer was that it didn't need it. The space was small enough as it was and the feel of the tree would have been destroyed if there was anything else going on there. To have created a busy display which conformed to a three item combination would have destroyed the simplicity of the tree and left it feeling mechanical and contrived. I had an ideal early autumn scroll but it was slightly too long and the colour too much of a contrast against the white back drop. It was a shame as I wanted to use it. I was happy to be on the end of the row as the extra space next to the display was helpful. It also helped to have some stones on the other side so I wasn't over powered by some massive tree.

The art of bonsai display is the art of successfully using space to create the impression of something larger than what is seen with the eyes. Space can be oppressive if seen with preconceptions of "tree, scroll, accent", there is a desire to fill it up. If freed from such self imposed conventions, the space can be liberating, allowing the viewer to imagine.

I am not sure how the displays that I have done in the past have been taken and I don't know if people expect for me to be displaying big impressive trees to show off my skills and professionalism and win prizes. I personally take the opportunity to show that there are alternatives, different aesthetic ideas and motivations for doing bonsai...

And then show off on the Blog.

Thanks to everyone at the show for making it fun, but especially to Simon Haddon who let me use his camera because I typically forgot mine.

If you think all the above is a bit pretentious and speaking in riddles, it's because I have been reading some books. Aye...proper ones. Been very enlightening.

"He who only knows, without seeing, does not understand the mystery. Even should every detail of beauty be accounted for by the intellect, does such a tabulation lead to beauty? ...The scholar of aesthetics...tries to make seeing proceed from knowing, but this is a reversal of the natural order. The eye of knowledge cannot, thereby, see beauty"

from The Unknown Craftsman by Yanagi Soetsu

So does that mean I wasted all my time reading books?

"A man should avoid displaying deep familiarity with any subject...it is impressive when a man is always slow to speak, even on subjects he knows thoroughly, and does not speak at all unless questioned."

from Tsurezuregusa or Essays in Idleness by Kenko

Oh...I will shut up then.

Chinese Drunkard

2011-08-17T04:58:00.001-07:00

In the course of my recent writings, I have found the internet a constant source of amazement and time wasting. None more so than reading the poetry of Li Bai, one of the great Chinese poets of the Tang Dynasty so I have come to learn. Now he is a man of great distinction in my book, possibly due to his incredible fondness for alcohol, the moon and rambling around in the mountains.

I sometimes look back in history, see the simple and pure lives they had and wonder how far we have actually come with civilisation. Sure, we have ipads and can now watch sky sports for free, but are we really happy?

Maybe if we take Li Bai's advice we will be...

If heaven loved not wine,

A Wine Star would not be in heaven;

If earth loved not wine,

The Wine Spring would not be on earth.

Since heaven and earth love wine,

Need a tippling mortal be ashamed?

The transparent wine, I hear,

Has the soothing virtue of a sage,

While the turgid is rich, they say,

As the fertile mind of the wise.

Both the sage and the wise were drinkers,

Why seek for peers among gods and goblins?

Three cups open the grand door to bliss;

Take a jugful, the universe is yours.

Such is the rapture found in wine,

That the sober shall never inherit.

I will buy a pint for the first person to tell me how I got to reading that poem....

Planning for the future

2011-08-12T06:06:00.000-07:00

So a small window of opportunity in the weather and schedule allowed me to finally get around to working on the juniper that featured in a few posts ago. Many thanks to Les Storey whose tree it was/is , the tea and sarcastic comments.

It is a big garden juniper which was rescued from a garden up in the Wirral many years ago, then languished in a pot for many more years before I got my hands on it. It was very weak and had almost no roots, so for the last three or four years after repotting it has been just building up strength (that is another way of saying I have not found the time to work on it). Now it is strong enough and has a good root mass in a loose soil mix (20% garden compost, 80% Perlite). More importantly the live veins have settled down and thickened along the main arteries up to the only living branch. Although there is a lot of green and wood up top, only one thinish branch remains which needs to be fed. This leads to thickening of the live vein along the section feeding it.

My plan, right from the start had always been to graft some Itoigawa whips into the trunk and redevelop the tree with branches lower down and with a workable foliage. The lower trunk is actually quite powerful and if the bottom section only can be used then there is potential for a very powerful, chunky little chuhin sized tree.

Obviously a lot of dead wood carving to be done in the future, but the main job now is to get the live vein thinned down to close to where we want the final vein to be and get the grafts in. Any detail work on the dead wood can be done once I am certain of graft success and the top of the tree is removed. I will want to use some of the jin up top as well and there will be some sand blasting to be done once it gets into a bonsai pot. The carving today was simple to reduce the live vein down and then allow it to dry out.

Here you can see me hard at work. It does happen every now and again and yes, I do use power tools.

Graft point and whip are prepared. The channel is deep enough so it is at least 50% buried. Cambium layers are revealed and best attempts are made to join the two together.

The whips are screwed into place. I found some mini-screws in Japan which are the absolute best for this purpose, they are only a few mm thick, long and strong. You just have to be careful with the impact driver and not go to quickly. They will never be removed but a few didn't go all the way in before the head got mashed up. They will need to be cut off carefully later.

The finished tree. Two grafts, one front,. on back were done, just before a torrential downpour of rain, hence the roughess of it all. The main job was to get the grafts done now, so it has a bit of the growing season left to help join up. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one to see some potential in this. Obviously it will never be a masterpiece compared to a mountain tree but it was better than throwing it out.

The foliage on top was reduced to allow sunlight in and also to stimulate the tree into growing. It has realised that half the foliage is gone and puts effort into growth. This will help us with the callusing. The reduced live vein up top and also around the back, is helping to channel the majority of flow around the whips. If this does not happen then the two wont join up.

Due to the rushed nature of the job, I am dubious as to the success rate, I think the back will take but not the front. Still I have more whips and plenty of time. I doubt we will see this tree anywhere near finished in the next ten years. Still, step two in the plan is achieved, we shall have to see how effective it is. It has benefitted from several years of being ignored, now in order to allow it to join and then gain strength, it will be ignored for at least a full season. This time next year will be the next time I will look at working it. If the growth is very vigorous on either the top of the tree or the whips then it may require attention.

If we are successful, further reduction of the foliage up top initially to next to nothing, then nothing, along with further thinning of the live vein will be next on the list of jobs to do. It will need to be put into a bonsai pot and more suitable soil mix in the near future after the grafts are full taken. Although I foresee no problems with that, there is a small risk and it is not until I have reached a relatively risk free point will I spend the necessary time on the dead wood. As it is, the deadwood being fairly soft will rot away if too much is done too quickly. So waiting is the key for the moment.

I will do a proper article on it later (if I get chance)

There are some trees which can be made quickly, there are others which require a little more long term view. There are very few trees that have nothing good about them or any redeeming feature. It just depends how long you are prepared to wait and to what lengths you are willing to go.

Text for the book comes slowly at times, quickly at others...possibly due to the fact we are absolutely thrashing India at the moment in the Cricket.

This morning before play started I wrote this, which seems apt...

The fundamental point to remember when appreciating Bonsai is that you are looking at a natural object which has been artificially styled and maintained. The lengths to which this is taken are aesthetic and philosophical decisions, yet the most important fact remains that bonsai is a natural object that is being appreciated, albeit a highly stylised one.

I need a harsh editor I think

Shohin on acid

2011-08-10T06:10:00.001-07:00

Doing some research for the e-book, I came across this page which is about tickets and posters of shohin shows from 40 years ago onwards...love it.

For people who think that the Japanese are too formulaic and stuck in their ways...

The red text up in the top corner says "The sound of spring bursts forth" or words to that effect. You can bet the hand that is holding the mike belongs to some lovely young model as well...

In praise of British Craftsmanship....

2011-08-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

and also a British inability to update the blog. I can assure you that it is not because I have been sat around doing nothing, but rather having my hands full with a lot of non bonsai related things and also doing a lot of translating and typing. Regular readers may be looking forward to an update on the proposed e-book...they will also be very aware of the fact that I am all talk and no trousers and it is very slowly forthcoming. I get side tracked to easily and have been doing too much research on various different potters, kilns and ceramic techniques from the Edo period.

I have been trying not to work on trees too much of late, concentrating on the books is my biggest priority, I have people counting on me which is always a bad thing, but the pressure does produce results. The trees I have been working on lately, I always forgot to take before and after shots, plus a lot of the work wasn't that impressive anyway. A few new customers and new workshop converts to the Saruyama way. I was in Poland recently doing a workshop and apparently it went down very well. Hopefully they will come to the next workshop scheduled in October....hopefully the Mugo I bent seven shades out of will still be alive...if it is, I will post a picture. We did discuss the fact that the tree had no future otherwise...but still, I absolutely hate to kill trees...especially ones that are not mine.

I do have a few new things to talk about though, namely some stands which have found their way back into my possession. One of the important aspects of the development of Japanese Bonsai was the relationships between craftsmen and the objects that was commissioned specifically for a purpose. Take the development of display stands for example. Before the Meiji period, they simply did not exist in the way we know today. Bonsai was an outdoor pursuit and stands were not necessary. As the development of Bonsai took things to a level where they were being displayed in exhibitions or in the home, there was a need for display stands. Master craftsmen, I guess we would call them cabinet makers, were commissioned to create stands that would suit the purpose of display. It would appear that the first attempts were so sturdy that they would withstand the weight of a garden tree. After a consultation process, a happy medium was reached between utility and beauty. The process continued and soon several master craftsmen were producing some superbly crafted pieces which are still used today.

In order for western Bonsai to reach the highest possible level, the same kind of consultation and patronage must occur between craftsmen here. Thankfully, we have some very skilled table makers and potters in the UK and some very beautiful pieces are created. I am lucky enough to know Doug Mudd very well. he is a table maker based in the North West and has been steadily improving with every table he makes and is now responsible for about half the tables on display in most UK shows. I have asked him to create several tables for me, each one a specific commission but with a little room for his own personal touch. One table was for a display that I had hoped to put on at a Suiseki exhibition in Madrid a few years ago.

Sadly, my request was a little on the impossible side; I had asked for the top to be made from a single piece of wood and to be as thin as possible. At the time, Doug had discussed his concerns and they were duly proved to be correct as the table warped and cracked within an hour due to the humidity and warmth of Madrid. I returned it to Doug for repairs and just the other day it made it's way back here...looking better than it did originally. It now has a brass rail to keep the legs from warping, and a couple of pieces of wood in the surface to stop it from cracking and warping any more. It is not quite flat but there is the beauty of it. The damage and the repairs have made it better. My hat is off to the man.

Hopefully I will get a chance to use it. I have one thing in mind but it is a few years off completion and it may be a little weak...oh well, another table will be necessary then.

Another two stands which have pride of place in my collection are by a long time friend and student of mine, John Brocklehurst, who turned his hand to making some root stands in his spare time. You will see more of his trees coming up in the future after already having won a few merits and commendations. You will also see some of his stands no doubt...after asking for advice on the designs and finishes, the results were pretty spectacular for a first few attempts. I was impressed at any rate.

If anyone is interested in commissioning any works, or indeed there is anyone who is looking for advice on designs or anything then get in touch. The only way forward is through working together.

I will be sat in front of the PC for the most of this coming week, although I will be going to work on a tree of mine (kind of) on Thursday. A garden Juniper rescued from the Wirral and has been awaiting my attentions for some time. I will give you an update afterwards, but here is the before shot...

Don't expect any miracles...

The only constant is change

2011-07-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

"All is flux, nothing is stationary"...this is true for everything in life, including Bonsai. Everyday our little trees change and grow, we see the changing of the seasons reflected in our trees as we watch the new shoots grow, flowers blossom and finish, candles grow and leaves turn colour before dropping off. The cyclical nature of the universe is wrapped up in our trees, they are constantly in flux, as are we...believe me, I am totally fluxed at the moment.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, it has been a very busy two weeks. The photo shoot will Bill Valavanis and Jonathan Singer went very well but it tested my bowing skills to the max. Running around to all the big names in the Bonsai world and trying to balance the needs of the photographer with the need to be polite and respectful of The Chief's (and therefore my) standing with everyone was an interesting experience. Not at all negative but it required some serious consideration and carefully chosen words. I think that I did a good job and even had a bit of a laugh with Mr. Kimura...a first in my Bonsai career. He was actually pretty friendly to me, except when he too criticised my Bonsai Focus article for not being dramatic enough...you cannot win I guess. At least it meant that he approved of Ryan's work, which lets face it, was pretty damn good.

After a week of very interesting photo shoots I made the long trip to Kennet Square in Pennsylvania, home of the finest single collection of trees in the US, if not the western world. I have been here for a few days working on Satsuki, getting them into shape after flowering and back on track for a good wiring and styling session in October/November time. Now is not the best time to be wiring satsuki as the bark is very tender and tends to scar very easily, especially when using heavy wire. As time is limited and the trees numerous, wiring is being left until a later date and I am just pruning my way through them. I had repotted a good number of them in the Spring and so it was good to see that many had responded well and had grown dramatically. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a good outcome to your work. It is always a concern when working on customers trees that after you have left they go down hill. Thankfully that is not the case here and several trees which were on deaths door are now pushing strong shoots and looking good.

Pruning satsuki can feel very much like topiary at times but it should not be...the essential idea is to remove as much of the woody, thick and short branches in favour of new green shoots, prune back to stimulate new growth and to prune in such a way that it will grow into shape. There are some advanced techniques for doing that, but at 3 am after several Heineken and a flight to catch tomorrow, I won't go into them. Plus, I have to keep a few secrets to myself ;-)

Tomorrow I will be in flux again, finally returning back to the UK and home to my own bed. I have slept there less than 10 times this year. 10 times. It is enough to cause divorce proceedings. Thankfully I will be at home for some time and will be basing myself around a computer for a vast majority of it. I have text to write for two books now after being asked to write some high level text for the photograph project. This will be a challenge as I have to appeal to a non-bonsai audience who is erudite and highly critical. Explaining Bonsai ideas to a bonsai audience is hard enough. I will have to get my serious organised hat on and schedule everything so that I am not wasting time catching up on missed TV and the Women's world cup, which by the way is phenomenal value for money. Maybe it is just the great coverage in the US, or the genuine heart with which they play but I'd rather watch Jill Scott than John Terry.

There will be changes afoot on the saruyama homepage, I have been going over my bandwidth limit so things are getting fixed. Keep a look out for that and also some postdated blog posts. I have about four or five little projects that I haven't gotten around to.

Stay fluxy (San Diego).

The People of the World Will Surely be Victorious

2011-06-20T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Chief went off to China and I got sunburned cutting candles outside before going to a home depot style shop called Joyful Honda to buy some miniature screws. I mean tiny screws.

I am supposed to be back in the UK by now, sat watching rain affected sports events and thinking about which flavour crisps to eat next but due to a fantastically interesting project under the guidance of Bill Valavanis, I have extended my stay for another week. Bill arrives tomorrow with a famous cameraman to take pictures of Bonsai to create a very artistic picture book. All profits are going to charity to help the Tsunami relief so it is all for a good cause. I am very much looking forward to it, even if it means my reunion with Cheese and Onion Walkers is put back a couple of weeks. The sacrifice will be worth it.

Candle cutting continues apace, I have had to keep reminding the youths to cut cleanly and true, no strange angles or the new buds will form in strange positions. Another important thing that they fail to do is to clean and disinfect their scissors after each and every tree. This prevents the transmission of fungal infections from tree to tree, all the more important of late as there is a new type of Pine fungal infection raging in Japan at the moment. Dont know what is called in English but it is pretty bad on the trees.

Lots to do today before they come so I will leave you with this, from which the title of the post was taken... a wonderful song from the Cultural Revolution....

(For any Americans that may take offence, there is a more than a slight hint of irony in the use of communist propaganda in relation to a country of which the elite wealthy are buying more luxury goods than they can stuff in their suitcases while the peasants which make them stupid amounts of money starve in the countryside. Please do not take it seriously ;-)

Here on my own...

2011-06-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

All on my own...How good it feels to be alone...Tonight. I haven't felt so alive in years. Only click the link if you love the 80's...which quite frankly, everyone does.

The reason for such indulgent reminiscing in the past is that I have just spent a very enjoyable night working alone, listening to Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Smiths whilst Candle Cutting the Chiefs most famous Black Pine, the infamous Seiryu, and then working on fixing a customers azalea which was in need of being sorted.

It was a very refreshing experience to actually sit and enjoy doing Bonsai again, something which has been missing from this and the last trip to the Chief's...and I realise why. I was sat alone without having to worry about what the other apprentices were doing or not doing. The Chief popped out around 9 and poked his head through the door, smiled sheepishly and said "I'm off to bed...I'm knackered". I smiled back and said "G'night". Those are the times where nothing is said, but everything is understood. It is hard to explain the relaitionship between a master and apprentice, but I have spent more time with him than I have anyone else except my own parents.

That is pretty crazy when you actually sit down and consider it. It's like being married...except you can't get divorced.

Anyway, I had decided to push on with getting some important work done because frankly, nobody else is capable or willing to do it. The Chief leaves for four days in China tomorrow, then from the 22nd I am busy with another project, so all the important stuff needs to get down before then. Things have been stressed of late, mainly due to the entire lack of application, effort and common sense of the younger apprentices. I don't want to sound like an old man but if the idiots that I am surrounded by are representative of the youth of today then I despair for the future of the human race. It's not that they are bad people but they just have a complete lack of desire and difficulty following the simplest of instructions. I always check with them to see if they have understood what I said...making a point of getting them to repeat my request, but stlll it all goes wrong somewhere. The next day, the pont I tried to teach them the day before is forgotten and the same mistake is repeated.

It drives me to despair which is then made even worse when the Chief rips into all of us, especially me recently for some stupid mistake which could have been so easily avoided by either asking me, or thinking before acting. There is only so much you can do and I seem to spend all my time looking after three children aged 40, 29 and 22....none of whom seem to listen to a word I say. I ask myself if I am at fault.

One thing is for certain, it is putting me off ever having an apprentice of my own...if that ever arose.

Anyways...enough whinging, back to the Bonsai. At the moment we are finishing off the Satsuki pruning, working on the late flowering varieties and customers trees that are brought in. The general rule of thumb is to get it done by the end of June, then you will depinitely have a good set of flowers next year, leave the pruning into July and the if the weather turns bad, there is a chance not as many flowers will be set. We are also working on Candle cutting Pines.

I had to properly shout at the two youngest apprentices a couple of days ago for not coming to me before starting Candle cutting. Not only had one of the cut them candles of a tree I am in the process of styling and wanted to do myself, but they also started from the strongest trees. Both of which are signs of a lack of brain function. After shouting at them for a couple of minutes, during which they actually got a bit scared as it doesn't happen that often, I sat them down and we had a twenty minute discussion on how to make Bonsai, particularly with regards to the seemingly dull aspects such as candle cutting, which they approach as some kind of horticultural necessity rather than an essential technique in the styling of a tree.

I asked the youngest lad to tell me how to make a Bonsai...he couldn't come up with a decent answer. The other lad made an attempt to explain but was off the mark a little. It is a difficult to answer question because there is no one technique, no one area that is any more important than the other. As I tried to explain to them, it begins with something as seemingly unimportant as the little metal staples we make to keep the fertiliser cakes in place and ends with displaying the tree at the highest level possible.

If effort is found lacking at any of the steps along the way then the tree wil not improve. If the legs of the metal staples are too short and the wire is too thin, then the sparrows will flick the fertiliser cakes off the pot in search of insects, then the tree doesn't get any food, doesn't set strong buds, branches die and it needs to be restyled from scratch again.

Wiring, carving and bending big branches are not the be all and end all of making a tree, they are simply the starting point. The real creation of a tree comes through carefully applying the correct techniques, both horticultural and technical and paying attention to details. Everyday details make the difference between success and faliure, not wiring and finishing a tree in day.

Anyways, back on track...After finishing of the Blue Dragon, I began work on this Azalea. It is a Matsunami, an old variety which doesn't thicken very much and has the tendency to grow thin, long branches. It has multi coloured flowers and is one I like. I bought one a couple of weeks that will feature soon. The problem with multicoloured varieties is the dominance of one parent or one colour. If the tree is allowed to grow au naturel, then within a few years it will all coe one colour...red. Red is the dominant colour and once it starts to grow, it spreads. Withina couple of years a white flower can become red, slowly working it's way through speckled, striped and then full colour. It is a one way transition, once it has becom red it can't go back.

Apologies for the poor pictures and makeshift back ground but I was trying to get finished. As you can see the main branch on the right has a lot of red, an awful lot of very strong red. A mistake was made when the tree was early in development and that branch was made from a red flowering branch...a school boy error. As the tree has developed. the red flowers have gotten redder and spread to other branches. there are entire branches on the tree which are red. If possible, the best ting to do is to prune out the red branches entirely as you find them.

Sometimes, the entire branches needs to be replaced, but that takes time if there is thickness to it. In the case of this tree, the character branch is entirely red, but in order to correct it, two branches of "normal" non read Matsunami have been grafted in. The grafts are of the normal multi coloured variety and so there will be variation in the flowers. Sadly it means removing large sections of the tree.

Once the red branches have been removes, the branch appears very bare and slightly lacking in volume and ramification. This will take three years to fill back in, unless the grated branches go gangbusters on us and grow like crazy. After a rough prune, then more detailed pruning, cutting out the hard, thick areas and unnecessary branches, The main branch was very carefully wired and set roughly in position. As it is a grafted branch, extra care needs to be taken so as not to tear it off at the base. Grafts are generally only attached by the cambum layers and there is a lack of structural integrity to the join, so they can often pull apart easily, even after several years of healthy growth.

The finished tree looks like this. A few years of development on the character branch and it will be quite a nice tree. As it stands, anybody who looks at it simply says, "too much red". This is a particular characteristic to Satsuki enthusiasts and half the fun of growing them.There is an obssessive nature to getting the perfect mix of flowers, a perfect example of that variety. We are not to this level of concern at all in the west, which may be a good thing!

Anyway, it is past 1 am and I need to be up in the morning to drive the Chief to the airport. I have a week left in Japan and to be honest, I can't wait to get back and away from the stress of looking after younger apprentices. That said, I will definitely miss working on trees, going through the different stages of creating a Bonsai. Especially enjoyable when done alone...

Do you like my pebble

2011-06-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

This last week has seen pretty terrible weather, we are still firmly in the rainy season, however we have pretty much finished the azaleas on time and are moving on to the candle cutting on Black and Red Pines. It is also a time for Suiseki...traditionally a summer pursuit for those in the Bonsai world.

Life is still not getting any easier, I had to shout at the youths yesterday for being pillocks. They started working on trees without letting me know and one of those I had been working on for the last three years. It is most annoying to have someone else work on it and ut two years of work to waste. Still...what can you do?

Tomorrow we have a group coming over and so the Chief asked me to put on a few displays...the first time in a while he has done it. It was as much fun as alwaysmatching up scrolls and tables etc. They will undoubtedly change tomorrow morning when the Chief takes a look but here they are...

The first display is a Kurama stone, displayed on a half bamboo table. The scroll, written by the wife of a good customer reads "Kan UN" which translates as Floating clouds, rolling by slowly in the sky.

The second display is a tree of unknown origin, but it has fruits on which are yet to ripen. It is displayed on a very rough looking irregular Ji-ita . The scroll shows a willow branch hanging down wth a cicada clinging on. It is a little too early for their godawful constant crying but I love the scroll and it fits in the tea room perfectly.

Apologies but I am falling asleep...I have a few more pics but they will have to wait...along with more text on them. For now, it's bed time

Me and the moon...

2011-06-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

It's a lovely night with the moon in the sky...

After another overtime session in the work room where I was the last man standing after the young lads left to go to bed...go figure, I went to buy an ice cream and on my way home I was struck by the beauty of the moon tonight.

There is something extraordinarily special about a partially obscured moon, drifting in and out of view, occassionaly illuminating the world below. I stood and watched the clouds drift slowly by, and forgot that I was in one of the worlds most populated cities. In the distance I could hear the lonely cry of a lost and solitary frog who has found his way by mistake into the garden. and was crying out desperate for a mate I felt there was at least one kindred spirit in the world and it was perfect.

The subtle nature of Japanese aesthetics appeal to me, always have I guess, hence my path in life. Sometimes it is better to not show everything off and keep a little hidden. We all know it is there, but sometimes imagination is much better than the real thing. Anyway, I'm knackered. Here is the best picture I could take before my battery died.

Summer's just begining baby...

I thought my life would get easier..

2011-06-14T06:22:00.001-07:00

Instead it's getting harder...

So I haven't updated the blog in a while, I did write an entry last night but my computer died before I posted it. I then gave up and went to bed...it was after midnight after all.

So the Chief has come back from Germany where he had a great time by all accounts. Since he has been back he has been about as much fun to be around as...something not fun at all. It started off alright but then he has descended into his normal rollercoaster of emotional turmoil which is accentuated by jet lag and internal and external politics, a lack of motivation from the apprentices and the fact that he isn't as young as he once was.

Getting back to the previous thread, I went to the auction and it was pretty much a disaster. Despite doing a thorough recce of the stuff up for sale, nothing seemed worth dropping large amounts of money on, all the Chinese pots were damaged in some way or they were being sold by persona non grata. There were a few nice trees but our respective valuations didnt match up. I discussed potential purchases with a trusted friend of the garden who has his finger on the pulse so much he wears a nurses uniform in his spare time. My valuations were not too far away from his, and after setting some prices, I took pictures of the most likely items and emailed them to the Chief on his mobile phone which he looked at half a world away. How 21st century Bonsai has changed.

Everything that was worth a look at came and went for more than I was wlling to pay, including a lovely but unusual bamboo stand. It allegedly came out from some famous collection but netiher I nor my advisor had ever seen it before, it had not been in any books that we had seen and it was a little on the "I'm not prepared to drop $20,000 of someone elses money on a whim" side of things. It came up and went for almost three times more than I wanted it for...but thankfully, the Chief saw it when he got back and said I had made the right decision.

Times like this it pays to have spent the evenings of an apprenticeship looking through the hundreds of books, exhibition catalogues and collections that are available. If the object is in a book somewhere then it lends a slight air of authenticity to it and it can be traced back to somewhere rather than just listening to some sales spiel. Knowledge is power...as is the ability to pretend you are stupid, which is just as important. The whole poker playing atmosphere is fraught with subtle implcations and the unsaid but understood.

When it came round to me selling the stuff for the Chief, you could have heard a pin drop. Not a single bid from anyone except Morimae who bought a stand for much more than it should have been just to save face for me. It didn't help much but the Chef was happy that nothing sold...proves to him that his presence is essential at events like this.

We are allegedly really behind on the work (despite being ahead of the schedule from last year and every year previous to that) and as such I have been burning the midnight oil a little Working on into the night to get stuff done...iIt is a pleasant reminder of the joys of apprenticeship and how slack I become when I am by myself...but then we have a different work ethic in the West, based on efficiency and planning rather than just running around in circles until you get exhausted.

Speaking of exhausted, we went to the house of a customer today who has been coming to the garden for the last 7 or 8 years. A purely satsuki man who is a great laugh and has a big heart. We have always got on well and have a good understanding of each other. A couple of years ago he developed throat cancer after a lifetime of heavy smoking and is no unable to speak because he has a hole where his voice box once was. For two years he didn't come to the garden and nobody saw him, but everytime I was back in Japan I would make the effort to go around and see if he needed any work doing, which he always did. Cancer tends to take priority over Bonsai no matter how much of an enthusiast you are. It caused a few problems with the Chief because he was annoyed that I was being asked to go instead of him but it wasn't like that in a bad way. The customer was embarrassed to be seen in such a state, especially as it is very difficult to understand what he is trying to say at times. I guess he found it easier to ask me as we had history and I am also a foreigner, so our communication had always been bordering on the non verbal anyway. Thankfully he is pretty much back to his normal jovial self and The Chief, myself and Naganuma went around today to do all his post flowering pruning. He was happy to have us around and spent the whole day making rude gestures and playing around with an air hose, but he did it with a smile on his face.

One of the most important part of a Bonsai professionals life is the relationships you build up with customers, through good times and bad, when they are buying trees and not. Obviously there is a financial reward for the work done, but there is almost always a much more valuable reward for getting out of bed at 5.30 and working like a slave for 9 hours solid. Bonsai is more than just pretty little trees in pots...it is a chance to make people happy. As pretentious as that may sound...it is true.

Tomorrow I will start on with Candle Cutting on the pines in the garden. We have about 75 to do in a week or so. Thankfully the Chief is away for most of the week...and I still have to get some images together for my book! Oh well...to bed now.

Forgot to post this here..

2011-06-10T01:29:00.000-07:00

This was originally posted on my website on Wednesday 8 Jun 2011

Day tripper

Long days and busy nights have meant I haven't posted anything recently. Been busy while the Chief is in Germany. Lots of work been done, satsuki shows are finished, plowing through the deflowering and also wired a couple more trees. In a throwback to my apprentice days I worked until midnight tonight, but unlike those days, I actually got loads of work done. It isn't until you actually graduate and your income depends on working quickly and efficiently that you learn how to not waste time. What would have taken me two days to do when I was apprenticing will now take me 3 or 4 hours and the quality is better.

Anyways, tomorrow is the big auction. The stuff I have to sell is in the van and I will be off at 5.30 tomorrow morning to have a good shufti around and see what is going on. The pressure to not waste money or the opportunity for getting something saleable is fairly high. Still, it's nice that I have been entrusted with it.

I guess.

I was looking around at photos for the e-book thing and I came across this lovely snap. Taken by the Chief's wife when we were at Niagara Falls last year. The Chief was demonstrating at the 2nd National Bonsai show in Rochester and Bill took us up to Niagara Falls. When the Chief was peering over the edge, I couldn't resist trying to push him over. Well, pretending to anyway. Don't think he has ever seen the picture...

Today has been a long day, a 2 hour drive from 5 am to see Akiyama, mt senpai who has married the Chiefs middle daughter and has given us two lovely baby girls. It was nice to just sit and chat with someone intelligent about the Bonsai world and trees, tools and fishing.

Sleep....until tomorrow

Summer is the time

2011-06-03T16:29:00.001-07:00

"Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world."

After the right kind of day yesterday, last night we just got drunk. Still, I woke up this morning and taking a walk around the garden I realised again why I love Bonsai. You just can't beat it for seasonal beauty. It makes me drunk with the belief that all is right with the world.

The beauty of Bonsai is not found within the showing off of one's skills or the receiving of awards, it is found in the appreciation of nature, watching the seasons change around you and finding a way of expressing it. What we do with trees is nothing compared to what they should to us.

I am at my most thoughtful (or is it pretentious?) when hungover.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose

2011-06-02T06:53:00.001-07:00

After all the satsuki shows have been set up, a little calm has descended upon the garden. That is mainly due to the fact that the Chief has left for a week for a Satsuki show in Germany. He will be working with Valentin Brose, a German apprentice who had to leave recently and is starting to work in Europe.

When the Chief goes away, everyone breathes a sigh of relief but there is something unnaturally strange about the garden when he is away. It gives us a chance to actually do some work for once rather than running around doing whatever pops into his head at the time. We are going to be busy this coming week, with the end of the satsuki shows, lots of pruning to be done and also an auction where I am expected to act on behalf of the Chief. He picked out some stuff he wants to sell and told me the reserv e prices. Bonsai auctions are a lively affair and I am going to have to hold my own against a number of buyers and sellers. I also have carte blanche to buy whatever I think is good. The Chief loves to buy stuff and people love him for it, the Satsuki auctions wait until he arrives even if he is two hours late. I am going to be put under a lot of pressure from everyone there, then there is the pressure of buying something for too much or completely unsaleable...as was the case in January. Still, all good fun and will be a learning experience. I am mainly going to see the action and report back...who is buying what, what prices etc.

The title of the post refers to the trend I have been following recently of being asked to do things that are completely out of season. Yet another Five Needle pine was given to me to wire, despite my protestations that it was the worst time of year to do it..."Just be careful" was the reply. The tree belongs to the same person who owns the Juniper I did earlier...so it was a bit under the weather, a lot of dead or dying branches on the inside, unbalanced vigour , branches with no buds. Not the ideal candidate for a massive amount of detailed wiring so I tried to balance the desire to make it look nicer with the need for a rest and hand in the right direction to achieving balance and stop losing branches.

Five Needle pines tend to send out three buds, one strong central terminal bud and two weaker buds to the side. If the terminal bud is allowed to grow too strongly, it restricts the growth of the two weaker buds to the point they die. This causes branches to become leggy and lacking in ramification. The key to pines is to protect the weak and oppressed and to hold back the strong. Much like Socialism ;-) This was done all over the tree and a considerable amount of foliage and unnecessary branching was removed. Rather than wire everything out to the tips and knock of the soft developing buds, only main branches and essential branches were wired. Again, a very rough and ready look borne as much out of horticultural sensibility than aesthetics. Almost nothing was wired in the apex as I cut back as hard as possible to developing buds. To wire them now will be counterproductive and that is what I will tell the customer. I will also ask him if he is willing to change the front.

Looking at the tree, I couldn't believe how flat and dull it had been styled...not by us I might add. It just lacked any interesting character point, with a big head, boring branch structure and totally unrelated second trunk. I turned the tree around to look at the tree from an angle and found a much better front. It had depth, movement, a dead wood feature and a bit more elegance. It seemed so obviously the front I had to spin the tree around a few times to double check.

The unfortunate thing about being me (well one of the things) is that I can't just do what I want, when I want. This tree belongs to a good friend of the Chiefs and although he has lost interest in Bonsai, I am not sure how he would take to me completely redesigning his tree. When I first started as an apprentice he was a bit on the rude side towards me which I took to heart and I am not going to provoke things any more than is necessary. Although he seems to like me now...I am not convinced.

With the restraint of not being able to go crazy on the tree and do what in my mind was necessary, I set about making a two fronted tree. Shock horror. A tree with two fronts. Yes it is possible. Admittedly in this case the current front is styled to look a bit on the boring side whereas the side I want to make it from is much more interesting...however, there has been no irreversible branch removal, which I would need permission from an absent higher power for. I will take it over to the owners house sometime in the week and ask his opinion. More branches need removing and internal buds need to beef up before a more detailed and final wiring but given the time of year, the tree and personalities in question, I have done as best I can.

If I get the nod, the bottom branch is coming off and it will look like it this.

In other developments, I was allowed out of the garden yesterday and ventured into the real world. I had a meeting about the proposed e-book which I have been asked to write.

I had done very little preparation for it

so I scribbled some notes on the train but it was not necessary. I have a free hand with regards to content, it is left entirely to me. I will also be able to publish it as a proper book if so desired. After the discussion was over I realised that I actually have to sit down and write it, rather than writing about how I am going to write a book. Bit of a difference.

The good thing about the real world is getting out and seeing some pretty girls, of which there are a great number in Tokyo. Seeing the female form is always refreshing for young(ish) bonsai apprentices and somehow our conversations always revolve around to them. The other night we were sat around after work talking over a beer and I told them what I had written about here, what I was thinking with regards to styling and the approach of natural beauty rather than prettiness. Naganuma, who is a bit on the coarse side but quite insightful described it as "Ranchou no bi"....the beauty of disorder. He also made the point that the reason that women go to so much effort to make themselves pretty is so that after a suitable period of courtship, a dinner date for example, men can ruin it....thus making them suitably disordered and therefore beautiful. His language was a little more colourful...but his point true to an extent.

Anyway, I have to get some thoughts down on paper...

Satsuki show and a day off?

2011-05-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

This blogging lark is becoming quite regular. I guess it is because I am all alone and have no money to go out drinking if I get any free time.

Last night was spent working on getting a ahead start on the post flower pruning of the hundreds of satsuki that we have here. Trees that are not going to be on display or are not up for sale are worked first, removing the flowers and flower buds so that the tree does not tire itself out. Pruning back satsuki is an essential technique for keeping them healthy. It generates new growth which keeps the tree going, and it also enables the branches to ramify and develop. Pruning needs to be done before the end of June so that the new growth will have time to set flower buds. A good explanation can be fund in this months Bonsai Focus.

I have a funny relationship with Satsuki...I have been doing them sice I started Bonsai, they are fun to do and have taught me some essential skills, but compared to thin trunked aged pines and twisted Junipers, they lack a certain depth. Without a doubt they are very pretty when in flower and can be interesting when styled but...they are not beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I love them, especially Aozora and Hoshi no Kagayaki which are not only lovely trees but have wonderful names, "Azure Sky" and "Brilliant Star"...cute and pretty.

The closest you come to wabi-sabi with an azalea is the pile of semi finished flowers and unopened flower buds on the floor when pruning. The flowers work so hard to be pretty and they are discarded by the way side. Buds which have yet to open are robbed of their potential and thrown in the mud. There is something quite lonely about a deflowered tree, slightly naked, used and then put back on the bench. For one week, it is the centre of attention but then...it is finished. I enjoy the pile of used flowers that builds up after a day of pruning.

Satsuki shows are a big reason behind their popularity. There are a number of awards and categories based on trunk thickness and height. The awards are as much for good cultivation as they are design and artistic ability. There is a great freedom with Azaleas and they are made into some interesting shapes, but the standard triangle of foliage on a thick trunk is hard to escape from.

This week there are many shows on and this morning the Chief suddenly decided that because of the rain we would all go up to see the shows and learn something. What I learnt is that in typhoon conditons, driving on the expressway when there is a torrential downpour and standing water on the road is not a good idea and should be avoided at all costs. Some idiot cause a pile up which delayed us for an hour. It was worth it though to see The Chief walking around in this slightly un-Chiefly pink cardigan. People change when there are flowers around I guess.

Morimae is doing an exhibition at the moment at the same place and we popped in today. It is superb, the man has incredible taste and the ability to put things together. Sadly my battery died as soon as I took one picture when we got there so you will have to wait until I can go another time. The Chief is off to Germany in a few days so I will pop up then.

Some of my favourite trees from the Satsuki show....The Prime Minister award winning Osaka-zuki which belongs to one of our customers, a shohin sized and an absolutely perfectly made Akemi no Tsuki (named after the daughter of the guy who cross bred it). I wish I could show you the branching structure on this tree. The amount of work that has gone into it is outstanding.

Except for the rain we had fun and saw some pretty trees, picked up a few things and got home in time for tea.

Omachi Update and a bit of Bruce Lee

2011-05-29T08:59:00.001-07:00

Another varied day of Bonsai related fun, including a suprise visit from Isao Omachi who had his entire life washed away in the Tsunami in March. There was a blog entry about him and the donation fund for him. It was good to see him back doing business and making attempts to get back to normal. We didnt discuss much about the devastation in his life...we talked more about Chinese pots and what was happening in the Bonsai world at the moment. He came with Sakurai Senior and Junior. Sakurai Junior is an apprentice of Shinji Suzuki and good friends with Omachi, working regularly together. Sakurai senior is a pot broker more than a bonsai professional; he is a good friend of the garden and has a fantastic poker face. When discussing pots and business in general, he plays dumb even when he has heard everything before. One of the aspects of the Bonsai business in Japan I enjoy is the relationships between professionals and the poker playing attitude to business. Give a little here, bluff and play dumb, occasionally you can hit the jackpot. Auctions are hilarious at times watching people play off against each other. Recently things have been made more interesting by the inclusion of a few Chinese buyers. Anyway, I digress..

I did ask Omachi about the situation with the donation fund that Marco has set up and he is fully aware of it and the value of it. He expressed his deep grattude for the generosity of everybody and hope to repay everyone in kind in the future. I wish him the best of luck.

After a trip to the green club to drop off some trees for a show, I continued to work on the pine here. As mentioned yesterday this is a triple trunked white pine picked up at an auction. As this is the worst time of year to be wiring white pines I had to take my time and ensure that no damage was caused to the delicate buds.

Sleep takes over again...and I'm back. A couple of days later but still here. As I mentioned previously, the tree was purchased at an auction at Seiko-en. I have begun to admire the styling of Yamada much more recently, finding his classic styling deeply beautiful. It is not pretty in the modern style of Bonsai but it has a depth and meaning much more appealing to the intellect rather than simply eye candy. In order to create this style it requires patience and the unlearning of many of the things I have spent years working on. Unlearning is perhaps the wrong word, being able to put them to one side is a better way of looking at it. It is important as a professional Bonsai artist to create trees which will appeal to the popular taste which is undoubtedly for pretty trees...however there are times when making a tree to please oneself is important.

With this tree, I attempted to use as little wire as possible and try to achieve the art of wiring without wiring. (for more on this watch this video) Sadly I failed miserably and I kept putting more and more wire on. In order to try to achieve the "artless art" (copyright Bruce Lee), it is very difficult to arrange the branches to look as though they have not been arranged. Five Needle pines are quite feminine, especially slender ones and they should look a little on the disheveled side. They are at their best when the wire is taken off and the tree begins to grow out of the rigid pads a little. The definition is still there but the lines are blurred. It is the same feminine beauty that you see when your woman is lounging around the house in sweat pants, wearing one of your shirts, without make up on and her hair in a bit of a mess. There is no pretence to prettiness but there is a sublime intrinsic beauty which makes you feel warm inside.

Recreating that in Bonsai is something I aim for but have yet to master, the reason being that you cannot do it in a few hours of wiring and styling. It comes from years of slow growth and mochikomi...the character that comes from years of restricted cultivation in a pot . The closest you can come in one session is to not wire the branches to the tips and to not create unnatural foliage pads. Movement should be gentle and not forced to align all the buds into a neat and compact shape. Styling of this variety is done much more with scissors than by wire. Branch removal is the key aspect. I think there are a few branches which need to be removed but they are kept for the time being. At least until I get over the shock at how difficult it was for me to try to make it look natural.

Bonsai is a constant struggle, mainly against impatience and adherence to patterns. One day however I will make a tree like this...named "Mikka tsuki" (3 day moon). It belonged to a customer of the garden who has been doing bonsai for longer than I have been alive. I repot his trees every spring and he tells me stories about the pre-chief bonsai world. It was a superb tree which held so much power, grace and elegance whilst appearing to have been growing like that for ever, never having seen a human hand. Anyway, my bed is calling me. I woke up at 3.30 am this morning to watch Man U get schooled in the art of Football. It was worth it.

A long long day

2011-05-25T18:26:00.001-07:00

Today has been one of those days that felt like a week...just seemed like it would never end. It started slightly hungover at 5 am, rolling out of bed and into the shower. The old saying is true...wine then beer does makes you feel queer. Need less to say a shower and then the prospect of driving an hour to a customer's place soon made me feel better and off I set to drop some trees off, ask him to display at an exhibition and also get him to buy a new pot for one his trees. He had asked for a pot but the one I had was double the price he wanted to spend. It was a nice pot and fitted perfectly the tree so it was not a hard sale. I had to play the hard done by apprentice card a little..."If I go home with this pot I will be in trouble!". I have know the customer for seven years and he likes me and asks for me to come and tend to his trees three or four times a year. I will be going later in the month so I will take pics then.

Back to the garden and had to start work on this Juniper. Belonging to a famous friend of the garden, it has suffered from many years of inattention and the branch structure has become difficult to use. It is a grafted Itoigawa tree and it is the a leaf type which doesn't grow much and turns into dense pom pom's unless regualrly worked on. It hasn't been so there are lots of woody branches with tiny tufts of foliage on them..still I had to get it done today so it was a stupidly rushed job and I'm almost embarrassed to post the pictures. It was alright given the start point but nothing too good. Just by cranking the apex back improved the tree incredibly. I should have stopped there...wiring is a difficult job at Shunkaen especially during the day when so much is going on...keeping an eye on the young lads prepping for the satsuki show...talking to the old men and sorting out my owm work.

I am falling asleep as I write so I am off to bed. Another 5 am start tomorrow....After a few hours sleep I am going to finish off this entry.

So the Juniper was finished in a hurry, a terrible wiring job but to be honest, my heart wasn't in it...why? The tree will go back to the owner who simply doesn't care any more. He will ignore the tree until the wire digs in and branches start to die off. It is hard to motivate yourself when the audience is not appreciative. I know this is the wrong attitude, it should be done properly for the sake of doing it properly, but when there are a hundred and one other things to do at the same time, values like that go out of the window.

The preparation work for the satsuki show involves collecting all the club memebers trees together, tarting them up with a bit of moss, cleaning the pots, old leaves, withered flowers and then finsing the cheapest table we can to put it on. Why cheap? They almost always get broken or water stained at the show. There is a group loosley associated with the garden and we act as a focal point and free labour. The first load of trees went out this morning to Kanuma, the satsuki centre. Tomorrow I will be taking the second load up to Tochigi to another show. This is slightly more popular as it is sponsored by an electrical store and the prizes include plasma televisions and kettles. The other show you get a bag of rice and some miso. Go figure.

We have one tree which will be in the running for best in show. It is a big Osakazuki...pics tomorrow when it is in place.

I finished the day off by starting work on a tree which I wanted to buy...but had to let the Chief take precedence over..one does not out bid the Chief when sharing the ride home! We went to a small auction last week at Seiko-en, the garden of Yamada Tomio, or rather his daughter Kaori who is very popular doing Saika Bonsai...a hybrid of kusamono and pop bonsai. We had a meeting of the Nippon Bonsai Sakka Kyoukai, of which I am a member (ridiculous considering I cannot qualify to be part of the European Branch ;-). I have always been attracted to the hands off style of Seiko-en which has been handed down from old school times. Yamada-san has a very sharp eye in respect to classic bonsai and also tree/pot combinations. I was amazaed to see just how little his trees had been worked and also how dry he kept them. Thats why his five needle pines look so good....anyway, during the auction he made a disparaging comment about a literati pine which had been fully wired out and styled to make it look perfect..." If you hadn't wired it then I would buy it. Now all it's good for is scrap value". Harsh but a very fair comment. With that in mind I am attempting to make this triple trunked five needle pine in the classic style that will appeal to such a discerning eye. More on this later.

Tool of Champions

2011-05-21T06:49:00.000-07:00

The satsuki exhibition at Shunkaen is in full swing, albeit a very small swing. Hopefully tomorrow I will get the chance to take a few pictures. We have had a lot more visitors this year than before and even a bloke from Leeds turned up out of the blue. Being a fellow Yorkshireman I found it very easy to grumble and complain about things.

One of the visitors today was the master tool maker Kawasumi Etsuro,(left) a master craftsman of the highest order. He is part of the family who make Masakuni tools, but had a falling out with his brother who in turn took on the family business. There were at least three sons who apprenticed under their father, Kawasumi Masakuni. Etsuro is a funny old character who likes to partake of a drop or two and that has hampered his commercial success, well that and his stubborn, perfectionist attitude to his work.

Etsuro is famour for his Ikebana scissors much more than Bonsai tools which are incredibly sharp. Many years ago, when I was getting ready to purchase a pair of his thin bladed scissors he told me a little about the process he goes through in order to make them. Everything is hand processed from start to finish and the iron he uses to make the scissors comes from an old ships anchor.

Japanese tools, particularly chisels are made from relatively soft steel which makes them very easy to damage and the blunt quickly but they sharpen very easily and if done properly the blade can split the finest of wood. Etsuro's scissors are the same in that once they have been sharpened they cut so beautifully and true it is incredible. Not only are they scarily sharp but they are weighted perfectly so that the fit in the hand and do not tire you out. They are without doubt the Rolls Royce of Bonsai scissors....not that I am not a brand obsessed tool manaic, quite the opposite I use cheap and cheerful wherever possible...however there are some jobs in Bonsai which require a delicate and true cut and only something of this quality will do.

The reason he came today was to deliver a pair of scissors he had made for Kuma-san, our saturday apprentice. Kuma-sam has been coming almost every weekend for over six year and just works on whatever needs doing. He is by no means a skilled Bonsai artist but he just likes to get out of the house and away from his wife and mother in law. He rides a 1300cc motorbike which roars like a lion and is an all round great chap. Get a few glasses of sake in him and he turns into a one man comedy show. I will never forget the time he got drunk and shouted at the Chief who had chastised him earlier in the day. "How am I supposed to know not to step in the soil! I work for Canon! I fix photocopiers ever day!"

Tomorrow sees the last day of the show and hopefully we will get a chance to take a breath on monday before prepping for the shows next weekend. Morimae is putting on a show at the same time as the Kanuma and Tochigi shows so hopefully I will be able to get to see that. He always makes something worth taking the time to go and see.

In other news, I have been asked to write a book on Bonsai from a Japanese Cultural perspective but from western eyes. I think it will be digital only at first but I am pushing for a paper version. If anyone has any suggestions for things they would like to see in such a book then let me know. Until next time...

Back in Japan...

2011-05-18T08:07:00.001-07:00

Once again much time has passed since the last blog entry. I seem to only manage it once a month. Still, not much has changed...except that I managed to take a little time off and spent most of it drunk, eating or watching football. It turns out that after all these years of doing Bonsai 24/7 that I don't actually have a hobby to speak of. I did spend some time thinking about future plans and what direction I need to head in. This resulted in me buying a diary and attempting to become more organised.

I am now back at the Chief's and working and living as if I were still an apprentice, which of course I am until one of dies...and then even after that. After the earthquake and subsequent devastation, the Bonsai community has continued even more quickly on it's downward path, however there are some bright spots. Various different media appearances including both the Chief and myself have stimulated a lot of interest and we have had a number or younger visitors to the garden, including some lovely ladies...which is always nice. The power of television is incredible...I need to find a way to get on to the BBC.

Without wishing to sound boastful my face has been cropping up all over the place recently. I was featured in the May edition of Kinbon, the June edition of Satsuki Kenkyu and the most recent edition of Bonsai Focus. A copy of BF arrived at the garden the day before I did and the Chief was not impressed to see my work when compared to the tree which Ryan worked on. With the apprentice of his rival on the cover and working a great piece of material to a superb completion, it was a blow to his pride to see me working on a lesser piece of material tucked away at the back of the magazine. If he could read the text then he would understand the point I was trying to make, however a picture speaks a thousand words. He asked me next time to do something more impressive.

Rivalry in Bonsai is like a cancer that eats away at the enjoyment of playing around with little trees. Trying to create it or measuring one person against the other on the basis of one tree seems counter productive and pointless. I am the first to admit that there are much more skilled people in Bonsai than myself...but anyway, lets get back to me showing off..

When I was here at the start of the year I was asked to do a photoshoot for Gekkan Satsuki. I have done a few for them before and they have been terrible. The Chief has always picked the worst piece of material for me and it has been all but impossible to create anything. This time I was in charge of the material and I went out and bought a lovely tree which would quite easily be transformed. The tree is an Osakazuki, a tough variety which will withstand dead wood and not die back. I was particularly taken with the 90 degree bend in the trunk and the funky movement in the branches. It was also a tree which could have been made easily from either side.

The work took a day and was not particularly taxing. Once the branches had been removed, it was a case of a little carving, wiring and then planting it on a Kurama stone. I have never liked the approach to demonstrations or photoshoots which ends up with dead trees, doing something extreme for the sake of it and ending up with a tree which slowly dies and you have nothing to show for it. Thankfully, as you can see, the tree is in bloom now and has put on some great new growth.

Design wise there are a few things which may change in the future, the branch on the right may be slowly removed, it is a little risky to do it due to the flow of the live vein around the back. Otherwise I am happy it is flourishing and I didnt kill it. Maybe next year it can go to one of the upcoming shows.

The reason I am back in Japan is to help out at a busy time. We have many Satsuki shows to prepare for, a suiseki exhibition and then post flowering pruning and Pine candle cutting to get done by the end of June. The Chief will be away for two weeks in China and Germany in the middle of it all. Updates on work will follow so stay tuned.

The beauty of Bonsai

2011-04-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Once again it has been some time since my last post. Busy on the road as per usual. I am in the US now working on some incredible trees. Pics later when I get the chance.

Last weekend was the Best of British show and I was unfortunately unable to attend. A good friend of mine displayed this tree which was very carefuly prepared and exhibited for the appreciative public. A collected blackthorn with age and development in the pot, it was a sight to behold. The flowers were timed perfectly and it was outstanding. It doesn't get much better than this in my eyes.

Shohin Off

2011-03-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

fun and educational week was had by all who attended the British Shohin Association weekend, well I assume it was, I certainly had fun and learnt the lesson that if you get pulled into an AGM, it is generally a bad sign.

In an attempt to stay fresh and keep the level of Shohin Bonsai increasing in the UK, we organised a mainly workshop weekend rather than simply an exhibition. It was a great chance for the members to get some free expert tuition from people who have experience in the field such as Chairman John Armitage and Marco Invernizzi. I was also present with more hair on my chin than on my head.

It was great to meet up with the real hardcore enthusiasts who made the trip to Willowbog Bonsai in the beautiful wilderness of Northumbria. Despite it being a mainly workshop based event there were a number of displays on show and the most popular by far was the immaculate and superbly presented display by Mark and Ritta Cooper. They are good friends of mine and I am very pleased that they have started to come out and show their trees.

It was also good that they got the opportunity to show people that they are not just displaying "cheque book" Bonsai and that they have put in years of dedicated hard work to get their trees looking so good

This is something which is beginning to show in the trees of many of my regular students and customers...not wishing to blow my own trumpet but their trees have by and large improved since we started working together. It is rewarding to see the fruits of our combined labour now we are coming into the second repotting cycle for some trees and many of the deciduous have ramified well, pines have back budded and Junipers filled out. Patience and diligence is key with any Bonsai and the rewards are just starting to come after three or four years.

What then for the future? For the future of the BSA it is onwards and upwards. During the AGM I was press ganged into become the Vice Chairman, a position I am happy to fill as it gives me a chance to help the tireless work that John Armitage puts in to promote little trees. My first duty was to put down in writing the proposal for the next BSA show, which is here....

BSA show 2012

Following on from the success of the practical workshop based “Shohin Off” event in March 2011, we are excited to announce plans for a new and improved show format for 2012. We are inviting a wide range of participants to take part in our popular and enjoyable show weekend.
As in previous years we would like you to consider displaying, individual trees or a full composition of:
Shohin Mame or Chuhin
(We do ask for a maximum size of 45cm from the top of the pot)
As a new, more inclusive feature to our show and an attempt to help bring the fun of Shohin Bonsai to a wider audience we are also enthusiastically inviting those of you who think that your small trees are not show worthy to bring them along and under the guidance of Marco Invernizzi, Peter Warren and John Armitage they will be prepared for the show and displayed as part of a larger composition or as an individual tree in a special display area.
Knowing full well that it is difficult to put together a full 3,5 or 7 tree composition on an individual basis, we would like to make it clear that we more than welcome group entries and invite Bonsai clubs the length and breadth of the British Isles to put together a club composition featuring the best trees the members possess to form a collaborative effort.
As in previous years awards will be given to the best:
Shohin, Chuhin, Mame, Deciduous, Conifer, Native Species, Composition, Collaborative display, Work in Progress, Pot/tree combination.
Do not worry if you:

think your tree is not ready

do not have the time to prepare your trees

do not have stands, scrolls, accents

are not a member of the BSA (only £20)

This is an all inclusive event and we are aiming to show you the fun of participating in the BSA show and also help you to improve your trees and displays.
The show will be held on the 10/11th of March 2012 at Willowbog Bonsai. As part of our continuing efforts to help improve the level of British Shohin Bonsai we will be offering the services of three eading names in the Bonsai world free of charge. Both Marco Invernizzi, Peter Warren and John Armitage will be on hand to help you clean, moss and titivate your tree ready for it to be on put display. We would like those of you who have the time and experience to prepare in advance, it is fun to do it yourself after all; but for those of you who are beginning to reach the level where you would like to display your trees but are not sure of the final steps, we are here to help with advice, moss and more stands than you can shake a stick at!

So basically we want everyone and anyone to come along to the show and make it even more fun and wide reaching than ever. After all Bonsai is supposed to be fun as well as artistic, deep and meaningful.

A few more days or repotting in the UK are ahead plus the dilemma of the ever increasing insurance premium to figure out...year on year it has increased by 50% despite my no claims bonus increasing. I may end up cycling to work. I will be visiting Poland for a few days and then to the US, trying to beat the clock in terms of getting trees repotted in the correct time of year.

I am tired now having been awake for 20 hours today. My bed is calling...

Omachi Ganbatte

2011-03-15T15:17:00.001-07:00

Further to the post earlier regarding the Japanese tsunami which has destroyed Isao Omachi's garden, Marco Invernizzi and Doug Paul are being very active in creating a fund, "Omachi Ganbatte", which will allow Omachi to get back on his feet once things have settled down.

Details can be found here on Facebook, for those of you do it... http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_161322040589059 the group is called Omachi Ganbatte. For anybody who thinks that this may be a con, then please read the small print on the page. The fund is being managed by various people and there should be no concerns about donating money to the cause.

For anybody who does not do facebook...including me. details for donation are...

for US: Please send checks to:
Omachi Relief Fund
P.O. Box 22
Yorklyn, DE 19736

The checks are NOT tax deductible!

If someone wants to wiretransfer money to the US account please get in touch with me or Marco .

Paypal info:

Omachifund@aol.com

For Europe:
Donate to:
Bank Name:Banca Popolare di Ancona
Branch n.287, Osimo sede
Bank Address:Piazza del Comune 4 60027 Osimo Italy
Acc. holder: Marco Invernizzi
IBAN:IT74B0530837490000000001382
Swift Code: BPAMIT31
Bank Code: BLOPIT22

Although the account is in Marco's name, it is managed by Diego Fortune, a bank manager and upcoming Italian Bonsai artist. Full details can be found on the facebook page.

Like I said, please do consider giving a donation to him, not only is he a friend of mine, he is a fellow Bonsai artist in need. I will be donating to him in person in the Japanese tradition of Omimai. In times of disaster, solidarity is essential.

Nature is King

2011-03-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

With the recent events in Japan, it is clear to see that we humans are not as powerful as we think we are and that nature has far more hold over us than we care to think about.

I returned to the UK a week ago and missed the erthquake by a few days. Some people have told me how lucky I am but I feel the opposite, guilty for not being there to help the people I care about clean up and cope with the aftermath. Power cuts, food shortages and the threat of the unknown. These things put Bonsai into perspective and show how unimportant it is, yet at the same time how very important it is to protect.

From Bonsai we can learn many things about life and death, the eternal struggle between the two and how relentless it is. I has an email from a Japanese friend who told me how happy she was to see new shoots forming on a tiny maple seedling she recieved from the Chief. Looking at that gave her power and hope. Despite all the death and destruction that has taken place in the North East of Japan, despite the panic and uncertainty of Tokyo, despite her powerlessness...nature still continues regardless.

Many people have emailed me asking after the Chief and other Bonsai people. As far as I know the worst affected is the young Bonsai artist Isao Omachi, who was from that coast line. He and his family are safe but his life and work have been totally destroyed. Marco Invernizzi who is a close friend of Omachi's is setting up a relief fund, you can find details on facebook. I will post more details here when I speak with Marco. Thank you all for your concern and thoughts. At times like this, friends and genuinely good hearted peopl become apparent.

Shunkaen and the Chief escaped relatively lightly. The stone laterns fell over, a few bonsai damaged, a few pots broken but nothing of note. Everybody is shaken but unhurt. Morimae is in a similar situation, everyone is ok and there is some superficial damage.

It will be a long time before the full extent of the damage become aparent and what this means for us humans...however, life goes on relentlessly. This is the nature of the universe. More details as I know them.

Hasu no hana

2011-02-08T05:36:00.000-08:00

Hasu no hana

Apologies for the lack of updates for anybody excited by the Kokufu results, as you can probably guess, they were nothing special. We got a 50% record across the board, which was in retrospect, not that surprising. After the drunken and angry exploits of last year, I was not that bothered afterwards, in fact the night of the judging was spent at a party at the house of pro golfer Jumbo Ozaki, who was a Bonsai enthusiast and is still on good terms with the Chief. We went along to his place and after some food and a few beers the Karaoke started and after a few turns somebody put Queen on. Needless to say I was called up to the floor where I then proceeded to belt out a number complete with dancing in a Freddie Mercury style, grinding against the mike stand and all sorts of tomfoolery. Most people (who had absolutely no idea who I was) were amazed. Bearing in mind I am tone deaf and have no singing ability whatsoever, I am surprised that people didn’t boo me off the stage. I made such a hit that I was then constantly on the dance floor and impressed with my robot dance…from 1984. The Chief was over the moon with me and spent the whole car ride home reliving the experience. Jumbo was so happy he invited me to the next party. Life as a Bonsai apprentice has some surreal moments.

There was much better news for one exhibitor though, for the second year running, there will be one of Doug Pall’s trees in the show. Absolutely nothing to do with me or the Chief, but congratulations are very much in order. The rest of the world is catching up with the Japanese, especially as they ease their foot off the pedal. There will also for the first time be a Rosemary displayed as a main tree. Several years previously one was used as the second tree in a Chuhin display, but this is the first time (to my knowledge) that one is being used as the main tree. Before the judging happens, a list of species and numbers put up for judging is released and I was very excited to see that one was being put in for consideration. On the day of setting up I was eager to see it as the Rosemary is a species close to my heart. I will let the public be the judge of the tree when they see it.

Noelanders was a great show by all accounts, Ryan’s demo and his naturally humble and enthusiastic demeanour excited everybody and I have had many mails from my customers saying that he was the best thing they have ever seen…says a lot about my work then I guess. I am genuinely pleased for him as he deserves it and he is one of the few people who can dispel the myths that surround Bonsai. He can show the Japanese that Bonsai can be done to a high level from scratch outside of Japan, he can show Americans that there is another way to do Bonsai and he can show Europeans that American Bonsai can become something to admire. The smashing of boundaries and long established ways of thinking are essential if Bonsai is to survive and grow. People need to understand that at the end of the day they are just beautiful little trees in pots.

Other things that are consuming my time other than one particularly annoying customer, keeping the lads on the straight and narrow and working on the occasional tree is the various media appearances that have been coming our way of late. Last month we did five hours of filming, which turned into 2 minutes on the Nikkei program which is broadcast on various channels across the globe. The other day I did an interview for some magazine and tomorrow we are filming a program for NHK which will be broadcast tomorrow morning. The main theme of the piece is how the popularity of Bonsai outside of Japan should be making the Japanese take another look at their own culture. They want to show how a foreigner is teaching Japanese kids their own culture. I have thought long and hard about how I feel about this…is it patronising, is it typically Japanese, are they just looking at the funny foreigner who thinks he is a native and having a laugh?

During the interview today and the discussions we had leading up to the filming of tomorrows program I discussed the fact that an apprenticeship is not about learning techniques and skills, it is about learning how to think and behave in the way that is necessary to do Bonsai at the highest level. It is more about human relationships than it is about wiring techniques and styling. The conversations with the lads have revealed a lot, they are not as stupid as they appear, especially Naganuma-kun, who is now into his fourth year. He is not a natural Bonsai stylist, not originally from within the Bonsai world and he has his own ideas about life and how it should be approached. This often leads to suffering and a tongue lashing from the chief but he is fact quite intelligent and incisive in his observations, describing life in Shunkaen as Dostoevskian

One particular conversation led me to the understanding of the importance of the lily flower and its beauty and significance in the Buddhist world. Growing up towards the light from the dark, dirty and stagnant depths of a pond is the slim and slender flower stalk, bending and flexible in the water. Once the bud opens with such force it is audible, the most pure and beautiful white flower floats above the surface of the water. If that isn’t a metaphor for life I do not know what is.

Bon-anza

2011-01-25T16:34:00.001-08:00

A trying few days at Shunkaen has once again revealed the nature of life and death to me, giving me an insight into the hearts of those around. We often talk of dead wood, shari and jin but how many of us actually stop to think and contemplate what that actually stands for. No matter what nature throws at a tree, no matter how severe and harsh the conditions become, somehow it finds a way to survive. In difficult times, it pays to take time with your trees and to take strength from them.

However, that is an aside to what has been taking up most of my time recently. The Bon in both the title of this post and BON-sai refers to the pot. One of the two characters used to write the word means pot, so by that logic, 50% of the image and importance of a pot, comes from the container it planted in. This is one part of the more traditional side of Japanese Bonsai that I particularly enjoy, and one sadly that is disappearing at an alarming rate.

Due to the political situation in China way back when, many of their items of cultural heritage were destroyed in the revolution. Thankfully the Japanese had been shipping Bonsai pots and other ceramics, tables and whathaveyou for the previous hundred odd years. This means that the best examples of Chinese Bonsai pottery were in Japan...not any more. With their growing economic might, the Chinese are bulk buying their heritage back at an alarming rate, meaning that Japanese Bonsai heritage is fast disappearing. As much as this may be disappointing for some, it is the nature of the world. As a result The Chief is getting a lot of interest from the Chinese to sell many of his masterpieces.

Over the Kokufu period we are having what amounts to a garage sale...but of a bit higher class. The Chief put an advert in Kinbon saying that we had over 1000 antique Chinese pots. I doubted we had that many but after spending three days pulling them all out of the various hiding places we have for them, it has left in no doubt whatsoever. Naganuma described it as "making him feel queasy when he looked at them".

What was good for me though was meeting many of the pots again for the first time in a few years. Every pot that came out had memories attached to it. I can remember what tree was in which pot, the time it went to Kokufu, the customer who owned it previously....there were a few very special friends, and a few that I wished were still mine!

Along with setting up the pots, I have also been helping some Italian friends and customers to find special pots for their trees. It is reassuring to know that there are people out there willing to spend a little more money to find something that is worthy of the high quality trees that are around in Europe and the US at the moment. Without wishing to sounds as if I am snake-oil salesman, the prices of a decent aged Tokoname pot or a semi-antique Chinese pot are not really that much more than you will pay for a new Chinese pot at some places in Europe. If following the Japanese ideas of Bonsai then surely it is important to pay equal attention to the pot. If following a more European or American idea, such as using a native tree in a native pot, then the same rules apply. Thankfully there are many great potters out there who specialise in bespoke pots, in the UK we have both John Pitt and Andy Stone Monkey Pearson for a start. Either way is fine, the point I am making that as we are rounding the corner into spring and repotting season...maybe it is time for an image change.

Anyway...things cntinue on. I have a few days to get our scant number of trees ready for the Kokufu. One is a Kicho Bonsai (Important Masterpiece) so it should get in anyway, the others....well we shall see.

Into the blue...

2011-01-23T04:42:00.000-08:00

Look at me...blogging regularly and everything! This week has been as always, full of fun and excitement. On Tuesday I went to a Satsuki auction with the remit from the Chief (who was in China) to buy anything on his tab. I bought wisely, also picking up things for myself for customers here who wanted smaller trees. I also managed to　finally get a pot for an Italian customer who had been patiently waiting for something of the correct size to come up.

Needless to say, all of the things I had bought for the Chief were WRONG! I was describing them to him in the car on the way home from the airport and without even seeing them he was tearing me a new one so to speak. It now turns out that I was not buying for him, but rather have to now pay for a lot of azaleas myself. Thankfully the ones I did get are saleable and hopefully will go at the Kokufu sales area. If not then I may have to work longer than I expected.

I did buy a beautiful little tree for myself, hoping to make it and display it in a few years, however, one of the old hands here took a shine to it. Uematsu-san, a man who has taught me that even as you reach 80, it is still possible to work like a trooper, play like a sailor and have a laugh and a joke while you are at it. He comes almost every day and sits, drinks tea, makes fun of us but is always looking out for the apprentices. A kind word at exactly the right time and sharp wit and dirty talk at all other times.

The tree in question is an Aozora shohin/chuhin sized araki (fresh from the field). I love Aozora, not just the flowers, but the word itself. It means Blue Sky, or rather the brilliantly deep and shimmering azure sky that you get in the late winter early spring in Japan.Both the word and the sky have a freshness and a sense of new beginning about them. The song, Kaze wo Atsumete by a bunch of 70’s Japanese hippies, featured in (the terrible) film “Lost in Translation” kind of sums it up perfectly, longing to soar into the empty blue sky.

Back to earth, the tree was soon marked as sold before I even had the chance to try and persuade him to take one of the others. Still, we made an agreement that I would work on it whenever I came back and in that way it would remain my tree (kind of). Being a good friend and having received plenty of unwanted pots and much appreciated good advice in the past, I let him have it for a little more than I paid for it, and included the styling and repotting.

Styling a satsuki araki is getting a balance of not cutting off too much foliage and creating the absolute base framework from which the rest of the tree can be created. Araki are generally made in one of two ways, literally in the field or in growing beds of Kanuma soil. Some are trees which are initially styled in pots and then placed in growing beds to thicken up. When they are collected they are full strength and have enough power to be seriously pruned back and bare rooted, root washed and potted up at the same time. The one point to be careful with is to ensure that there is enough pulling power in the branches, by that I mean foliage at the tips, to create the desire for roots. With a pot grown Satsuki that has a fine root system it is possible to complete defoliate, prune back to branch stumps and expect it to bounce back immediately. With an araki that will have almost no fine roots, there is the worry that the engine won’t start and it will not get started in the spring. Leaving foliage, even if it is unwanted in the final design, will give the initial kick start to start growth at both ends. Once roots have established, new shoots have sprouted it is then possible to cut back to the desired shape. So with that in mind, I removed some of the major branches, many of the smaller branches and created the basic shape. It is not advisable to wire initially, particularly as there will be another serious prune back in the next year. The first year after this process should be devoted to pure growth, both on top and below.

The main branch placement was good, the bend in the trunk is a little forced and unnatural but that can be hidden or helped by the foliage placement. A lot of work still needs to be done, the first branch on the left needs to be seriously cut back and remade from a shoot coming from the underside of the branch. Apart from that there was not much to worry about as the material was good. 90% of creating a good Bonsai is choosing the correct material, the other 9% is horticultural ability, the last 1% is artistic and technical ability. The most important thing is to choose a good starting point, for most people, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear. I have made a few silk purses into sows ears though...

I have full pictures of the repotting which I will make a mini article out of, once the time presents itself. Anyway, the tree turned out well and although I wanted to keep it, both me and Ue-san are happy with the outcome and it gives us an excuse to continue our slightly bizarre friendship.

The future of Bonsai

2011-01-14T17:03:00.000-08:00

Over the last few weeks being back in Japan, I often think about the path I have taken, sometimes coming back here feels like a backwards step. Once you have become your own boss and can wake up at 10 am and watch some TV before pottering around the garden, it is difficult to then get up again at 6 and get shouted at for something that you didn't do. Still, it isn't a backwards step, I am still learning many things, some of which not directly related to Bonsai at all.

One thing that has been apparent to me is the lack of cooperation between professionals in the west which is something that came as a bit of a shock to me. In Japan although there are rivalries and affiliations to bear in mind, there is a sense of togetherness and helping each other in the pursuit of making a living from Bonsai. If I have a customer that wants a tree from another professional and I push him towards buying it, then the seller will be grateful and give something back and not necessarily in monetary form, it maybe that he then intorduces a customer to me or lets me have a tree at a discounted price. I myself try to continue in this spirit and I hope that comes across to those I deal with. It seems counter productive to consider everybody as a rival when everybody has a different set of skills or aesthetic eye to bring to the table.

One fellow professional who I would very much like to help out (although he doesn't need it) is the man of the moment, Ryan Neil.

We spent a lot of our apprenticeship years in Japan at the same time, although I was a couple of years ahead and had been through the difficult patches of dealing with the Japanese system and mindset of a traditional Bonsai garden, so when we could meet secretly I was able to advise him on how to ignore the bad bits and focus on the good bits. In return, he would get me drunk and thenmake sure I got on the train home.

Now he is back in the US and starting to build his empire on a hill top in Oregon, just outside Portland in a town rather amusingly named Warren. I was lucky enough to visit him before we both went to the GSBF conference in October last year adn was amazed at what he had built so quickly. It puts me to shame...but then our objectives in life are different so it doesn't pay to compare yourself against others. His vision for Bonsai is pure and totally ego-free and he approaches it wtith a pure heart which is thoroughly refreshing. Obviously his skills are phenomenal having spent six years at the feet of Kimura, the only westerner to have done such a feat. There are not that many Japanese that have made it either.

Next weekend he will be headlining at Noelanders, so any of you lucky enough to be going, watch and learn all you can. Buy him a beer afterwards as well.

What is the reason for this outpouring of bromance? His new website has opened and go take a look.

The Chief is in China now for a few days so I can get down to some Bonsai work, I have a few trees of my own to work on, bought for a Kinbon photoshoot, but then the Chief trumped my paltry purchases and got me a humongous Juniper to work on (he wanted the pot). I will clean them up and put them up here.

The future of Bonsai is, like our trees, what we make of it. With the right heart, the right instruction and the right trees, there is no reason why our Bonsai future cannot be bright.

Happy New Year

2011-01-08T16:52:00.001-08:00

Once again a month has passed since I last wrote and so as a late christmas present and a celebration of the new year,here are some pictures for you. One is of my favourite ume, the other is one of my favourite stones which has just had a new daiza made for it by Suzuki Koji.

As per usual at this time of year I am back in Japan,this time with incredible sinus problems and the feeling that I am not as young as I used to be. It is always a busy time of year as we have an exhibition on here, a celebration of the new year for all our customers. Everybody comes along and says hello so we are constantly entertaining and trying to find new trees and pots for people who have new plans for their new years bonus!

Kokufu is around the corner so I have been working on a few of the trees for that, thankfully we are not putting too many in and they are in a good condition anyway so there is not too much to do there. The location is changing this year and the number of exhibits is slightly down, so we have decided to not try any trees that are on the borderline of being accepted. Tomorrow Kinbon is coming to do a photoshoot on a tree that Valentin will be working on, he is the german apprentice who is featured in this months issue of Bonsai Focus. He is leaving in a few months after three years here. Due to immigration problems he was unable to complete the five years that is commonly required but he is a good lad and has come on very well. I look forward to working with him in Europe in the future. As I am the senior apprentice I will now have someone to carry my bags!

Anyway, enough...please enjoy the pictures. I should try to make a gallery page...but.... Happy New year and I hope all your Bonsai wake up in the spring!

Shows and no snow...

2010-12-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

After what seems like another age has past, I am back from a very busy period in Japan which took in four different exhibitions, a lot of work, meeting some new additions to the family and the worst cold I have had all year.

One of the reasons I went to Japan at this time of year was to see the Taikanten exhibition held in Kyoto. It was rumoured to be the last one ever due to the ending of the current sponsorship deal; this however turned out to not be true and it will be on next year. Still, I had kept the time free in my diary and told the Chief that I might be going over, which means I am going over. I flew over to Kansai airport, arrived at 5pm and was out drinking with some customers by 8.15. The pace did not relent from there.

The exhibition itself was a disappointment, there was a distinct lack of effort on the part of the professionals charged with preparing the trees for the show and I fear for the future of the show. Sadly this is becoming a common trend throughout Japanese Bonsai and due to the current economic climate, belts are being tightened and exhibitions are suffering as a result.

Other than this, my two days in Kyoto were enjoyable; I spent an afternoon with Mr. Morimae at the Choseki-kai Suiseki show and helped to clear up. The autumnal colours in Kyoto were beautiful this year due to a sudden drop in temperature and it was said to have been the best in many years. The crowds were testament to this and it was impossible to move around at times.

One of the other reasons for returning back was to also to be part of the Sakkafu-ten exhibition, the show for professionals, which was held at the Green Club in Ueno at the start of December. My senpai Akiyama-san won the prize for the best Azalea in show for the fourth time, equalling the number of times won by another Shunkaen graduate, the late Kawakami Mitsuhiro. Although the Chief is no longer a member of the professional’s union and does not display at the show, we still had a sales table there and were part of proceedings. The sales were pretty good due to one or two customers who bought some Japanese pots, which are seemingly unfashionable at the moment.

At the same time as the Sakkafu-ten, the annual exhibition of the Sakka Kyokai was held at the newly opened Omiya Bonsai Art Museum. This show is called the Sakka-ten…it all gets a bit difficult when they all sound the same, but they were very different shows. One had a tree by me in it, the other didn’t. I didn’t realise I was a member of the Japanese Sakka Kyokai until three days before the show when the Chief said, “So what are you going to display then?” Unbeknown to myself he had enrolled me and paid my dues in absentia , making it an obligation to show a tree. It made me smile because I had been enquiring about joining the European branch of the same association and the membership requirements are very difficult for a travelling professional such as myself…still perhaps I have found a back door?

Once the bomb had been dropped that I had to display something, the question was what? The Chief suggested I put some moss on a tree that had just come into the garden and was in a displayable state but I was not happy with the idea of displaying something which I had not worked on and was not a tree I would personally own myself. There was one tree in the garden which I had begun work on almost four years ago, a cascade red pine which was very much to my taste. I remember it arriving at the garden around this time of year and wishing that I could buy it. The tree needed a little work on it, but that was mainly branch removal and nothing too serious. It had a superbly flowing trunk line and ancient branches with bark developing on some of the secondary branches. At first glance it was a difficult tree with far too many branches and it had also been made back to front in my opinion, however I took it upon myself to try and find an understanding customer and convince him of my plans. One of the difficulties being a poor bonsai artist is affording the material to create beautiful trees. As with any art, it is essential to find a patron who can in effect sponsor you, so that you make beautiful trees together.

Thankfully there was one such man, Tanaka-san from nearby Yokohama. He was part of a group of ten or so Bonsai enthusiasts who came regularly to the garden and I became very friendly with most of them. Another one of the members was Murata Hideo, who was the owner of the literati red pine which I styled for a Bonsai Focus photo shoot; so it is obvious that we all shared a similar eye and taste in trees. This was not the case with this tree as it created a decisive split in the group. Walking around the garden with a few of the group I showed the tree to both Murata-san and Tanaka-san and asked them what they thought. I said that I had been looking long and hard at the tree and couldn’t decide which face to make the tree from. This was a little bit of a white lie but it got the ball rolling and it is essential for a young apprentice to not be too bold and brash with their ideas. Here the pair disagreed with Murata-san saying keep the present front, which was the easiest way to make the tree; and Tanaka-san saying reverse the tree and work the foliage in such a way so as to accentuate the crank in the branch which creates the apex.

Working on the friendly rivalry between the two of them, I asked Tanaka-san if he would purchase the tree and let me work on it for him. To my surprise he said yes and the deal was made. Sadly my vision for the future involved half as many branches as Tanaka-san and a compromise was struck. Here again is one of the problem areas of working on a customer’s tree as a younger artist, sometimes you need to wait for the owner to see what you see in it and come to the conclusion that it is correct to remove that branch. Once you have gained their trust, then most people give you a free hand to do as you please but I was not at that stage then. The tree was wired up and styled to Tanaka-san’s liking and we were all happy. I worked on it another two times during my time at the garden and it progressed very well. After I left, the candle cutting was done poorly on one branch which weakened it (thankfully it was one which needed to be removed) but apart from that it continued to progress as it should do.

When the Chief asked me to show a tree that was the only one I had a strong connection to and so I called Tanaka-san to ask him if it was ok to display the tree under my own name. He was over the moon that I had asked him and said yes; he also said yes to my request to “perhaps prune one or two branches”. With only a few days before the show, I worked long into the night to achieve the image that I wanted to with the tree, one which achieved a good balance between foliage mass and trunk thickness, one which showed off the beautiful and natural lines of the trunk but more importantly one which showed off my interpretation of Bonsai.

From the rough and shaggy starting point I removed several branches including the weaker branch half way down the cascading branch and the front pointing branch in the apex. Both of these allow the viewer to see the trunk line and the apical trunk section much more clearly. The branches removed from the apex give it a much lighter feeling and a bit more direction. I spent about 8 hours in total preparing the tree, most of which was spent plucking the right number of old needles off so as to achieve a good balance over the whole tree. If this is done without thought and the same number are removed per branch throughout the whole tree, then the bottom always looks weaker than the top.

I only put four pieces of almost invisible wire on the tree in order to achieve the style I wanted. It would have been very easy to have wired out the whole tree and arranged the branches in a well organised and rounded foliage pad with a nice, flat bottom. This does not appeal to me however and I went for a much more natural style. Natural should not be misread as untidy or unkempt; it takes a good number of hours of touching to make it look so untouched. The chief is not a big fan of this style when putting a tree on display as it is difficult for the general public to understand as it can be misread as lack of effort, however he had the good grace to allow me the freedom to do as I pleased.

The exhibition was put on in one of the classrooms at the Bonsai museum in Omiya. It wasn’t the greatest location but it was an attempt to support the new museum which Yamada-san (the chairman of the Sakka Kyokai) was a big part of helping to become reality. We turned up and built some staging out of plywood boards and plastic beer cases. The rest of the morning was spent arranging the trees which we had brought along.

Part of the requirement for displaying is to spend a day at the show and offer information and explanation to the visitors. I went down the day after the Sakkafu-ten had finished and spent a day surprising people that not only could I speak Japanese but also I had a tree on display. I had telephoned Tanaka-san to ask him to come and visit which he did. Thankfully he was happy with the decisions I had made and approved of the tree. The other visitors were varied including a screen writer who wants to make a Bonsai movie, several young ladies and lots of older gentleman who asked my advice on everything from Black pine candle cutting to spraying for leaf mite on Azalea. Needless to say I had fun and it once again showed me the reason for doing bonsai and for spending 6 hours plucking old needles, driving for hours and lifting 26 beer cases and 10 plywood boards up a flight of stairs. An appreciative public make the difference and even if they do not know anything about Bonsai, most people can see the effort that gets put into the act of display.

The last three days of my stay were the busiest, with every day beginning at 5 am and finishing after midnight for one reason or another. It didn’t help that I had been suffering from a cold for over two weeks and still had not cleared up, but the end of the road was in sight. Thursday, despite being a very long day was very enjoyable as it was the monthly auction at Morimae’s. There are always a good number of professionals there and it is a good way to pick up material, pots and all the gossip and rumours. Sadly, due to the poor exchange rate and my lack of funds, very little was purchased.

Although it was less than a month there, it was an intense time and I learnt a great deal. I feel it is always important to keep in mind the reasons why you do Bonsai and for me once again, this has been shown to me by the reactions of long standing customers who were happy to see me again and invited me over to work; and also the visitors to the exhibition, many of whom were seeing Bonsai for the first time.

Aiseki Kai Newsletter

2010-11-10T23:15:00.000-08:00

The California Aiseki Kai newsletter is now out. It is one of the best, if not the best Suiseki only newsletters out there and I look forward to it every month.

As I mentioned below, after the Stone symposium, I was asked to write something regarding my approach to stones, so I did. You can find it in the newsletter which I think is a worthy read here

Here it is on my site though....

Over thinking and under feeling: a difference in approach from West to East

After my experiences at both the 2008 and 2010 ISAS symposia and along with reading much of the discussion and debate on the internet, it is obvious that the approach many people take to Suiseki differs greatly. It is not my place to criticise or denigrate opposing points of view but rather explain the why behind mine and hope that it helps others to understand their own. After a few years involvement within the Bonsai and Suiseki world in the west, both European and American, I have noticed that there is one particular topic which is very rarely discussed. Many enthusiasts and professionals wax lyrical about what is or is not a Suiseki and how to understand it in simplified terms and conditions; however I have yet to find many people who talk about why they do Suiseki. Although there are many reasons and none is superior to any other, we are all entitled to our opinions and tastes yet we are seemingly afraid to openly discuss our motivation.

My initial experiences of Suiseki were entirely in a Japanese environment and I was lucky enough to be exposed to very high quality stones in a traditional environment. At first I found it strange that lumps of rock could be revered in such a way however as time passed I began to truly enjoy the appreciation of Suiseki in a deeper and philosophical way. After coming into contact with Bonsai and Suiseki I began to reconsider the logic which I had previously studied during a degree course in Physics as stones spoke to me of a world beyond my immediate comprehension. Suiseki is, to quote from the new Matsuura book, “anything but scientific” and allowed me to “feel the poetics and beauty of all things in nature.” Stones which have a provenance of over 500 years can tell us many stories but more importantly, if approached with the correct mind they can give us an insight into ourselves and the way in which see the world around us.

Many of the Japanese aesthetic ideals are concerned with the passage of time and an implicit understanding that death is inevitable yet not to be feared. We are impermanent and the universe continues with or without us and Suiseki is a reminder of this. A stone which was created before humanity and will outlast us, yet in this infinitesimal period of time has been appreciated by many, creating a chain of linked experience and shared history which varies according to the individual who gazes upon it. Therein lies the rub, the problem of the individual, and in the case of the appreciation of an Eastern practice through Western eyes, a significantly different mindset.

The logical mindset of the West at times has difficulty embracing the Eastern approach where less emphasis is placed on the quantification of reality and is more interested in the understanding of it through experience, observation and empathy. Rather than seek to define what is observed and conclude an eternal and universal truth, it accepts that “while I see this as x, tomorrow it may be y and for another viewer it may be z.” While a Japanese viewer may see a red mountain stone which reminds him of Mt. Wakakusa, an Italian may see Mt. Sassolungo in the autumn and another viewer may see himself walking through the hills surrounding his Pennsylvanian childhood home. It is true that all viewers see a mountain but in different contexts. This can be taken even further with more abstract stones, particularly object stones. In one figure stone different viewers can see dragons, dogs, people or whatever takes their fancy. An individual and particular appreciation of stones without the limitation of explicit names, either poetic or categorical, is a large part of the enjoyment of Suiseki.

For me the beauty of Suiseki is the lack of Aristotelian logic and the limitless possibilities a stone can offer the viewer. Without mystery and ambiguity, the beauty of a stone is lost and it becomes a rock, a geological formation with value only as a curio. The Japanese are well renowned to favour black and smooth stones with a quiet and simplistic appearance. Such a stone creates a blank canvas in which the viewer can see a rich tapestry of internal feelings which are destroyed by external considerations such as the geological composition or the positioning of the signature on a scroll.

Approaching Suiseki through an either/or logic limits the ability of an enthusiast to appreciate Suiseki. There is a greater depth to the practice of Suiseki and whilst classification of stones is an important entry point into the deep and mysterious world, it is just that, an entry point. Others of a more spiritual or artistic bent will look to take further steps along the path provided by Suiseki to a deeper and more personal, particular understanding. As I stated at the beginning, I firmly believe that no one reason for doing Suiseki is superior to any other, for many the joy of collecting is the sole motivation and for others the classification and naming of stones brings pleasure. As you have seen in Wil’s excellent series of notes from Japan, the umbrella of Suiseki is wide and varied, however the motivation of each group and school of thought is clear, distinct and evolves over time. Each can exist peacefully next to each other as they are all different viewpoints of the same thing. It is unfair to expect everybody to sit meditating in front of stones to get a deeper understanding of the nature of the Universe (this is something which very rarely happens in my life); equally I feel that it is unfair to force everybody into the same way of thinking and interpretation which is something that taxonomy and the literal naming of stones does.

When approaching the discussion of Suiseki, the motivation of others as well as one’s own motivation for doing suiseki must be considered. While I find the debates created by adherence to rigid systems on both sides of the argument both counterproductive and circular, it is not in keeping with the spirit of Suiseki to add fuel to the fire or ridicule anybody else. Self improvement is not achieved by pushing others down, but rather by examining one’s own position. I do not look to speak for the Japanese and my personal approach to Suiseki is something which is rooted in both West and Eastern thinking and feeling. I have found in Suiseki aesthetic ideas which resonate within and allow me to see through different eyes. Over time and without a conscious thought process, philosophical questions posed in quantum mechanics lectures began to explain themselves in ways which I am yet to fully understand. Only through further study and dedication will it become clearer.

Just my humble opinion like...

2010-11-10T23:13:00.000-08:00

Back from some wandering again...or was it just wondering

I said in my previous post, which was over a month ago that I would be more prolific with posting but that clearly hasn't happened. I hope anybody that follows this is actually still there. I feel it is necessary to post stuff to help people to understand what I do and what I am thinking but, like my dislike of living life through a lens, I have been more focused on learning and experiencing new things...some of which have been incredible and given me a different outlook on Bonsai, others simply good fun.

I have just returned from a month long trip to the US which took in two major conventions and plenty of private work and clubs in between. The first convention was one which is very close to my heart as it is the only purely stone orientated convention and it is run by a good friend and spiritual brother of mine, Sean Smith. This year I was invited to speak about Japanese Suiseki Aesthetics, a topic which made me think greatly and do some academic research into things which I had taken for granted or simply accepted. I was very worried that my talk would be dry and too academic but it was warmly received, particularly by those people who are much more learned than me. The world of Japanese Aesthetics is a very vague and indistinct one, the concept of beauty for the Japanese is something difficult to define and comes from the heart more than the head. It was good practice for me to try and make it come from the head and along with a lot of the discussion that took place at the event, I wrote an article for the California Aiseki Kai newsletter which will be published soon. I will link it here when it goes up.

Mr. Morimae of Wabi fame also came and spoke and I had the honour of translating for him for some of the time, if you can call it an honour, it was a trying and difficult ordeal but I made it through relatively unscathed. He talked a lot about many of the things I had spent the summer thinking about. This is not unsurprising as he is the organiser of the Genkoukai, the group who put on a very special exhibition in Kyoto at the end of January. At the end of January I had seriously considered quitting Bonsai for various reasons which need not be discussed here, but after visiting their small but refined exhibition and speaking with several of the key figures in the group and also taking time to sit down with the Chief and discuss why we do Bonsai, I decided that my short term annoyance with the shady side of Bonsai was not as important as having a grand view of things and the necessity to concentrate on the path rather than the goal.

After a few months of ruminating on this, Mr. Morimae spoke at great length of the importance of approaching Suiseki with the correct heart and mind. Rather than looking to criticise and look for the negative, it is better to be more accepting and appreciative of the effort that has been put into it. This was something that I had felt at the Newstead exhibition in the middle of September. Whilst the overall level of quality of individual trees had decreased slightly, the overall level of effort and spirit had increased dramatically. There were many new names and faces who were trying hard rather than resting on their laurels. This would feature again later in my trip

After the show I spent a few weeks on the North East coast, mainly with Sean Smith but also up in Rochester, NY and also down at one of the greatest single collections of Bonsai in the west, the Kennet Collection. During my time with Sean, we spent many a night discussing the future of Suiseki in the west and how we can both best serve the small but dedicated number of enthusiasts. The Cuba Libre's certainly helped the conversations flow but it was refreshing to speak freely and openly about the problems and the positives that come up. Sean also taught me a few new techniques and it was incredible to watch a true craftsman at work. I commissioned him to make a new box for an antique scroll I purchased. I was very happy not only with the final result but also to have been able to watch him in action. It also gave me another insight into why rather than simply how.

One of the other highlights of the trip was the fact that I got to experience an American Halloween for the first time...including carving my very first pumpkin. Staying with Sean meant that I got to hang out with his daughter who, along with most girls/women I meet, seemed to enjoying making fun of me, calling me "Accent Boy" and moking my clear and perfect speech. I did get even though by beating her at pumpkin carving and the Disco numbers on Just Dance on the Wii. I challenge anybody to beat me on it...my rendition of "Ring my Bell" will go down in history.

I have just written another page of text but due to the wonder that is windows and this stupid blogging tool, it has been lost. I am an analog person. I need to sleep so I shall add to this again later.

2010-09-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last blog entry. I have had a lot on and also been thinking a lot about various different things. A lot has happened in the interim period, a lot of workshops, a trip to Poland, Newstead show and a lot of research for my talk at the Stone Symposium next week.

I am leaving for the US soon for a month or so but I will have lots of updates while I am away...trips are always interesting and I always discover a new aspect of Bonsai.

My work with Bonsaibasho.com has continued, Phil has put more videos up, rather than link them all here, just follow this link to find them http://www.youtube.com/user/bonsaibasho. We have done one for wiring as well which Phil is getting all giddy about. I look forward to that series. It did involve me wiring a tree all day which is something I am not used to doing any more.

I had a trip to Ibuki Bonsai in Poland recently to work with Mariusz there, it was a very interesting trip and we worked on some good trees. Not the greatest pics but we had fun and got on very well.

This is a wonderful mugo pine which I tweaked and put on the road to an exhibition. I cannot claim much of the credit here, all we did was refinement work...but the small touches are some of the most important ones...a tiny bit of space here, the uncovering of a root or a branch and the whole tree changes.

The exhibition at Newstead was a great weekend. John Hanby did a great job with the show as always and there was a great atmosphere in the place. A lot of people commented on it. A lot of new trees as well, not all to the highest standard in the world, but well presented and lots of new faces which is great for the Bonsai community. The Shohin was of the highest quality, I give massive credit to John Armitage for promoting shohin via the BSA and for such talented people as Duncan Hield and Mark and Ritta Cooper for putting on the best Shohin display I have seen outside of Japan. Many of the trees have come from Japan but most a long time ago. I was very happy to see a fully developed and well ramified Zelkova that was brought over five years ago as a stump, when I first met Mark and Ritta in Japan, I am very much looking forward to the Shohin event in March 2011. We have a thriving Shohin scene in the UK which is, in the most part, down to the hard work of John Armitage.

Suiseki has been playing a large part of my life for the last few weeks, as has Japanese Aesthetics. I have been doing a lot of research and preparation for my talk. I even went down to the British Library to read over some old books. Made me feel like an unwashed student again. It was great to learn some new things and read in words and solidify ideas that I had experienced with my eyes and thoughts. It has pushed me closer to the ever elusive book. I will be discussing that with the Chief in November. More as it comes.

For anybody that loves ceramics, please check out Stone Monkey and his tea bowls. They are outstandingly good and I bought one yesterday as a present for myself. He goes from strength to strength with his works and will certainly take on the mantle of the UK's greatest potter as the current generation begin to wind down production.

Must try harder on the blog front....

A long journey finished, another begins...

2010-08-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

Apologies for not posting anything recently, most of the recent stuff has been a bit off on a tangent anyway, sorry for that, seems to have bored most people into silence. One of the reasons for my silence is that I have been on a bit of a trek recently, physically as well as mentally. 3000 miles in three days solid driving...nice. It has taken me a week to get over it! More on that later. you can find out a little back ground detail in this new article here

More of the Bonsai Basho videos have gone on line....part one of a series on tools. It is for beginners mainly I guess but there will be something in it for anyone who uses Bonsai tools. I know I go on about it a lot and it now means I have to practice what I preach.

Just yesterday I worked on a phenomenal collected yew that a student of mine had picked up for an absolute bargain price. I wish that I had gotten to it first....as per usual I didnt have my camera with me so I will wait for him to send me some pictures. We will get round to sand blasting it over the winter or next year. I am in the process of building a sand blasting kit, so expect some pictures of that soon. Have four days of workshops from tomorrow so will get some pictures there as well. I really need to work on this self promotion thing....

Pesticide problems

2010-07-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

Phil over at Bonsai Basho towers has been a busy boy. He has finished the video for the azalea transformation. It can be seen here on You tube or if you pop over to www.bonsaibasho.com and register you can see them both plus an exclusive bit of text explaining what is going on.

We also did a video about the problem that has been facing a lot of people up and down the country this year, spider mites on Junipers. The video misses out a bit of the explaination of the problem so I will be adding text to it asap. but here it is. Please excuse the poor quality of explaination. It was all one cut stuff and some of it was unusable due to back ground interference.

Now the pesticide problem is one which I alluded to in my last post and it one which prompted a response regarding DDT. Now before we start I will state that I am all for the environment and living in close relation to the earth, I do not agree with widespread and unrestrained use of agro chemicals, I wish we didn't live in a world where demand for cheaper and standardised produce was driven by profit obsessed behemoths such as Tesco...that said, the myths and junk science that surround the DDT are legend showing us the fundamental difficulty with such issues. The problem lies with the burden of proof that is required by scientists, but not by environmental campaigners who are happy with anecdotal evidence and the policy makers who are at the mercy of lobbyists and voters. Sadly I fall somewhere between the two camps, I require a certain amount of proof, and in the case of the egg shell thinning of birds, for every research paper proving DDT was the cause in the dec line, there is another paper to prove that it wasn't.. A very good article can be found here which links to much of the evidence both for and against.

What is abundantly clear is that the anecdotal evidence of the post-war decline in predatory birds can be attributed to, but in a purely scientific way, it cannot be proved beyond doubt that DDT was the singular cause. The ban of its use on a widespread and unrestrained scale in the western world is a good thing, as shown by the increase in numbers of predatory birds throughout the world since the DDT ban.

This leads me to the point about Defra and the banning of pesticides seemingly at random. The lack of scientific rigour and common sense in their haphazard way of deciding what is good and what is bad is astounding.

Take the case of Bifenthrin, recently banned in the latest cull of chemicals. It was the active component of Rose Clear 3, a very useful contact pesticide. Bifenthrin is a Pyrethroid, a synthetic version of Pyrethrin, an organic chemical obtained from Chrsanthemum flowers. Both Bifenthrin and Pyrethrin are of low toxicity to mammals, but high toxicity to aquatic life. Neither are carcinogenic.

Bifenthrin was banned in the cull, but Pyrethrin is still available on the shelves of garden centres up and down the country. If Pyrethrin gets into the water system, it will just as fatal as Bifenthrin...just as fatal as bleach or Jeyes Fluid. If both build up in humans through consumption of crops which have been sprayed with it, neither will be dangerous. Apart from the slightly longer half life in soil of bifenthrin, what is the difference? Perhaps the word organic? More importantly, what is Rose Clear 4 now made from?

Careful examnation shows that the active ingredient is Acetamprid, which unlike bifenthrin, is a systemic insecticide, not a contact killer. It is a neonicotinoid, which is a synthetic replacement for Nicotine, a traditional pesticide. The problem lies with anecdotal evidence from France, Germany, Italy and Canada which prove a strong link between the use of neonicotinoids and the tremendous decline in Bee population.

Colony Collapse Disorder has been attributed to may things but there is a strong, yet unproven anecdotal link between the collapse of bee colonies and the presence of such pesticides as Acetamprid, the replacement for the relatively harmless Bifenthrin. As early ago as the 1990's French Bee Keepers made the link between the rise in the use of neonicotinoids and the decline of bees and honey production. Whilst Bifenthrin is toxic to bees if used indiscriminately and sprayed directly onto a colony, it does not have the same effect as Acetamprid.

One the one hand Defra claim to protect the countryside, one the other hand they are a Bureaucratic monster which does no good what so ever, causing more harm. On the decision to ban bifenthrin, from the Defra website...

"In March 2009, the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health voted on the European Commission’s proposal for the non-inclusion of bifenthrin in Annex I of Directive 91/414/EEC. The Commission proposal for bifenthrin did not achieve a Qualified Majority agreement. Under Directive 91/414/EEC a “non-opinion” in Standing Committee means the dossier is referred to the Council, which then has three months to act. If a decision is not taken within three months, the Commission will adopt its original proposal by default."

Which means that because they couldn't be bothered to reach a majority vote either way, and nobody could be bothered to do any research to figure out what was worth doing. Agro Chemical companies couldn't be bothered to shoulder the burden of proof as they have many more toxic chemicals which are yet to be banned left to sell. It is not as if Defra don't have money to burn...£350 million wasted on a computer system that doesn't work , a rebranding and new website. All this while money to allow farmers to create land for birds to nest on and thrive in is desperately needed.

Through a complete lack of common sense and blind following of EU legislation and disregard for true science and direct observation, problems like this continue to occur. When the bee population of this country continues to decline, as more and more colonies collapse, the blame must surely lie with Defra. Their random nature shows a lack of leadership and policy.

That is why I think Defra are idiots.

Waltzing Monkey

2010-07-16T02:58:00.001-07:00

Now that the world cup is finished, the accounts are finished and I have got no more excuses, its back to some good old hard work. I have some Sisyphean cleaning tasks to do which will have me longing for receipts and spreadsheets.

I did promise that there would be some new content via Bonsai Basho...and here it is...in all its embarrassing entirety. I am not camera shy, I am naturally like that.

There will be a full text to go with the second part, Phil at Bonsaibasho.com is finding it difficult to edit my monotone drone. It will get done soon though. This is the tree in question....

During the discussions we had making this, I told Phil that I do not like the use of the word "Master" to describe what I am and it reminded me of a documentary I heard a while ago about the continuing tradition of Wandergeselle, or Journeymen, in Germany and neighbouring countries. It was the second time I had thought of this recently as I am very much a Journeyman and have gone through a similar process.

According to the oracle of Wikipedia...."The word 'journeyman' comes from the French word journee, meaning the period of one day; this refers to their right to charge a fee for each day's work. They would normally be employed by a master craftsman but would live apart and might have a family of their own. A journeyman could not employ others. In contrast, an apprentice would be bound to a master, usually for a fixed term of seven years, and lived with the master as a member of the household, receiving most or all of their compensation in terms of food and lodging."

Since the early days of the industrial revolution apprenticeships have declined in the UK as machines have replaced the need for skilled labour, a trend which continues today. The number of self-service check out tills in supermarkets and B&Q is abhorrent and should be boycotted at every opportunity. The rise of the capitalist industries also destroyed the power of the guild who controlled the progressions of an apprentice through being a Journeyman and who finally decided if the craftsman could become a Master. While the guilds did impose restrictions on trade and who could practice the trade and where, they did ensure a standard of quality which made European craftsmanship of the 18th/19th century a thing of beauty.

There is no guild of Bonsai artists so who determines the Mastery of it as an art or craft? The use of the term Master in the bonsai community is free, unrestrained and in many cases self awarded. We have a culture of frowning upon the sale and subsequent display of a masterpiece tree created by the great artists, so is commercial success a good yard stick for mastery? This is certainly true in the art world where the works created are a commercial product, yet in the artistic Bonsai community this is not strictly true.

Apprenticeships declined in the UK to the point where it was less than 1% of total employment in 1990. I have always felt that we have a snobbish attitude to craftsmen or tradesmen in the UK. The idea that intelligence is vastly superior to skill and ability is endemic in society. During my schooling the entire education system was geared towards academic excellence rather than the ability to create anything and we are now seeing the effect of this in society with our almost non-existent manufacturing industry and our dependence on the service sector...which would make you think that service would improve, but that simple piece of logic seems to have bypassed the current generation of bar staff in most London pubs. I always felt pressured to go to University and was never given any other option, when I discussed my desire to be a gardener at the age of 17, my careers adviser laughed at me and told me it would be a waste of talent. I do not regret it and it was a worthwhile learning experience, however I would not do it now, with the debt burden, possible new graduate tax and 70 applicants for every graduate job. With news today that University applications are at a record level and over 100,000 people will be rejected, what for them? Will the traditional apprenticeship make a return or will the country create more non jobs. I'm sure Defra need a few more idiots on their staff to ban every chemical that is of any use to us.

Anyway....that went off a bit political and I didn't mean for it to. I have recently come to appreciate my status as a Journeyman Bonsai-ist and will continue my years of being a jolly swagman.

The Divine Comedy

2010-07-09T02:39:00.001-07:00

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

One of the things the Chief never taught me as part of my apprenticeship was the importance of keeping good records...mainly because he never did. There was one time the tax man came knocking and we shut up shop for two days whilst they went over the books for the last six years...it was not a pleasant time.

Now I am settled and not a non-dom, I am at the mercy of Her Majesty and her Revenue collecting suits. The last week has been sat trying to get to grips with Excel, Receipts from a year ago and looking over my bank accounts for the last year. Where did all that money go?

It is an interesting but very very painful process. I have never felt so grown up. It is like voting for the first time. I have to go to the accountant this afternoon so hopefully what I have done has not been in vain.

A Japanese friend of mine said to me the other day having read my blog...."Philosophers do not make good businessmen". I understand this very much now. I must be serious from now on.

On a lighter note...I will be up Bonsai Basho towers on Sunday so expect some new stuff next week. We are getting the video camera out...so expect some hardcore bonsai.

After that I think its only fair that next week we have a day off....

Back from the Internet wilderness

2010-07-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the lack of updates, I don't do it nearly enough I know...like many things in life I guess.

I have lots of excuses, mainly the World Cup and Virgin Media related. At least England have crashed out in shame, Japan have gone out in glory and America went down fighting. Virgin Media crash down any which way but online and have no way of telling me why or when they will do what I am paying them for. Still, touch wood, there have been no problems for the last three or four days.

I have written this little piece about the second national show in the states. Enjoy.

I will be doing some stuff this next week for Bonsai Basho hopefully. Keep it peeled. Planning on doing something tool related...seemed to be obsessed a bit at the moment

Tool Time 2 - Return of the Tool

2010-06-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a two week trip to the US. Texas and the national convention in Rochester. It was a busy but very fun time. A full report later.

Watching the world cup in the US was a great experience, seeing the US sports channels doing a great job presenting it was an eye opener, no smarmy Lineker, cliched and critical Hansen and no coverage of the biggest tool of our time, John Terry. Never before has a footballer filled me with such despair for the human race. How has this man become a national icon? What kind of a society do we live in where a tool like Jay-T can command such press coverage and admiration from some quarters. Crying like a baby because his job is boring? Go and live in North Korea, I'm sure they are not worried about the boredom of their training camp, they have to go home having being beaten by Ronal-doh. Speaking of which I had a difficult time trying to explain to a bar full of Americans why I was supporting North Korea against Portugal and cursing everytime they scored. I am not part of the axis of evil, I just don't like cheating cry babies, even if they are good.

Anyway, the trip gave me and the Chief some time together and we had fun, as you can see here.

Tool time

2010-06-03T10:14:00.001-07:00

Due to the unnaturally hot weather today, I decide to try and stay out of the sun, given the tendency of bald spots to burn and necks to turn red. I have spent the day pottering around the house doing odd jobs and checking on the home brew, replying to emails and doing a bit of preparation before going off to Texas next week.

I decided to do something which I should have done a while ago and I spent an hour cleaning my tools. This is something I have always been quite fastidious about but have let it slip recently. It is essential to maintain tools on a regular basis so that cutting edges stay sharp, joints do not rust and so that disease cannot spread. As I travel to many bonsai gardens across the world there is potential for spreading fungal diseases and I do not want to be responsible for the Bonsai version of Dutch Elm.

Sounds corny but clean tools mean a clean mind and a focus on the job ahead. Even the greatest artists in the world had to clean their own paintbrushes. I have been meaning to write a whole "How-to" thing about tool maintenance, I approached Bonsai Focus about it but they were not overly keen to get on with it. I need someone who can do some good photos and maybe some videos to help me out here...

One of the reasons my tools were so dirty were because I had been doing a few days work with Ian of British Bonsai. Here is the before and after of one little Juniper that we worked on. The aim is to get it in to BSA 2012. Without wanting to sound patronising, it is a pretty little tree and has enough character to hold its own amongst other container grown trees. I look forward to its development. It will never be a world beater but it is what it is. More details to follow.

Looking forward to next week’s trip to Texas and Rochester to see some of the best Bonsai in the States and catch up with some friends.

The Problem with Yamadori

2010-05-24T06:50:00.001-07:00

I recently went over to the Netherlands and Belgium to work with Bonsai Focus and Marc Noelanders respectively. I had a few moments of understanding about the state of the Bonsai market at the moment. One of the reasons you don’t see me in the magazine so much is that I am working on some long term projects. When I graduated/got kicked out of Japan in 2007, Farrand and I discussed doing articles for them, which of course I was very happy to do. One of the problems he faces is that there are too many instant Bonsai articles, just as there are too many demonstrations in which a tree is presented only in the initial styled state. I was not particularly happy to continue this tradition and suggested that we work on some long term projects together where I would come along several times a year and we would work the trees through to finish. This takes the pressure of both me and the tree.

Several of the project trees have worked superbly, several will never see the magazine, but such is the nature of Bonsai. Of the ones which are working well, including one which I styled this trip are some collected trees which are being taken slowly yet steadily to completion. Here lays the trick, allowing the tree chance to grow and put on roots, something which freshly collected trees inevitably lack. They are being gently guided into the shape we want, rather than forced and pushed.

Over dinner we discussed the current depressed state of the Bonsai market and what can be done to stimulate it. Talk turned to what I think is the seriously inflated prices in the Yamadori market and my disbelief that people are prepared to pay vast sums of money for something which has, literally in some cases, just been ripped off a mountain side with barely any roots and no guarantee if it will live or die.

Arriving in Belgium to do a demo at the club in Hasselt, which Marc Noelanders arranged, we again discussed the state of the Bonsai world. He said that he was trying hard to teach the club members and people who he gives workshops to that whilst the best results can be obtained from Yamadori trees, they are not something which will happen overnight, they are long term projects based more upon careful horticultural practice than artistic prowess. In order to fulfil the artistic whims and fantasies of many bonsai enthusiasts, it is better to look at material which is well established. Garden centre material or imported Bonsai material which has been well established in a pot, with plenty of roots and usable branches. This is something I whole heartedly agree with and we both spoke of the problem faced when doing workshops when students turn up with some piece of collected material that wobbles in the pot, has branches with foliage at the end of very long branches and has been planted at the wrong angle by a collector more interested in making a quick profit than a decent piece of usable material.

The ideal process for dealing with most Yamadori is to develop a pot full of roots before working the rest of the tree. This can be done at the same time as gradually chasing back the foliage from the branch tips, creating back budding within the tree. This requires an incredible amount of self control to not rush ahead and create an instant image, however if done correctly, the final result will be much better and a sustainable design, not one which will spring out of shape once the wire is removed.

I do not disagree with the use of Yamadori, I have many myself, but I do disagree with the inflated prices for rootless, freshly dug trees that have very little chance of becoming a decent finished tree. I hope that a modicum of self control and long term planning begins to become apparent in both the buying and selling of material before Bonsai self implodes.

Rant over.

Ichiban Inspiration

2010-05-10T13:25:00.001-07:00

Ichiban Inspiration

I have been meaning to write about this for a long time, but as per usual, never got round to it. One thing after another and too many distractions. I am now on a train and have just finished my book, the thoroughly recommended ”The Storm of War” by Andrew Roberts and so I have finally gotten around to it.

Many years ago, Marco Invernizzi asked me if I knew anybody who made tools in Japan as he was planning to make his own, I thought little of it at the time and put him in contact with the few people I knew, not, however Masakuni as we did not deal with him, rather his brother Ezuro. The two brothers worked under their father making tools until a falling out and they acrimoniously split up. The Masakuni brand continued and Ezuro went off and made his own tools, specialising in Ikebana scissors as much as Bonsai. The handmade tools he makes are a joy to behold and I am the proud owner of a pair which cost more than I am prepared to admit online. This is merely an aside though.

When the Ichiban was released, I was a little sceptical and thought that it looked a bit funny and the seven tools in one was just a gimmick, however when I looked at Marco’s website and saw the thorough design process which he went through I was very much taken aback. What really struck me was the outside of the box thinking which drew on Marco’s pre-bonsai background, namely his design studies.

The foundation for the creation of the tool lies in the amalgamation of both parts of Marco’s experiences, his formal design studies and his extensive Bonsai activities, including several years of apprenticeship at Kimura. For all that is spoken of Kimura’s artistry as being held up as the premier standard, the majority of people fail to recognise both his craftsmanship and horticultural skills. Craftsmanship should not be mistaken for a lack of artistry, rather a complete understanding and mastery of the tools and materials required to make such things. The economic use of wire, tools, time and movement when making a tree for example are the fundamental principles upon which being a professional bonsai artist is based on. Here within lies the beauty of the Ichiban for the average bonsai hobbyist.

One of the first lessons I was taught, after being able to wire to a sufficient standard, was to make it quick, and then once I had learnt to do it quickly, it had to be done quicker and with less wire. One of the tricks to this is using a wire caddy for lower gauge wire, having it close to hand and most importantly, never putting down tools and then picking them straight back up again. Repeated over the course of a day it becomes very time consuming and attention breaking. Constantly searching for tools can destroy a train of thought. I am terrible for this, putting my scissors in my back pocket one minute, side pocket another, then my jacket pocket and then behind the tree (I am the same with train tickets and my wallet as well). The trick is to have a pair of wire cutters that fits into the palm of your hand or, in the case of the Ichiban, flicks back to rest on the forearm.

Without wishing to go too much into a declaration of love for either Marco or the Ichiban I will just say that an incredible amount of thought and experience has gone into it and that should not be criticised. Some of the features are a little debatable, the hammer for example would be a struggle to use with a larger chisel. I use a 14 oz hammer and that is just about heavy enough, however the ergonomically designed scissors and wire cutter feature alone warrants the price tag. I am going to use the Ichiban more myself and see just how useful it can be.

The main reason for my writing about the Ichiban is not for promoting it in itself, but what it stands for; something new in a world where there is little to be invented or bettered. Variations on a theme are possible, the Ichiban is a very clever and unique one, but what it represents is a bringing together of ideas from outside the Bonsai mentality and breathing a bit of fresh air into our world. Not only the design aspect but also the very professionally done advertising campaign and the whole Ichiban club idea. Very few people have actually attempted to be so professional and blend other worlds together in such a way. For all the bad publicity he may get and criticisms of being arrogant or egotistical, I say Bravo Marco.

What then for me? Where does this leave the Monkey mountain in all of this? I have long thought of the parallels between my pre-bonsai world, Physics, and the current life I ended up in. I am constantly asked about how I went from Physics to Bonsai as they are seemingly worlds apart. I personally think of them as being very closely linked, but perhaps I am clutching at straws. One of the reasons I went back to Japan and became an apprentice was the profound effect reading “The Tao of Physics” had on me. Fresh out of University and the equations of quantum mechanics and Cosmology still fresh in my head, I struggled to make head or tail of what it meant in my head. Concepts such as Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Relativity still puzzle me to this day. The mathematics of them are reasonably easy to comprehend, but the actual meaning is difficult. All of the great physicists had the same problem, they struggled to believe that what was mathematically and theoretically sound and valid, could actually be true. Einstein himself famously said “God does not play dice”.

Reading “The Tao..” which illustrated the remarkable similarities between modern Western scientific theory and ancient Eastern religion/spirituality/belief lead to a moment of enlightenment for me. Many of the concepts I had struggled with were illustrated by Japanese aesthetic ideas which were present in Bonsai, for example the relative relationships between matter and space and the observer/observed or creating foliage pads using crystalline structure patterns. For me, Bonsai represented a way in which I could understand some preconcieved ideas and gave me a wealth of different perspectives on life.

I have often struggled to put my thoughts into words in a way in which I am happy with, I fear that I would need to do more research and dig out my old text books at which point my theory, or my spirit will break in two. Either way I feel that seeing Marco succeed in such a way as to utilise his past and present experience is enough to spur me to combine mine in some way.

UBI, Panic on the streets of Europe and the Lurgy

2010-04-25T04:22:00.001-07:00

I had been asked to go to the UBI show in San Marino last weekend as a judge and demonstrator...and seeing as I was going anyway, it seemed only logical that I go and trade as well, seeing as the Italians were renowned for buying things Bonsai related.

The monkey mobile was packed up to the rafters with most of my stock and we set out Tuesday afternoon, meeting up with the intrepid and experienced European campaigner John Pitt (and his good lady wife) at Maidstone services before heading off to the Continent together. John is a good friend/colleague and it seemed only natural to travel down and stick together, and it worked out well for us as we got the best trading spot and joined forces to create a corner of a foreign field that was forever England...well at least for three days it was. My thanks and appreciation go out to the Pitts for making it a much more enjoyable experience.

The drive down was fine, except when I found out that I was paying 30% more on the French toll roads than Mr. Pitt because my van is only slightly taller than his...I felt persecuted and thought about taking it up with the authorities before realising my GCSE level french would fall apart and I would end up getting directions to the beach and talking about what I did at the weekend....J'ai écouté des disques et j'ai mangé du fromage

The event was good, despite the rain, location was fabulous and I met a lot of people, especially my friends from Sardinia who came over and helped with the wiring. For some reason I am drawn to people from different countries who are down to earth, stubborn and do not suffer fools...yet have a reputation which precedes them. Texas, Sardinia...Yorkshire. I will have pictures of the demonstration tree when I can get them.

The sales area can be seen in this video here....I took out all the big guns, hoping to sell at least one of them...needless to say I came back with a truck just as full as I went out with. Despite heavily reduced prices on the final day, I simply couldnt give the trees away. What was pleasantly suprising is that I managed to sell many of the antique Chinese pots to some very discerning customers. I also got invites to several gigs this year and next. I will be coming to Poland, Turin and some blokes back yard sometime in the near future.

The demonstration and judging went well as far as I could tell, there was no fireworks after the decision was made so it was all good. Some of the pictures can be seen here

Marco and Carlos Van der Vaart were the two other demonstrators and it was impressive to see Marco at work, it was the first time I had ever actually seen him working and there is something different about the way he works. Although I only got a few minutes to watch, I actually learnt quite a lot from him. I also had a good look at the Ichiban in action and more on that later. Carlos was good value as well, he helped finish the wiring on my tree. A great bloke but he kept worrying about the chaos on the roads due to the Volcano no fly fiasco. He put the fear of god into Mr. Pitt and myself so the plan was to hot-foot it back to Blightly asap. The drive home took around 28 hours, stopping every now and again for a coffee or 40 winks. I also started to feel sick and feverish as we were leaving San Marino which deteriorated quickly the more I pushed on to get home. The result was this last week was spent in bed. Hot lemon and honey combined with reading trashy novels and watching even trashier TV. I regret ever starting to watch 24 season 7.

Was it worth it? Very much so...it has marked the end of a year based entirely in England and has given me plenty to think on with regards to how I go ahead in the future.

Busy busy on Monkey Mountain

2010-04-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

Been a very busy few weeks down at Monkey Mountain HQ. That week of sitting in front of a computer did not materialise and my odometer has another extra few miles on it. Still, it’s all been fun and plenty of good work has been achieved. I have had to schedule time for some of my own trees as well, most of it done early in the morning or late at night, but I am up to date and nothing has suffered yet.

One of the things I had to do was to repot my infamous Rosemary, known as "the tick tock tree", apparently because it was due to die sometime in the summer of 2007. I have written a history on this tree which was due to be published by an Italian publication but they don’t seem to have gotten around to it, so it will go up on here. Needless to say the tree is still health and alive despite the fact it has now spent close to four and a half years growing in the UK. I was told, very politely, by many of the established members of the Bonsai community that it would be dead in six months.

It spent the winter in a plastic box because I was ordered to return the pot it had been growing in for several years, the one it was displayed in at both the Best of British and the BCI event in St. Vincent 2008. Despite the fact I had bought the pot outright, the Chief had already made an arrangement with a Chinese buyer to take the pot when I had returned with it and so I was in a bit of a pickle. The pot had to make it back safely, and so, on Christmas Eve, in the Yorkshire snow, I took the tree out of the pot and put it into a plastic box where it sat, surrounded by soil until the winter. It was in a heated and lighted greenhouse as per usual but it did look a sorry state and for that I apologised.

It over wintered very well and at the start of March it had already woken up and was beginning to grow. Root tips were beginning to move and she was off again. I had hoped to pick up a pot of exactly the same dimensions so I could just slip the well established root ball back into the pot without any disturbance. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and I had to settle for a nice Tokoname pot I had on hand. I chose this as it reflects well the maritime nature of the Rosemary and it also gives it a slightly new look. It went in relatively easily, I had to wash the soil out and mould the roots into the pot, but minimal disturbance was caused and I am confident of no major problems. The new soil mix is roughly equal parts of Akadama, pumice and perlite all of which are small particle size. I have been using this for the last year. Seems ok. Apologies for the picture. I dont have a studio.

I also got around to potting up this little Juniper I have had for years. One of the problems with travelling around so much is missing out on working on trees at the right time. This has suffered from that. It should have been on display by now but it is lagging behind. It was something I picked up from Toju-en, Hamano’s garden where Kimura and Suzuki both studied. The current generation have a stand near us at the Green Club and they press-ganged me into buying it several years ago. He still remembers it and asks every year. Next year I will take a picture of it! It is in a Stone Monkey pot, one of a few that I have of his superb work. The original pictures of the tree can be found here

Another tree I have recently come across is one I bought from the first gentleman of UK Bonsai, Ken Leaver. I was at his a week or so ago and came across this azalea and thought I should buy it. It has incredible mochi-komi and had been growing in that tight pot for ever.

A repot and a quick prune later and we are in business. Assuming it can get over the severe repot into such a small pot, again a beautiful Stone Monkey creation with a bamboo style lip, then it will be all stations go. A literati style Azalea with great natural movement and a superbly flared nebari. Obviously there is alot of work to be done up top but it is not bad for £19.

More articles and that to follow. Trips to Spain and Italy coming up over the next week along with a debate on the topic, Eastern Tradition vs. Bonsai as Art. I will let you guess which side they asked me to defend.

The Joy of Bonsai and the Unjoy of Van Keys

2010-03-22T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Joy of Bonsai and the Unjoy of Van Keys

long but enjoyable weekend was had down in Bath, it has been a long time coming, but it was well worth it. Sales went better than expected, mainly due to a beautiful blackthorn and a superb assistant in the shape of our lass. It was my first show proper in the UK and I tried to bring my own feel to both the table and the demo that I did.

I did a repotting/rootgrafting demo on the Sunday...one tree, the air layered trident I have worked on for ages went very well, many good questions and interested viewers so I was pleased with that. The second tree I did, an air layered zelkova was a disaster...half the trunk was dead so grafting was not an option. Such is life I guess. Should have checked before hand. Still, I wanted to do something a bit different rather than just wire and style a tree and that I did.

The show itself was interesting, many familiar trees and some not so. The innovations exhibition was having its first outing and Simon Temblett did a good job of finding some different ideas and new ways of displaying Bonsai. I was invited to do something which I did, not many people actually thought it was part of the innovations show, I guess it was not radical enough for people. I just suppose that I am not one for rocking the boat...still, it pleased me and the wife so thats all that matters.

The brief was to display something different and relevant to you. I sat and looked at that which is available to me and at the things I hold dear. How is it possible to mix classical Japanese aesthetic priciples with something intrinsically English? How is it possible to represent the coming season? What I came up with is a Sakura (Cherry) in a 300 year old beautifully patinated Shirokochi White glazed pot, displayed on a black laquered Shin-nuri board with the accompanying item an old Yorkshire cricket ball which has travelled around the world with me as a reminder of home.

To obtain the correct timing for the flowers to open mid show was particularly fun. I had it hidden in the dark and cold, checking every day and worrying until just before the show when it was carefully packed in the van and it then spent the night in the hotel room with us to swell those buds to bursting point. They held off until it was time to go on show adn the first flowers began to open just after lunch on the Saturday.

The other highlight of the show for me was the appearance of a tree that I sold last summer to a good friend of mine who has looked after it better than I ever could. One of the most beautiful trees I have seen in the UK and in full bloom.

The only downer on the whole weekend was the Unjoy of snapping my van key in two at a service station on the way home. I didnt even think it was possible but apparently it is. I would like to think it was my Hulk like strength. Many thanks to the bloke who drove out and sorted us out at 8pm on a Sunday night.

More updates later, I have a week or so of sitting in front of the computer so I shall blog a little if I can.

Back in the UK...

2010-03-02T19:47:00.001-08:00

Well that was a very long and busy month. I was on TV twice in two days, Kokufu came and went with a blur of sales and snow and I made it back eventually with bags and contents eventually intact. More on that later when I get things downloaded and sorted.

First job back was the thoroughly enjoyable BSA Shohin show up at Willowbog. Second time for me this year and it was yet again a pleasure. I demonstrated and judged the show along with the inimitable Marco Invernizzi, a man who never ceases to amaze me. As promised, my little Rose made it to the ball. I found a pot suitable for it and the season. It is a Taisho period (1920's) Japanese pot. Size wise it was perfect and the colours were subtle enough to work. I displayed it on a delicate modern stand made from mulberry wood. and used a simple picture of a Bush warbler sat on a Ume branch. The accent was a small planting sat on top of an arrangement of small wooden gears. I picked those up at the Kokufu sales area and was thoroughly pleased with myself. Whilst walking back to our sales area, a professional whose eye and taste I respect noticed me holding them and told me that he often used them in the past. Taimi-san, this one is for you.

The reason for such a minimal display is that I wanted to show that something delicate and not worked could have character and presence. I also wanted to show that there are alternative, dare I say "innovative" ways of displaying Shohin Bonsai, we are not limited to the tried and tested Tana-Kazari method.

Anyway, must get off to bed. Its 3.43 am

Hon-mono

2010-02-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

Has been a trying few days for one reason and another. The end of an apprenticeship is always difficult, especially when having started business on your own. The chief has begun to push me towars a return to Japan...just gently but there is a strong desire there from him. Things have been a little strained. I am looking forward to some kind of release soon. maybe I will just get pissed tonight.

I came across this picture from the Kyoto exhibition on the S-Cube blog. This is the Bonsai that moves me. Expect a full report in an upcoming Wabi. Please enjoy.

2010-01-30T18:35:00.001-08:00

Sunday 31 Jan 2010

Kensho shimashita

Yesterday was a long yet very fruitful day. A trip down to Kyoto on the night bus to see what was a very enlightening exhibition of 13 Bonsai and Suiseki displays held in the grounds of a temple.

It was here, sat in the warm sun, listening to the people enjoying themselves without pretence and backstabbing that I realised why I do what I do It's quite simply incredibly good fun.

I didnt have a flash of enlightenment, more a slow realisation throughout the day that this is what I do it for. To listen, discuss and study that which is beyond the normal realms of my experiences, and to make it my own.

Bonsai is more than just trees in pots, Suiseki is more than just rocks on wood. This runs deep.

I have a book planned.

2010-01-30T18:34:00.002-08:00

Friday 29 Jan 2010

Wabi-Sabi and the art of Bonsai

Got drunk again last night with the boys, I had given them a really hard time over the last couple of days as pressure built up over various things and The Chief, being chiefly decided to diffuse the situation by going away for a day, taking with him one of the pressure points. A relaxing day was had, listening to the ipod, wiring a humongous Juniper.

It gave me the opportunity to think about an upcoming debate which I have been asked to participate in. Eastern Tradition vs. Western Innovation. Organised by ABBA, I will be up against the vanguard of UK bonsai in the shape of Simon Temblett who I respect a great deal. I haven't givenm it much thought but yesterday I went through a few trains of thought and solidified some ideas, mainly about the Japanese aesthetic vs. the Western interpretation. I am not sure of teh best way of getting my point across to the audience because I'm not sure i have one. Perhaps teh best thing to do is drink half a bottle of sake before I begin..."now lishen ere..."

After work had finished and we were sat around the campfire, a few shandys got things going and I started by asking them what they thought. I got some surprising answers which I should have written down at the time as I have no recollection of what they were, just that they surprised me. I will endeavour to write something solid in the near future when I have the time.

Woke up this morning and discussed with The Chief the translation of the Keido manuals for the only school of traditional display...of which he now has the last remaining copies. We should have a semi-translation in time for Kokufu. It is interesting stuff and requires a wider knowledge than I have so I am pushing myself to read more and further myself.

One thing I do realise is that this incredibly poor resolution picture is, for me, intrisically more beautiful than the tree in full bloom. Sounds a bit poncy and weird but the reason that life can be so beautiful is that eventually we die. Bonsai is the same.

Monday 25 Jan 2010 Hungover Day

2010-01-30T18:34:00.001-08:00

The Japanese have a term for what happened last night...yakezake

the word combines the characters for "despair, desperation, abandonment" and "alcohol".

I have a term for how I feel this morning. It combines the words "sick as" and "dog". I expect no sympathy.

The Persian philosopher and astronomer Omar Khayyám said it best...

And much as Wine has played the Infidel
And robbed me of my robe of Honour, well ...
I often wonder what the vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell

For some we loved, the loveliest and best
That from His rolling vintage Time has pressed,
Have drunk their glass a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest

But helpless pieces in the game He plays
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days
He hither and thither moves, and checks ... and slays
Then one by one, back in the Closet lays

"The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."

Not bad for the bloke who first moved towards non-euclidean geometry and developed binomial theorem to the power n. I bet he got those ideas when he was on the razz.

Needless to say yesterday was a bit of a tough day. Still today we have a photoshoot and for once it isnt me, I get to watch my kohai Naganuma nervously cutting branches while i laugh in the background.

2010-01-30T18:33:00.001-08:00

Monday 25 Jan 2010

Judgement Day

Today is arguably the most important day for Bonsai professionals in Japan. More important than the exhibition itself, today is the judgment day for Kokufu. For many, the weeks of preparation and cajoling customers to display their trees is now coming to the final point of...was it all worth it?

For those younger and less well known professionals who struggle to get good customers who can appreciate and afford trees at the level required to get into the exhibition, it can be make or break time. If they have sold the promise that the tree can get in to the show and it doesn't then there is a lot of explaining to be done at around 4 pm today. If it does get into the show then there is the chance of a much longer association with the customer and possibility of selling a new tree for next year.

Displaying trees at such a prestiguous exhibition is not cheap...just the fees to Bonsai association run to around $1000, not to mention the cost of table, pot, accent rental, preparing and transporting the tree. For some people it will cost over $2000 to send the tree to the show. If that kind of money has been invested in vain, then there is a lot of apologising to be done.

Entering trees is a difficult balance of realism and expectation. Some of the trees we have to force the customer to enter, even if they are clearly top class, whereas some of the trees entered are done so because the customer desperately wants to despite our best advice against it. One of our trees falls into this category. Although knowing that the tree had a very low chance of getting in, I prepared it as best as I could, the pot was changed to a very old Chinese antique pot, the foliage perfectly arranged and the moss was painstakingly put together piece by piece. That alone took six hours.. It looks good but still in my heart I know that it will be lucky to get in. After finishing the preparations, I phoned the owner, who likes me and we get on well, and invited him to come and inspect it. He was very happy , declaring it to be a new tree but then asked the difficult question which I was dreading and had prepared several well scripted answers for..."Will it get in?". The stock answer is..."a lot depends on what else has been entered, but if I were the judge, it would get in", followed by a reassuringly cheeky smile. Today we shall see if I too have to apologise and blame the luck of the gods.

Yesterday the trees were taken to the judging, which is held under strict security at the Green Club in Ueno. I am not allowed to go this part of the process because I stick out like a sore thumb and I am considered persona non grata by many of the judges and people in the association. If they see me carrying a tree then the chances of it getting in are reduced. My senpai Akiyama took his and our trees yesterday and managed to get them on to the benches undetected. On his return we began the long, dark wait...and then lightened it up with drink. Lots of drink.

Drinking is a part of life here and one which is generally most enjoyable as I am partial to the odd shandy after a days work. Last night was a weird mixture of tension, resignation and expectation. We talked about who had entered what, which famous tree was there and what pot it was in, how many similar trees to ours were there and the chances ours would be selected. Inevitably the conversation turned to women and normal service was resumed. One of the current apprentices, Naganuma is a great bloke to have when drinking, his stories and way of thinking is frankly not suitable for print.

Anyway, today, there will be 8 torturous hours of tension followed by a phone call telling me to come down to the Green Club, possibly to help pack the van up with all our trees which failed to get in, or possibly to double check that the actually did get in!

The gnawing feeling in my stomach and restlessness is why I came back and why I will be coming back again next year...well that and the beer that will be drunk tonight...hopefully in celebration.

Update from Japan and a new tree for me...

2010-01-30T18:32:00.000-08:00

After a very cold christmas, my first back in the UK for 9 years, me and our lass flew out to Japan for yet more festivities.

New year is a busy time for the bonsai world, exhibitions, sales and preparation for the all important Kokufu exhibition. As is expected of me as the most recent "graduate", I have come back to help the Chief and teach the current apprentices a thing or two. Sadly their heads are so hard and unable to comprehend the simplest things that it makes life hard. I blew a fuse today at them today for poor watering technique. It is really difficult to allow them to make mistakes in order to correct them. I sat watching it for an hour, my blood boiling until they finally finished. After they had gone back to their normal work I quite politely asked them to explain what they had done and just how stupid they were. It is at times like this that I am so grateful to my senpai Akiyama-san for being patient and understanding with me when I was just that stupid.

I am still in debt to Akiyama-san as he pulls me up through the bonsai world, involving me with being a normal professional in Japan. He keeps telling me that I should become a Japanese citizen and work here full time. As much as England disappoints me, there is no way I could give up my passport. We went to a Shohin Auction the other day, some of the items may be for sale on my shop soon, I am going to try and sell them here to existing customers first. I bought specifically to order as I am broke due to the exchange rate. It was my first time at a shohin auction, a very different occasion to the normal one I go to where everybody knows me now and lets me have stuff cheap. Walking around before the auction, looking at what was coming up, one tree took me and I just had to have it. I mentioned it to Akiyama-san and he just laughed and said I was sick, I showed it to Taiga Urushibata and he said I was mental...still it didnt come up until the end of the auction and I was ready and prepared, I had a limit, which was the money in my wallet and there was nothing going to stop me. The auctioneer started the bidding and I immediately jumped in. One other fool decided to bid 500 yen more than me so I topped that by another 1500. There was a second of disbelief when everyone realised it was me shouting. They soon realised that there was no way they would win against me...I was dragged up on the streets of a fighting market town. A shohin auction stand-off doesn't scare me.

Looking at it objectively, I am in fact sick and mental, but by god, this is a superb little tree. I will get a pot for it at the kokufu and it shall be on display at the BSA show up at Willowbog.

New site

2010-01-28T23:01:00.001-08:00

Have decided due to the limitations of my website, to move my blog here. Same crap. Different place