Fruits of Volunteering

It’s become pretty apparent that when I look at my own collection now, I see some pretty flagrant flaws. The usual fare: bad branch layout, bad maintenance, leaving wires on for too long, and overall not really styling with the tree. I thought I had a pretty good track record of keeping my trees in good health and having good design practices. Apparently, not so much now that I know what goes into maintaining trees at a certain level; and in this case, museum grade level.

For example here is a Japanese white pine, “Pinus parviflora” ‘Aoi’ (Japanese for blue), I initially went on a bonsai nursery crawl and purchased this tree meant to go into someone’s yard as a decently sized tree. It was bought late in the year and I couldn’t do much with it other than trunk chop it, and so I did.

This was the original tree.

As previously stated, the tree was immediately trunk chopped and left to recuperate.

About 5 months later, early spring, the tree received it’s first initial styling.

After initially styling the tree, it was repotted into a pot that’s roughly the size I’d like for it to be in the future. Also, note how the needles have been let to grow without much refinement.

After working on Japanese white pine, I was able to observe branch placements and refine my own tree.

This is the final outcome of the refined Japanese white pine. I am very pleased with this tree and can’t wait for it to grow into it’s shape. I also can’t wait to further refine this tree.

I really love how structurally organized this tree has become and also how compact it’s become as well. What I originally thought was going to be a troublesome tree (I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it) turned out to be pretty amazing. Not much structural changes were needed, it had a very natural lean and the tree was just telling me what it wanted to do and I had to respect that.

Dreams Do Come True, Volunteering at The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum

There are times in one’s life where one’s dreams are seemingly coming true but in a manner where you never expected. I’ve always wanted to be in some way associated with the Bonsai Museum in DC, 2 years ago, I got the chance. Early on in my bonsai hobby, I’ve made many visits to the museum and I always had the thought, will I ever get a chance to put one of my trees on these benches. I’ve noticed that there were trees from clubs and their trees get featured. A decade later, I had the opportunity to display a tree of mine for the Potomac Bonsai Association (PBA) Show at the bonsai museum. I thought I’ve accomplished my goal, I’ve plateaued, I’m finally here, at least for the regular serious bonsai enthusiast. 2 years later, at another PBA show I entered a smaller version of the same species of tree (seemingly less enthusiastic this time) and that caught the attention of the curator of the museum. I volunteered that day to help the PBA check in and check out trees. Being stationary, I was able to observe quite a lot and sitting at the only table that was open, I was able to share the table and have lunch with curator, Michael James. The man was simply a blur, when he wasn’t moving he was refueling his body so that he could move again. So being able to share the table with him, having lunch, it was pretty much an honor and we were able to talk. He found out I had a tree out on display, a portulacaria afra, and he said “It was cute!”

I’ve had 3 mentions of bonsai being cute in my life; one time by a friend, one time by my mentor, and the most recent time, by the curator of the bonsai museum.

I guess it was cute. What he liked most about the tree or rather, what he was most curious about was how careful did you have to be to wire and shape it. The answer, not really, but really. It wasn’t an answer because it’s relative to one’s experience as well as one’s strength control, but truly the answer was that these things definitely were not as fragile as one would think. However, would need some reservation to not use a tremendous amount of force to bend large branches. Slow and steady wins the race, with guide wires.

Earlier in the day, I had made a few new acquaintances and had expressed wanting to volunteer like they do since they really only do it once a week or once ever other week. I could definitely see myself doing the same as my Saturday’s are free. Little did I know that someone actually took me seriously and suggested it to the curator. So while sharing the table with him, he said, someone suggested you’d make a great volunteer here. Would you be interested? He had me at hello…even though he didn’t say it.

Three weeks later, after paperwork, I was able to start my volunteering. My very first job was to take on this Japanese White Pine that’s been in training since 1855.

My task was to clean off all of the brown needles off of the needle clusters and remove any sheathing left over. The curator had told me that if you were to inspect closer, you’d notice that you can see last years needles and they are visibly smaller. Nothing is menial and everything had a purpose.

The reason for this is because the tree was simply not as healthy last year as it is this year. This year’s flush was so dense, it dwarfed last years needles. It may not look like much; however, it does make a big difference.

4 hours later, I was done and the tree is visibly more lush and green. “It’s like someone just doused it with a tub of water and the tree is in such good shape” said the curator. We moved the tree out to the pavilion and placed it back on the bench.

At the end of the day, being able to sit and look around staring at the tree, I realized I was part of this place. People coming up to the tree and just saying, how beautiful it is, made my day and hours of work worth every second of it. In the end, it was exactly what I had hoped for; it was to gain knowledge and to further my understanding of why people do things the way they do and to see it first hand as well as my own hand.

I will learn so much from here.

Bonsai Pots: A Tale of Confidence

I’ve recently joined a bonsai ceramics group, one of the groups within the bonsai club that focuses in on the world of bonsai ceramics. The class is sectioned off into a 3 session round that typically lasts one workshop a month. Between the workshops, we’re allowed to work on clay with what we’ve learned from the workshop. This is our second go around and it is definitely a lot easier, obviously.

It’s very visually obvious at the quality of the pots as time progresses. It’s true with all things, practice makes perfect. Confidence is also built as the pots are progressively getting better.

My most recent pot is created under the guidance of our bonsai club president Aaron Stratten. It was built with the knowledge gained from 2 rounds of workshops and it shows how tight the build was.

Overall, my confidence was on cloud 9, I was feeling good. I went about to find possible new shapes similar to the sakura template Aaron let me use. I had expressed to him how enjoyable it was to see your own work let alone see how far your skills have progressed. I expressed to him I wanted to create another template with a more complicated shape. I used AutoCAD to calculate a possible template for the shape and was able to get the right dimensions for the pieces. It was very helpful to at least have the distances for the slabs correct. After some deliberation and consultation, a “good luck” was offered to me and I was set on the path of trial and error.

Started off pretty well, it was a very beautiful day during this hot spell we’ve been having and when temps dropped below 90 and hovered around low to mid 80s, it was definitely a good time to roll out some clay.

It went pretty normally, I didn’t have to roll too much and made some blocks for feet. I had to get everything leather hard before working on cutting out the template. The sun and hot weather definitely played a factor in the drying process. What I did have to do was flip the two pieces twice to get it to dry evenly. Once that was leather hard, in about 40 mins, it was ready.

With all the pieces cut out, it was time to assemble. I gave out a sigh, hoping all things go well, and started to assemble all the pieces together. But before I did anything else, I had to put my mark on the clay.

A chop I made myself fired to bisque, I was ready to put all the pieces together. After a 40 minute ordeal of slipping and massaging this was the outcome.

Shocking… not really. I was definitely way over my head on this template. I was a bit frustrated, it was hard. The template I made definitely showed I didn’t account for curves and angles. The distances were all incorrect which left me to massage pieces into place, which isn’t terrible, but it wasn’t really the right way. I found myself having to add more clay to fix the slabs. Once I added the base and added the coil to fix the base into place, I’ve realized the entire pot was lop sided and had a tilt of about 15 degrees. So, out came the rolling pin and back into a ziplock bag it went. I wasn’t too upset because failure is necessary. Also, dinner was supposed to be ready in 45 mins; therefore, I couldn’t do both.

One success did come from this experience, working with templates is a lot harder than initially thought. Curves has to look a certain way, and angles can be calculated better. Maybe I should use AutoCAD more to my advantage and build a pot digitally.

Anyway, dinner was awesome.

PBA Show

The Potomac Bonsai Association (PBA) hosts an annual show at the US National Arboretum. It’s always a treat to visit the arboretum; regardless of what season it is, the arboretum is always eventful. Every season presents a feature to admire and in some aspect, something to look forward to in the next season. However, when there is a bonsai show, the entire place just glows. The trees there look more amazing, there are certain features of trees that inspires you in a completely different way. The PBA enlisted the help of two pros (Bob Clinton and Todd Stewart) from Garden’s Unlimited to feature their trees and their art and boy was it a spectacle.

I’ve met a lot of new people and some very inspiration and influential folk. I had a few epiphanies that weekend and I’ve realized I’m at a crossroads at my current situation. Aside from my bonsai epiphanies, the most important one I’ve discovered is how incredibly supporting my wife is. She has told me that she spends her off days during the week admiring the work I’ve put in, gazing into the horizon as it seems. I’ve filled the deck with trees and she quite enjoys it as the wind blows it tussles the leaves and rings the wind chime.

I’ve always known her to be supportive, now she’s shown me a level of passion. It’s as if we are each other bonsai tree and stylist, growing together.

First Post

Through the years, I’ve had several means of recording my bonsai trees. I have an Instagram where I’ve documented my trees by picture; but, not much can be said about it other than snapping a picture of what was “done” to the tree. I’ve tried to post one interesting thing from my collection a day and that proved to be just too much but at the same time, not enough. It made life pretty difficult because there was always something I wanted to show. Not because I wanted to show off rather than to document what I was able to accomplish so I could naturally develop an organic record of all my trees as well as a natural progression of my skills and technique; alas, I couldn’t really go into detail by a picture.

I always ask myself, how do people “know” what to do. How do the artists remember the intricacies so that they will execute the technique that’s most effective at the right moment in time? I think we’ll all get there someday, but the key difference is probably the pros are in fact professionals and they need to know to best execute their art. I tend to not remember as well as they do and this is my way to record my successes as well as my failures should they occur.

So to start things off right, I’d like to present to you my small collection, an ever changing environment.