fresh yamadori, daylight pictures

fresh yamadori

I was in Dublin at the weekend and took a short detour on the way home to have a little look. I found these two beside the road just as it was getting dark. It's a mild misty evening so I'll wait til tomorrow to pot them up.

pinus contorta with not straight trunk

very small larch

sunday afternoon bonsai - dwarf spruce

the tree is about 5-6 years old, a dwarf round spruce

the canopy was full of dead shoots and old needles

after a clean out 

it had been growing in a peaty mix albeit with some grit

I managed to remove quite a lot of excess peat

potted up in a nice pot acquired at last weekend's Munster Club workshop,
maybe it'll get some styling at the next one.

another snow day picture

alpine scene in east clare

snow day in east clare

Yesterday we woke to 3 inches of clean white snow. It didn't last long but was beautiful while it did...

Munster Bonsai Club Workshop January 2015

Last Saturday I left a stormy County Clare and headed south towards the first Munster Bonsai Club workshop of 2015. Almost 100 miles later the winds had settled and the sky was blue. Ian & Phil soon arrived with pots, trees and various supplies. After the tea and coffee were made we got straight down to business; 

Kieran's pine

we each picked a front on my larch

Piotr's Pine

Mark's acer needed re-potting

down to work

 While Phil set me up with the wiring of my larch, Mark and Ian were busy repotting.

Mark's Chinese elm 

really washing out the roots well to remove old soil and to clean them

they continued to adjust some of the branches, will be an absolute cracker in early summer

My larch was a yamadori collected barely 12 months ago, and which had received some attention from Phil last April. After a re-analysis of the tree we proposed a provisional front and began to clear away from around the base of the tree to reveal quite a nice base.This confirmed the chosen front an it was decided to be style it as a (kind of a) twin trunk. The obvious unnecessary branches were removed and wiring began.

before styling

phil begins with the lower left branch

there were an abundance of branches to wire

later, after styling, (better photo below)

work continues after dark

finished larch, 3 days later

My larch also repotted in to a temporary pot (Thanks Mark!) and will hopefully settle in. I'm sure we'll do some follow up at another workshop in the future.

I also potted on a couple of trees and got some advice on a few more.

a small lonicera recieved a new pot

my windswept whitethorn in a pot I picked up in Chicago

Class Photo

So another busy day came to an end, a big thanks to Mark for hosting (another fab lunch) and to Ian and Phil for making the journey down again (two seriously gas men if ever there were!)

bonsai hunting in the bog

In the last few days I paid a visit to the old home place and went for a scout around in the bog. There are birch in abundance, many stunted by the wind and the poor nutrition. I collected a couple along with a scraggy pine, and inspected a few others that I had shaped a bit during the summer. I think I'll leave them til next winter and try to focus on the trees I have already for the season ahead...

panorama of industrial old industrial peat bog, County Offaly

a stunted birch growing along the edge of a turf bank

an extra pair of hands..

bonsai club night december

http://munsterbonsaiclub.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/meeting-15122014/

Masahiko Kimura Videos

I stumbled on these videos on YouTube a while ago and decide to post them here as a bookmark. They are from the early 1980's (?) and are in Japanese, but still compelling viewing....

phoenix, arizona

During my recent visit to the US, I attended my brother's wedding in Phoenix, Arizona. Our hotel was in Tempe, a university district and while the weather was quite hot, almost 30C, the early mornings were more comfortable for exploratory strolls round the area.

desert plants

shade sails over the vegetable beds

municipal offices of tempe, arizona

xeriscaping

wild west cactus, actually saguaro or Carnegiea gigantea

no boggy ground or bull rushes here...

three blacktail jackrabbit sculpture in tempe, the grass is rake but the water is real

tempe is a fairly pedestrian friendly area

at first i thought this was a modern sculpture, but its some sort of water pipe system

shade sails are everywhere in the phoenix area

stone cobbles in gabions used nicely to divide public / private space

major construction in tempe

notice all the solar panels on the roofs, there to power air-conditioning

arizona wildcats football stadium and car park, more solar panels

a beautiful mosque in tempe, looks like a scene from the middle east..

nice simple water fountain in a shady place

part of the shady garden 'under' the municipal buildings in tempe

more shade sails, i was studying these closely as i have to build something similar soon..

monster truck!

a rare thing in the US, public transport...

the oldest building in tempe, monti's restaurant, built in 1871

these trees were planted everywhere but i didn't find out what they were...

another public space with an emphasis on creating shade