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Recent Fun Project
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When I first moved to East Hartford, Connecticut the gardens were beautiful, honed from scratch since 1941 by a Master Gardener. Six inches of top soil was brought in to cover 24 feet of sand that once was the Connecticut River shoreline bottlenecked as a lake when the dinosaurs roamed. The last Iceage cut the river that runs from Canada through to the Long Island Sound, turning a lake into a river. I'm as threatened by river flooding as I am dryness due to excessive drainage. In the dry season we have to irrigate regularly. The beautiful gardens were not Asian influenced as I wanted. I sought to rectify that and pulled some material from the growing grounds for the landscaping and modified everything. My location and Asian touches needed to integrate. I created some very loose, almost falling down stone walls. The type I see here in New England all the time. The previous owner was a diligent composter, combating sandy soil, and I had inherited two huge bins of terrific material. I packed the material against these walls creating angled raised beds. I took my largest Japanese Black Pine and planted it as a semi-cascade in a focal position. Over the next few years, I busied my self with other projects and the Pine was let go and grew amazingly. Weeding one day I found myself crawling around under a dense mass of long needles and discovered an amazing buttress, decent taper and very old looking bark. I had initially pruned this tree to develop good pre-bonsai stock and even let go, the trunk had great movement. Too good for just a landscape tree. Plans were made for a hard cut back that Fall and extraction the next Spring. |
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We let it acclimate to the pot for a full growing season without any manipulation outside a light candle pruning and partial needle plucking in late Fall. It was well fed and exposed to full sun as it had been in the ground. The soil mix was very free draining and watering was only when going dry. This Pine had thrived in a raised bed and apparently thrived on dry. The needle pluckings created serious back-budding, even on older wood, the next Spring. All season long we picked off any unwanted buds to send vigor to our chosen growth. The following year the tree responded well to training in pot culture and another hard pruning and with candle pruning we had this tree in motion. We were able to prune the branches back as the back-budding became stronger. After another plucking late Fall a very nice tree was starting to emerge.
We let the tree really "fluff" out to make it a great for someone to wrestle home figuratively and literally. At this point, this tree was available as excellent Pre-bonsai on my website for 2 years at $800. Not one inquiry. It went to multiple Sanctuary Bonsai and club critiques and was discussed at length realizing 3 potential trees. Not one inquiry. I finally said to Lily, "Let's keep this one and work it through to completion.". She shrugged, with a nonchalant, sheepish smile and quietly said,"OK". I knew this is what she had wanted all along. There is a wonderful little girl inside this Grandmother of 6. Three things bring the little girl out. Her Kids, Her Grandkids and a good Bonsai project.
The work began. We chose the existing front and a new planting angle. As the tree would see quite a bit of growth between now and the next repotting, I created an angled base to give the tree an opportunity to correct it's sun positioning.
Some lighter pruning was required to eliminate anything stealing vigor from what was wanted to develop, Now, late Fall needle plucking, raffia and wiring everything. The copper equivalent of my retirement fund is on this tree. Two experienced, fast wirers. 14 hours total. Shaping was another half a days work. But, we are pleased with the result and look forward to developing this tree further.
The Jins and Sharis will be a Winter project. The nebari is very one sided yet supports the slant to the material. Further exposed and properly mossed, they could just work out fine. Depending on the roots, when we repot next year, the tree will move to a smaller training container or maybe even ceramic if I can commission the right pot. If I sell the copper as scrap metal, maybe I can afford the ceramic pot. It will be the biggest semi-cascade pot I've ever owned! |
