Quote:
Originally posted by Leesa
Al....I think you bring a great deal to the forum and I thank you for that...
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A great deal of hot air, maybe.
Rip: I think people do critique even masterpiece quality trees at shows and exhibitions . Earl (who is one of the nicest people you'll meet anywhere) and I did a lot of critiquing as we walked through the Pacific Rim collection.
Much of it positive: "How on earth do they keep the foliage so compact?!!?" "What a marvelous trunk line!" "Can you believe that was only collected 7 years ago?"
Some that could be taken as negative: "Look at that wire - it's cutting deeply into the branch," "I don't like the exagerated taper on this tree," "This tree doesn't really look right in that pot. Why do you think they chose that one?"
But mostly, we were just observing, and the judgement positive or negative is something that was really beside the point.
"Look - they've gone back to two sets of needle on each branch." "Their soil mix seems to be about 1:1:1 lava:akadama:gravel on this tree." "This is one of Johnny Uchida's trees? Wow!"
We learned a heck of a lot by doing so. Earl called a number of things to my attention that I otherwise would have missed, and hopefully visa versa. I think that if curator Dave DeGroot had been listening over our shoulders, he wouldn't have been insulted in the least. He might have found most of our remarks to be obvious, a few to be wrongheaded, some to be naive, and maybe - I would like to believe - one or two to be astute. But I don't think that he would have felt that we had no right to be talking, nor would he have grabbed either of us by the shoulder and demanded that we put up our own trees or shut up about his.
-Old Mister, who's getting up there in terms of post numbers himself.