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Bonsai mai-farli-bene
Join Date: Nov-2005
Location: Bremerton, WA
Country: USA
Posts: 1,427
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Taking my own advice... A False cypress and a Juniper in need of redemption.
A tale of two bonsais indeed....
The False Cypress.... I've had this little tree for a long time (relative to my experiance anyway...) but I've never showed it to anyone. Why?
Well I thought it was amusing in a tall whispy (don't know a thing about proportion yet) kind of way. So when I bought it, I brought it home and potted it up. But after it was in it's pot I looked at it, and couldn't think of a thing to do with it. So it has sat.... for almost a year.... untouched.
Looking at my row of bonsai today, I got the nagging feeling I was not taking my own advice. When I looked at my trees I saw all the ones I was very happy with, and had shown on an occasion or two. Then I saw the ones I had not had the nerve to show, because frankly I wondered why they were even in my collection...lol
Or in the case of the Juniper, the one time I had shown it went so badly, I walked away from the experiance with a bit of a limp. The reaction to it was so strong. (on a different site...)
Granted it WAS bad bonsai at it's most visible. But the juniper had been a salvage effort from a Home Depot tree gone very very very wrong. lol
I had purchased that tree in a rush (a serious mistake I no longer make after that instance)... I had FAILED to inspect it properly for trunk movement. Upon attempting to work it, I found it had the most gastly trunk movement I had ever seen. It was a result of some POOR training on the part of whatever mass producing nursery had slapped that tree together. So it became a salvage effort. A sad little tree with an unfortunate posture... and it was not otherwise messed with until today.
So my own advice I decided to take was...
1) Put a tree in balance to itself.
2) Deal with a trees issues.
3) Trunk chop and re-grow if needs be.
4) A tree has something good to offer, if you will just put it on a path.
My success or lack there of will take no small amount of time to determine. But thats ok. Because while they may be nothing to write home about now, I at least finally LIKE them.... and they have been given the chance to become something good.
Today was an excellent bonsai day... Because even compared to the warm reception of the Hemlock in my other thread... These are two wayward trees redeemed. And there is something marvelous to be said for that. I am glad I took my own advice.
Yours most respectfully,
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