Ponderosa Pine repotted

mike_p

Another project for today was to repot this old Ponderosa pine. Height from table is 24 inches.

Mike

Attached Images

ponderosa1_05.jpg (72.6 KB, 159 views)

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Learning the mechanics of bonsai is a matter of rote. Over and over again the processes are practiced until the hands and eyes know the moves.
Learning the art of bonsai may be more like water wearing away a stone, or climbing a mountain where the peak is always shrouded in fog and just out of reach.
Persist, and someday you may see the peak in sunshine. You may pick up the stone and it's a thing of beauty.

MP@BBB Studio

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Adam

I'm Jealous........

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Attila

Hi Mike,

What do you think about carving out a V-ish shaped wedge from the left side of the nebari (one arm of the V would be the continuation of the left trunk line)?
Wouldn't that make the buldge from the base disappear?

Great tree,
Attila

mike_p

Hi Attila
Questions about "the battle of the bulge" often arise concerning these Ponderosas collected from the Rocky Mountains. When considered in the classic pine sense, it's all wrong. But, this is how they grow in pockets, on ledges, at high altitude, and probably buried in snow 9 months out of the year.
I feel that to change it to any significant degree would be to deny its origin.
The carving that I did was to amplify the feeling of age by creating the look of rot in the trunk.

Mike

__________________
Learning the mechanics of bonsai is a matter of rote. Over and over again the processes are practiced until the hands and eyes know the moves.
Learning the art of bonsai may be more like water wearing away a stone, or climbing a mountain where the peak is always shrouded in fog and just out of reach.
Persist, and someday you may see the peak in sunshine. You may pick up the stone and it's a thing of beauty.

MP@BBB Studio

Adam_MA

Nice tree Mike... Relatively short needles for a ponderosa aren't they?

Thanks for sharing
Adam

Carl_Bergstrom

That's exactly right, Mike.

Marco Invernizzi worked on one of these trees in a recent demo here in Seattle. I asked him basically the same question that Attila asked you: are you going to carve that bulge down to get a more traditional taper? Like you, Marco explained that this was yamadori material, whose origins were to be celebrated - and he insisted on keeping the bulge and working with the bulge as part of his design.

That said, I'm not sure your pot choice brings out the best in the bulge. The pot strikes me as ornamented and almost rather delicate. How do you think something heftier, and more earthy would look, so that the bulge was nestled within the pot, instead of spilling over its borders?

Best regards,
Carl

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mike_p

Adam, I must confess. I cut the needles. Otherwise, they are much too long for a bonsai this size.

Mike

__________________
Learning the mechanics of bonsai is a matter of rote. Over and over again the processes are practiced until the hands and eyes know the moves.
Learning the art of bonsai may be more like water wearing away a stone, or climbing a mountain where the peak is always shrouded in fog and just out of reach.
Persist, and someday you may see the peak in sunshine. You may pick up the stone and it's a thing of beauty.

MP@BBB Studio

Attila

Well, than lets celebrate every bulge! After all, they are all created by nature, regardless whether they grew high up the mountain or in my backyard.

When I grow my material from a seedling and work on it for decades to develop age and character, leaving some decisions to the tree itself and to the whims of randomness, buldges will inevitably develop.

Why would I give the mountain yamadory a free ride while I would rigorously remove every perceived "fault" from my garden yamadori? Sensing a double standard here?

Disclaimer: I don't dispute the value in Marco's comment, so don't take this post too seriously. I am just trying to have some fun by applying logic and rationality equally to all bonsai.

Carl_Bergstrom

Because your garden yamadori has to have something to make up for the fact that it doesn't have bark that has obviously been formed by the cumulative effect of three hundred high-mountain winters.

-Carl

(Even that's not a fully serious answer here. To some degree a serious answer would have to deal with the philosophical problem of the difference in value between the lighter in Abraham Lincoln's pocked the night he was assassinated, and an otherwise identical lighter of exactly the same vintage.)

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