PREPARING MY BONSAI FOR THE “NOELANDERS TROPY XIII”

Hi, everybody,

This weekend (21 & 22 January) the thirteenth “Noelanders Trophy” will be held similar to last year in the Center for Sustainable Building in Heusden-Zolder. 130 Bonsai from all over Europe were finaly selected to be presented in this prestigious event and I am real proud to say that 2 of those are mine and a other one is from my student and friend Ed van der Reek! So this last week was a busy one! First I repoted my old “Hawthorn” that I am showing in to it’s new show pot from Horst Heinzlreiter. I was a bid anxious if it would fit into it’s new home with out having to cut off or disturb the roots to much, but luckily it all went pretty smoothly and I think my Little Hawthorn looks pretty special in this amazing new pot! A lot of time was spent trying out different display possibilities for my trees. Making a choice between different tables, accent plant or suiseki for the show is always  a fun part of this great hobby. It kept me busy for a few happy hours, and than I could finaly decide how to best display my 2 bonsai with the material that I had! I just finished waxing and polishing the tables and bubble wrapped them for the journey. Tomorrow my second Bonsai , a Larch, needs to be cleaned up. Hundreds of small yellow needles have to be removed from between the moss that covers the soils surface. And than the pot will be cleaned and than rubbed with some baby oil diluted in water to give it a bit of a shine to bring out the colors of the Brian Albright pot it is in! Friday afternoon will be the key day for this Bonsai, than all the wire will be cut off with the help of Ed. And I can only hope and pray that all branches stay fixated and in place! If not…well then I am in big trouble! The people who follow my work know just how importand open spaces in my work are to me! So I hope that they will stay in place with out the support of wire and that they dont collapse under their own weight, closing all that open spaces that I created between all the foliage layers! Fingers crossed! Than 5 o’clock this Saturday morning Ed will come to my place and we will load mine and Ed’s tree and all the tables and what not into the back of my car and than we have a 2,5 hour drive to Belgium ahead of us. I cant wait to finaly show some of my work again! 🙂

As soon as I have any info I will post it here on my blog so watch this space!

Cheers,

Hans van Meer.

Info: karamottobonsai@hotmail.com