Note from Me: this is a reply to the reader of my blog who so kindly posted a comment to point out to me that he or she and I quote: “did not know that there was a Dutch Hawthorn species”. Well, there isn’t! The title of this post “My Dutch Hawthorn In Full Bloom” points to the fact that the Bonsai in this post is a Dutch Yamadori of the Hawthorn kind and not that it is a Dutch Hawthorn species! Now I understand that I maybe could have better titled this post: “My Dutch Yamadori Hawthorn In full Bloom” to prevent all the confusion of this comment poster?! But in my defence, I would like to point out that like I did in Bonsai, I thought myself how to speak and write in the English language for the purpose of being able to write about my Bonsai adventures on bonsai forums, my website and blog! And I do realise that these posts are still full of poor spelling and grammar, believe me I know! But hé…I try as best as I can and 120000+ hits today when you google my name+bonsai must show that most people don’t mind me making all these honest mistakes and enjoy reading about what I am doing! And for all those people I will keep on posting and apologise in advance for all the mistakes that I know I will make in the future!
Hi, everybody, this picture was made a few days ago when the weather was just beautiful sunny and it was 25 degrees! As I write this today, it is only 11 degrees, raining and storming?!
I was in the middle of preparing this Dutch Hawthorn Yamadori (Crataegus monogyna) that I collected many years ago close to where I live, for the exciting “KEI BONSAI KAI” exhibition that is held on Saturday the 28th of May 2016 from 10h-18h in Danny Use famous Bonsai Centre “Ginkgo” in Laarne Belgium (free entrance)! Those unsightly wooden sate sticks around the rim of the pot are there to keep the rock pigeons that visit my garden regularly for free seed and water from sleeping under need the foliage! Otherwise, they would have destroyed the tender new moss and thrown out my topsoil! This those not harm them at all and now they sleep and rest on a large rock that holds down a cascading Mugo pine…you got to love these little creatures! The larger wooden sticks in there are to hold the top and top branch in place, this way I don’t have to use wire every time and it is just as efficient! The Hawthorn has an amazing amount of flowers this year and I was really looking forward to showing it for the very first time to the public ….. but disaster struck once again! About 35% of all the foliage was infected by some sort of insect and left the leaves covered with bums like they have chicken pocks or measles! I had this before on some of my Hawthorns and it is quite harmless…but it looks like shit! I removed most of the infected leaves, but I soon came to realise that it would leave the tree almost bare in some places and that would be unsightly and is not done in such a high-class exhibition! So I sadly had to decide to not show this one and another infected beautiful small Hawthorn that I was planning to show and has the same problem! It is sad and very disappointing….but these things can happen when dealing with living things that are a part of Bonsai if we like it or not! But the picture is beautiful enough to show you all this rare Dutch Yamadori in the “Mother and child” style with all her flowers!! She tried hard enough to be beautiful for this big show, but a small insect destroyed her chance to shine….maybe in the future, she will get another chance?! I will now bring in only 2 of my Bonsai! They will be shown with scrolls and accents and I will post a picture of the whole event (and maybe film?!) as soon as I get home from these exciting reunions of some of the old Ginkgo gang! After all those years it is great to get home to the place where it more or less all started! I hope that you are all coming to watch this great opportunity to see beautiful bonsai and shop around in Danny’s amazing Bonsai Valhalla!! CU is all there!!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.
Info: karamottobonsai@hotmail.com
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The Bonsai Blog of Hans van Meer 