That Gin made of Blackthorn or Sloe berries is an acquired taste indeed! Bud after half a bottle you are more or less used to the taste and probably pass out!!!
Below: But I don’t think that there are enough berries on my Yamadori Shohin Blackthorn Prunus spinosa?! But this afternoon in the sun I was wiring some small branches on it with a coffee at hand and was thinking: I want to show this ideal scene anyway to you all!
Below: Close up of the beautiful natural old deadwood.
I got the Bonsai virus in early 1990 and gave my first demo not much later at my then-Bonsai Club “KOYA” in Rijswijk (NL). My demo tree was a Dubbel trunk Chamaecyparis “Chamaecyparis” nana gracilis that was used for many years as a mother plant for cuttings in “Boskoop” Holland. Because of the typical for this species roots bulging and the leg of useable cuttings anymore I could buy it from the grower and daringly used it for this my first-ever demo! And I would use that Bulgin base as a feature! I planted it later in a (then) unique curved thin pot by my old friend Potter William Vlaanderen and entered it in the Yearly “Dutch Bonsai Federation” show and won first prize with it! Later we even drove all the way to the famous “CRESPI” Cup in Milan (IT) to show it there…boy, I was innocent these days sigh!!! With the tree on the leather back seat, of my 750 IL beamer (petrol was cheaper those days!😋) I suddenly had to break at a roundabout for a suicidal rabbit and that made the Bonsai fly straight into the back of my seat! Akadama was everywhere and some small branches broke! But we made it in the end and proudly showed it at this great venue! I came across the below picture on the web. I think it was made at the “Noelanders Trophy” in Belgium. Or at the “Ginkgo Award” in Belgium? I will look it up?
Below: Now some 25 years later my good friend and Bonsai fanatic Diderick Bovenlander (NL) is taking care of her very well for some years now and he has styled her further for the future!
I hope you enjoyed this short Bonsai story from way back in my early Bonsai life right up to Diederick’s present-day story?! Man, I suddenly feel old! 😱😉
Today was the perfect day for me! Why you might ask? Well while it was storming outside, I spend the day warm inside where I started wiring my Mugo pine “Woolfie” on a table that is perfectly high enough for me to work/wiring while standing up with a straight back! That way I am longer able to work…but what was more important: this table stands next to my big TV so that I can watch the Olympics with my left eye while the right one helps wire the tree! 😎🏆😉
I am currently restyling my old Mugo pine that I named “Big Ron” and today I wired the left and the right bottom branches and brought them more or less in the desired position. Next couple of days I will take pictures of the daily progress of this styling and post them here in this post! So more tomorrow!
Below: Way back in 2007 my old Belgium Bonsai friend Danny User (owner of Ginkgo Bonsai Center in Belgium) asked me if I wanted to be a demonstrator during the very last famous “Ginkgo Awards”?! My reply was: HELL JEH!!!! Needless to say that I was over the moon and very honoured! Later I drove up to Belgium to look around his amazing Bonsai Center to find that special demo tree for my demo. And that was by no means an easy task because the place is enormous and there were literally thousands to look through! My luck was that I preferred to demo on virgin Yamadori material and of those, there were only a few hundred to go through! After a few hours and a lot of coffee, I found a large field-grown Japanese Yamadori Yew! Below: Tadaaaaaaaa!!! It has a lot of raw deadwood to style and only two locations with bushlike short branches and foliage.
Below: Preparing the tree for wiring and styling in a tent that was hot as a sauna! Finding just the right branches to style in those bushes was serious business! Because what you cut off can’t be put back on!
Below: And this was the end result of those 2 days of very hot and hard work! I was pretty pleased with the (for now) end result! This demo was one of the highlights of my Bonsai career and I just wonder after all those years: who knows who bought it back then and who now owns this tree and if it is still alive?! It would be such fun to know this and maybe to show here on my blog how it is doing and looking now??? If you know anything then please mail me here: karamotto@hotmail.com Cheers, Hans van Meer.
The last two days were spent nice and warm indoors in our living room wiring my Scots pine cascade.
It takes this long because I can’t stand too long on my feeds these days! It was collected 10 years ago in Slovenia by me and my Slovenian friends. It took a lot of time and heavy wiring to bring that falling branch to this desired position! But now it is fixated, so only the thinner branches now needed wiring to stay in place! I like this design and I hope to find a real special cascade pot for it in the future!
Above: Spring 2008. Big Ron is looking just fine in this picture! Not too formal and strict and I was pretty pleased with him! It was shown in the famous Ginkgo Awards and the “Noelander Trophy” both in Belgium! Only the pot is too big I know…this expensive and handmade pot by my dear friend Brian Albright (UK) is beautiful but…too plump and massive…but that is my fold and not Brian’s! I like the arrangement of the foliage, not too strict and forced but still triangle-shaped with lots of open spaces!
Below: February 2009 Noelanders Trophy in Belgium. The wooden falcon was handmade in China for me.
Below: 29-1-2022. Today the sun was shining and I felt ok so I grabbed a little stool to stand on and a bucket for the needles that I would pluck off and started to carefully pull off the old needles of my Mugo. This old Pine has filled out so nicely after the complete restyling that I did a few years ago! And there is even some back budding on the thinner branches!
Note: Don’t remove all the old needles from a Mugo Pine!!! Unlike other Pines like Sylvestris, they don’t bud out/back easily on bare wood! They make their new buds next to last year’s growth/needles and even the year for that growth! So don’t remove all of the older needles if you want back budding!!!
I removed these last year’s needles because they were covered in black sticky residue from a late summer lice attack that I (due to circumstances) did not treat properly and way too late! Every inch of those old needles and the bark was covered with black sticky stuff that I could not remove! Those older covered needles had become useless anyway…so I did an out-of-season needle pluck! So little back budding this year for this old tree!
Above: 29-1-2022. Halfway through, the old needles on the left side branches are plucked and she is starting to look just like what I hoped for… an old and battered small tree in a pot!
Above: 30-1-2022. Later that same day and all finished, for now, so tomorrow I can start cleaning all the deadwood and treating it with Jin seal and wood hardener and then I will wire every branch and create a new look for him!
Below: I found an unknown picture on the web of my Itoigawa Juniper Shohin and Urbandori Potentilla Shohin (under 21cm) with a tiny Japanese Waterstone at the prestigious Ginkgo Bonsai Awards in Belgium. Years earlier I had won the “Dutch Bonsai Day’s Trophy” with that tiny Potentilla!
The story of “BIG RON” started some were in November 2000, when my friends: Teunis-Jan Klein, Carlos van de Vaart and I made the long drive all the way to Milan (Italy) to look for some Yamadori material. After visiting some Bonsai friends’ gardens in Milan, we arrived at NIPPON EN bonsai garden. There were some amazing Bonsai on display and for sale and the Yamadori material they had there was of very high quality! Some poor trees were lost among all this super Yamadori material and it is there where I discovered the very old “Mugo Pine” of this story.
Pic. 1: In this picture, which is a still shot from a poor video, you can see theamazing “Hawk” like roots of this Pine, which looks as if it is lifting the earth. I fell in love immediately, but was scared of the leg of workable foliage on these almost “Octopus” like long branches with only a little foliage on the end!
Pic.2: Here you can see the backside of the tree. There is not much to work with here either! Only those few long branches you see in picture 1.
Pic.3: I could not resist the challenge of this massive tree and bought it from the owner of NIPON EN. He told me that it was one of the first yamadori he ever collected. He himself had found it literally on the top of a very high mountain in the Italian Alps. And it stood in his gardens for many years, without much work done to it. And nobody seemed to be interested in buying it, because of the leg of foliage and age on those few branches. As there was no room for this big tree in the car that we came in and I did not have that much money with me as well, I had to drive all the way back again to Milan Italy in May of the next year to finally collect it! And I was very excited when I made that long trip again with another old friend in my own (bigger) car. The former owner of this pine asked me to take care of it and I promised him, that I would try my best to make it beautiful! When I finally had the tree in my own garden I made this first drawing of the idea I had in mind for its future. Although (than) I had no idea how to reach it, this is what I saw.
Pic.4: And now just over 6 years later, this is the result. This tree made a big transformation in a very short time, with only one real scare during that whole time. A few years ago the tree lost its beautiful bark on the right side of the tree. I peeledthe bark away and my heart almost stopped when I found out that the whole backside of the tree had died. I could easily remove all of the old bark of the already dry wood! I literally burst into tears, because I thought the tree might die and most certainly would never be like I hoped for it to be! After the first shock was over I tried to see what caused this dieback. I discovered then that the whole tree was hollowed out by “Wasps”, all the way true this thick tree, right up to the live bark on the bottom of this tree! I removed all the rotted deadwood with power tools treated the remaining deadwood with Jinseal and then Wrapped the whole trunk of the tree with a screening cloth to keep the constant returning wasps out for 3 long years. But the tree remained healthy and strong! And looks actually much better with this great-looking piece of deadwood, as if Mother Nature had the brilliant idea to help me with styling! I was tremendously proud to be able to show this old survivor I named “Big Ron” in this last “Ginkgo Awards Show”!
I think this Bonsai came a long way in a short time and I am glad I can finally show it to my friends here on my blog. The complete story of “BIG RON” can be seen on my website in the near future.
I do hope you like it?
Hans van Meer.
Big Ron way back in 2007 just before I proudly showed it in the last “Ginkgo Awards”.
“Big Ron” just a few weeks ago in April 2019! It has outgrown its silhouette completely and needs serious restyling to secure its health and future as a Bonsai!
The red arrow points at the stump that is left from removing the large back branch. This branch was bent over forward in a U shape to create the old top section. You can immediately see how much more space for the light to reach the inner section is created!
This is the top front branch that needs to go as well…big decisions indeed!The top section is seen from the backside. At the bottom of this picture, you can see the stump that isleft from removing the back/top branch.Front view before removing.And here is the top section removed… a pretty weird experience!
The still pre-Bonsai of this story was collected in 2012 by me and my dear Slovenian friends in the beautiful mountains of Slovenia. It was growing underneath a low-hanging branch of a very old and massive Beech. The leg of sunlight and the constant defoliation of the foliage and the young branches by deer and other grassers kept it this small! I can only guess how old it is?! During this past decade, I worked to get it to bud back lower on the trunk and branches to make it more compact and tree-like! It needs a nice shallow pot or even better: a slab and a few more years of fun work to get it to show worthy! But that now lies in the hands of my Bonsai friend Diederick who is buying it from me to at it to his own amazing Bonsai collection!
Above: Impressive close-up of the massive fused inner section of the raft!
The Bonsai Blog of Hans van Meer 