Some recent work......

Just a few things that have been given a little love over the past few weeks....

Large Japanese Maple.

In 5 years it will be a stunner! The front will change from the picture below.

Cutting it back this hard was the right thing to do, infact it should have been

done 3 years ago....instead of wasting the past 3 years on this one. Live and learn.

Ponderoas pine now in a Mike Hagedorn pot. I love this tree and it can only get better

from here. Pot is nice, but not the final pot.

Fatty elm after letting it grow unchecked last year.

Changed the front and did lots of branch work. Give this one a few years then watch out! :)

I know, bad picture quality! This tree was posted on BonsaNut last year....in which some
did virtuals of it in a naturalistic style. I liked what they did but this trunk lends itself to a more
traditional styling. This is what the tree needs and wants, it wants to be short, super fat and powerful. Better pictures to come this spring.

Crabapple with a 4" trunk...bigger than you would think.

Roots......tons of them! Anderson flats and pumice do amazing things, no matter the species of tree

In a large oval pot. Need to work on branch ramification now.

Shohin Ponderosa

Same tree in a clamshell style pot by Sir Knight. One he was going to throw away.

This will look good in summer and next spring when the accents get established and fill in a bit.

But its a start!

Amny more to post later.... But for now here is one that is now in line for some work,

 a rather large pine...... My good buddy Tony there as "bonsai model extrordinare", lol!

Shohin Ponderosa Pine

Here is a little ponderosa that I have had laying around in the front yard for over a year. A year ago I barerooted the little guy and potted it in lava and pumice. There has been an explosion of bew buds since then. This coming spring I will again repot it into a suitable bonsai pot which will change the image quite a bit. This will allow one to see the movement of the trunk coming out of the soil line.

Before I started it was about 8" tall and over 22" wide. Now is the time to give this dog a future and hope to one day be a bonsai

Lookin at the inside you can see a few rather large branches that are almost the same diameter as the trunk. While I can easily bend these it would just look funny and not be a good idea. After a minute a most of them were cut off and the tree changed drastically!

Branch selection has been made and now time to do some cuttting!

Jins have been worked, burned and will now age naturally in the great outdoors. By next fall they will be weathered and a nice grey in color. Tube of cut paste there for size comparison. Now the tree is very small and looks nothing like what it did 2 minutes ago. Maybe a future afterall?

After exposing the roots and seeing what the trunk did below the current soil line I chose to use this as the front. Ponderosa shohin are rare because they tend to have long needles. But there are short needle ponderosa out there, we see them from time to time. Or one could graft Black Pine on them as well. But for now native will work. While this tree will never be a show tree it will fit in nicely with my growing collection of shohin trees.  Next years posts here will show a much improved and filled out tree that will also be in a pot. Isn't bonsai fun? :)

Keep in mind this is an initial styling and the tree will continue to improve over the coming years. It has to start somewhere :)

Updated Literati Ponderosa

Here is an update on a nice ponderosa that I collected a few years back. It responded well to the initial styling and threw many, many buds that I had to thin quite a bit. I am very confident that in 2 years this will be a very full and killer tree. They bark and trunk line are very nice and elegant while the crown is starting to come along. It too will change quite a bit over the coming years as it fills in and extends. I see the foliage getting tighter and a smaller crown......in time though! Here is is last year http://jasonsbonsai.blogspot.com/2008/04/literati-ponderosa-pine.html

Instead of tearing it up like the wildman I once was on New Years eve I stayed in and cranked out some trees!! No better way to ring in the new year than sap on your hands and copper wire rolls everywhere~!

Before

Old Front

After some thinning and now ready for wire

Done for the time being. The fronts angle change quite a bit to enhance the subtle movement and the abrupt change of direction at the top. While some of the foliage does go away from teh viewer it looks really good in person. This coming Feb. I will be putting it into its new pot and that will take the tree to the next level for sure.

Pine Update

Here is a pine that I have been working on for 3 years now. It has come a very long way in a short period of time. Many of the "Big Names" in bonsai that have seen this in person have all really loved this tree, a few even bowed, lol!!

Here it is in the middle of August 2009. I needle pruned the bottom 1/2 of the tree at the end of that day.
Front before any work

Right Side before any work

After needle prunning and no wire. This is the beg. of Sept now. It sat on the bench for a few weeks before I got back to it.

Partially wired and I changed the front by a few degrees.

Partially wired, back

Partially wired left

Back finished!

Front finished with the sun shining

Front finished

From the patio. I will move this to a taller pole in the garden soon.

Trunk detail