artsofjc

These are odd times we living now. In California we are all under a shelter-in-place order with the spread of COVID-19 spreading around. One bright side of this crisis for bonsai folks is the change to stay home and play with trees more than normal. We and they are a captive audience. The weather here

January has been a ticking clock of work that must be done this month. Today, I finally took on the last major re-potting of the month. Everything else can wait til February and warming temperatures. This month, I had to complete the California Juniper.  The California Juniper is an old legacy tree that has been

Every so many years, I start a project of cataloging my collection to show how a tree has advanced or declined. All of the trees featured here have been in earlier posts and most have been in my development for a decade now. There are a few exceptions.

There are times in life that the stars align and things just fall in place.  This month, I received a special honor. The honor is being give the cover tree for digital bonsai magazine. Golden Statement is California premier bonsai magazine produced by GSBF (Golden State Bonsai Federation). It has been in print for decades

Fall is pushing in on the garden these days but we, here in northern California, are in the throws of a heat wave. Back into the 90’s we go.  Some trees are still thriving like crazy this time of year while others have slowed down considerably.   So what I have been doing for the past

This time of year, I pay considerable attention to the olives in my collection. I have let them blow out their aggressive growth twice this year; Spring and Summer. The pushes of growth generate a huge amount of leaves and long spikes of growth that strengthen the tree. I even reworked a small olive I

Boxwood can be one of my favorite trees to work on. I enjoy the leaves, bark and trucks. They are also a tree I caution students on because of the amount of work they can take. I only collect and work on one of these in my own collection. I would never have more than

In February, at an auction in Oakland, CA I bid on a tree near the end of the auction. It was not that interesting of a tree mind you but the pot was a completely different story. When at an auction it is important to look at all aspects of the item up for bid.

Temperatures and sun exposure this year is just weird. You may have that feeling too. Weather patterns are not at normal and some of us are beginning to worry about what summer will bring; hot and super hot temperatures? Who knows. In any case we need to pay special attention to our trees right now.

I am often asked if I ever wire a tropical tree in my collection and I say, certainly. I do all my wiring on these trees early in the season because as summer comes these trees grow so aggressively that I would have to check them every few days for wire cuts.  These trees shown

Re potting and refining trees has been the theme this Spring. Many were already done but there is always refinement and assessments required. Today I have been working on some early tropical tree re-potting. With the tropical trees; I wait for the soil temperatures to be sustained above 50 degrees to start their work. I

Normally, I wait a few more months to tackle major olive work. I wait until evening temperatures are steady above 50 degrees. This year’s weather has been a bit bazaar and I have movement in most species that I would not expect including my olives. I have a had a client olive hanging out on

Weather in northern California has been inordinately wet this year. Temperatures were unstable for a bit in February and had halted a great deal of re-potting. Anything I re-potted I would have to be protect from low temperatures and freezing so my plants did a lot of bonsai shuffle for a few weeks. Then, all

Distribution Pinus nigra is a tree of the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. The majority of the range is in Turkey. It is found in the higher elevations of the South Apennine mixed montane forests ecoregion in southern Italy and the Tyrrhenian-Adriatic sclerophyllous and mixed forests ecoregion in Sicily. There are remnant populations in

Checking on trees is a year round task. We recently went down into lower 30s requiring some plants to come indoors.  Now we are back in the 50s and having a blessed rain.  The trees are loving it.                       I have a new tree in

I have been fussing with this Chinese Quince for about 5 years now already and I have fixed many problems with its base and now concentrating on the top. I had structure wire on this tree for the second time; this time for over a year and I learned how to do it so it

The Sierra Juniper was re-potted to the new pot as Master Mitsuya had desired. He wanted this tree to move to a more feminine pot and I compromised on a rustic feminine pot. This one is artisan crafted special edition and give the tree a very delicate look as he had seen it to need.

I recently ordered a new light studio to shoot bonsai trees in. It came with several colored backdrops but I wanted to shoot in white to discover any issues it would be present. Sadly, what the vendor said was large and pictured in their advert is not really very large at all but it will

I had planned all year to get to the Golden State Bonsai Federation Convention 41 in Sacramento. This was going to be a historic even with the return of Master Yasuo Mitsuya after an absence of 10 years. He would be joined with Bjorn Bjorholm, Suthin Sukosolvisit. These headlines were joined by Mitsuya’s students. So

As the seasons change, I like to access how far the trees have developed in any given year and plan for the upcoming year’s development. So far I have reviewed some of the major trees in the collection that had considerable work done on them this year. The most challenging species for my location are

Doing club demos requires research and planning but the bring rewards to the membership and even to self. I recently had the opportunity to do a demo for the San Mateo club, SBBK, on the subject of tropical material. I introduced species many had not seen before. It is always good to help “change minds”,

This week I visited with my creeping fig tree. Years past I have let the figs ripen and fall off but that weakens the tree going into Fall and Winter. It was time to harvest. I remove most of the figs; leaving only those for ornamentation purposes. Moving around the garden, I also checked in

Nice hot day here in Santa Clara. I had re-potted most of the tropical trees before a demo I recently concluded. Now it was time for the final ficus and the last of the summer trees.  The Ficus Microcarpa Shohin is one of my prized tropical trees. It has been in the little shohin pot for

Projects consumed the morning on the 4th of July. Not feeling very festive for so many reasons that I will not discuss in my blog. On the docket this morning was a shohin Japanese Black Pine and a client Boxwood. After participating in an on-line training session about shohin black pines last night I was

Daytime temps here in Santa Clara are reaching upper 80s to mid 90s now. Work in the garden starts to slow down since most plants start shutting down in the 90s except for the tropical trees that begin to flourish as long as there is good humidity. Here in CA I have to create the

Purchased this cork oak from a nursery in southern California in 2009. It was in a standard nursery pot from a bonsai grower. When I got it home I was shocked to see that its roots were mostly 4 plus inches below the soil level with a stick in between with only a few small

Daimyo Oak 2018 The Daimyo Oak is the king of my collection. It has such a provenance. Seed carried from Japan by a club member and planted in 1960. Fifty-eight years ago this was an acorn. It was styled by that club member and then upon his passing, donated to the Bonsai Garden at Lake

Right now I am handicapped with a hand injury and lingering issues from sickness. That give me time to catch up on some stories and ask others to move trees around so I can putter about for a while. This past weekend the local bonsai club asked if  I would demo the creation of a Saikei;

It is show time next weekend so there is a lot of final cleanup and show display stand testing. We preset all the trees with a stand so we know we have the correct ones for the display. Not too large, not too small, the correct color, correct tree placement. As usually I do not

Here is late January I needed to re-pot a client black pine. The original pot was just too tight so I was off to Japantown to get a new one. The idea was to create more room for finer roots and provide some more space in the pot. Although I would normally use a rectangle