Two movies from Taikan-ten

I have never been to a bonsai show in Japan. In fact, I have never been to a bonsai show other than the our local club show. So when I found out that this year Taikan-ten is going to be during the week of Thanksgiving I figured I should go. Negotiations with family did not take long either – being married to a saintly woman does help. And, by a happy coincidence I bought tickets that got me to Aichi-en (the nursery I visit once a year) the night before setup. I landed in Nagoya around 9PM and we left the next morning around 5:30AM. What jetlag?

Taikan-ten is arguably the second best show in Japan, after Kokufu-ten, which takes place in Tokyo around February (would be harder for me to attend because of teaching). Also, Kokufu is much more crowded and overwhelming. Both Janet Roth and Mas Nakajima of https://suisekiart.com/ said that I should consider going to Taikan-ten because it is much easier to enjoy and it take place during a much better time of the year than Kokufu, and I would always prefer Kyoto to Tokyo.

There are too many things to share in one blog so I think I will break it into a number of posts and I will start with two movies that I took at the show (and this is not to compete with Bjorn).
The first one is of the four winning trees from the last Kokufu. I stopped talking in the middle of it for two reasons: First, I forgot the name of the crab apple and, second, I almost collided with a masked man who was very interested in those trees as well. To watch the movie click here.

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The second movie is of one of my favorite trees at the show. It is a medium size tree and I overlooked it a couple of times I walked by it, but John Milton, one of the apprentices at Aichi-en drew my attention to it and I then I realized how amazing it is. I think I am really drawn to the understated beauty of this tree. To watch the movie click here.

After I fell in love with this tree I took a number of people to see it - here is Uchi taking a good look.

I will be writing other posts from Taikan-ten in the next few days so keep checking back. There are only 193 pictures in that folder :).

The stories in the needles

I asked Mr. Tanaka once about what part of his apprenticeship he disliked the most and he said “pulling needles”. Then he explained that at Daiju-en, where he was an apprentice they pulled needles for about 3-4 months in a year. Daiju-en is known for its pines, including the candle cutting technique and the discovery of Zuisho pine, both discovered by the farther of the current owner of Daiju-en.

When I started working with pines pulling needles was definitely not my preferred part of the maintenance process. But over the last few years I started enjoying it more and more. I find it to be one of those experiences that really gets you to know your tree, year after year. I try to pull needles a few times a year, depending on how much I get done at different times of the year. Starting in the spring, when the candles start growing I balance the candles and pull down to about 5 pairs of needles on black and red pines (fewer in stronger areas and leave more in weaker areas). If the tree was not decandled last summer this process would have been done in the fall. Then in the summer (June or early July here) I cut candles on strong trees or balance the needles on weaker trees that are not being decandled. And in the fall I select shoots on the trees that were decandled down to two candles (or one in congested areas), pull last year needles and thin out new needles in stronger areas, or pull down to 5 pairs (more or less depending on the strength of the buds) on trees that were not decandled.

One of the things that I noticed is that needle pulling process comes with many special sensations. First thing I noticed is how mentally tiring it is. Looking through the needles for a few hours makes me feel almost dazed and I usually sleep very well after it. The reason for this tiredness is that you have to continuously refocus at different depths - first thing you see are the tips of needles, but then you need to focus on the base of the needles and count them, and often, you doing all the while looking through layers of needles.

There are different techniques people use to pull needles - you can pull with your fingers, you can pull with tweezers, or some just cut them off with scissors. I was shown the "proper" technique of holding scissors in your left hand and moving needles out of the way with scissors while pulling with tweezers in your right hand. I have to admit, I struggle with the "proper" technique, and find the it is easier for me to hold the shoot with my left hand while pulling with tweezers in my right hand.

Puling needles is one of those jobs that really gets you to know your bonsai. Maybe even more than wiring. I often find myself having a conversation with my past self – I often find messages that I left 6 or 12 months earlier. Like when I find a candle with a whole bunch of old needles I wonder “why did I leave so many needles? Did I just miss it?” More likely it is because it was a weak bud and I decided not to cut it during summer. Or maybe I maybe I decided not to pull needles around it the fall before. So now I can see whether it worked or not – if it did the bud will look strong and now I can pull the needles around and decandle in the summer (if all goes well).

Another interesting sensation of pulling needles is the smell surrounding the process. The first smell is the smell of the pine sap - the tree will start bleeding a little as you work and you will get a good introduction to difference aromas of pines. my favorite is red pine, followed by black pine. my least favorite is Zuisho - I get nausiated from the smell of Zuisho sap, so much so that I have considered selling the only Zuisho i have. Depending on how recently you sprayed your trees you might even get a good whiff of pesticides that you used. And the last smell that is the part of the needle pulling process is the smell of burning sap - after a few hours of pulling needles your tweezers will get gunked up with sap and the easiest way to clean them is to burn the sap and then brush it off with a copper brush.

in the late fall/winter I reduce the number of shoots that grew from the spot where the old candle was cut in the summer. There a number of decisions that need to be made at this point. Normally we would try to leave two shoots. The reason not to leave more shoots is to avoid the swelling at the point where the shoots emerge. And that is true not only for pines. But the question is which two. And the answer varies depending on where this candle is in the tree. Often I will try to leave two shoots that are not at 180 degrees to each other. If the shoots are at the top of the tree I might leave two weaker shoots and cut the stronger ones, but at the bottom of the tree or inside i might eliminate the weaker shoots. The goal is always to balance the tree.

The one useful thing to keep in mind is that strong areas will get stronger and weak areas will get weaker, and eventually die. This was explained to me by Peter Tea (more than once and using very short words) and I find that it is one of the fundamental principals to keep in mind. So if you are trying to make weak areas stronger the way to achieve it is to make strong areas weaker, while maintaining the overall health of the tree.

Taking care of the strong areas on the pine is one of the most important things to do to maintain the overall health of the tree so that the weak areas don't get neglected and die off.

Another sensation I notice when pulling needles is that I often get a back pain from bending my back too much. My work table is an engine lift I got from Harbor Freight tools so I can lift the tree or lower it very easily. But I have to remember to do it. What often happens is that I forget to adjust the height of the table in time and end up bending to work on lower branches - not the best strategy. So what I do when I am more conscious is to work horizontally at one level by rotating the tree and then elevating the table to work on lower branches. I pull needles from top to bottom so that i don't drop needles on the areas I already pulled.

The thing that is super important is to not just think about what to do but just do the work. It is important not to be judgmental about the work that you have done last year or doing right now. It is much more important to do the work and make a few mistakes, then not do the work. I often make a list and realize that there is just too much to do, but it is important to do at least what you can. So the important thing is to pick a tree, take it away from the bench that it is on to the working area and work on that tree. You might not be able to get to all your trees, but it is ok. You can do more next time. I often start working on the tree that is not my best tree to get the muscle memory back and the stories in my head straight and then when you feel better about what you are doing work on the better tree. A lot of bonsai is repetitive work so getting in the grove is important.

Thank you to those who made bonsai fun for me

Below is a transcript of an audio journal entry I made while hiking on March 26, 2016.

I would like to make a list of people, bonsai people, to whom I owe special thanks. As am I walking down Appalachian Trail I will be talking and when I write it down it will be a blog entry. I will make it in reverse chronological order.

The first person who comes to mind is, of course, Carrie. Carrie makes bonsai to be much more fun because she is awesome. She lives very close to me. I actually got Carrie into bonsai. We met in a yoga studio. We get together, we do bonsai, she helps me, I hope to think that I help her and any hour that I spend with Carrie doing bonsai is so much better for it. Thank you Carrie for being my friend and for making bonsai more fun on a daily basis.

The second person I should mention is Roy Minarai. I have been talking to Roy for a few months on Facebok and I finally got to meet him when he came down to our Show. There is something about this guy that just makes you feel glad to be alive. He’s got a wonderful energy about him, not to mention his ceramics that are mind boggling. As far as glazes go right now I don’t anybody who does work that comes close to his. Very deep, very complex, very emotional glazes.

Next person to mention would be Jeremiah Lee. Jeremiah, again, I knew through Facebook. I met him through an old friend. I only met him once when I was in California. We have been communicating over Facebook. He is just good all-around dude, again group of those naturally enlightened dudes. I would like to think that I have been helpful in a very small part to him, but definitely I am the winner from getting to know him because I feel like I have gained so much, on a personal and emotional level, from having someone like Jeremiah to just talk with.

Next person I should mention is Mike Blanton (m voice is faltering a little). I wrote a tiny little blog entry where I mention both Jeremiah and Mike. I only Met Mike once, again, but followed him on Facebook for a while before he passed. I remember thinking “Wow, this dude’s life is so awesome! He is doing bonsai every day, posting trees that he worked on.” Then I found out that he had a stage four lung cancer and that really had an effect on my life and my lifestyle because I decided I did not want to wait until I have a terminal disease to do things that I love to do. That really slowed me down, or helped me to slow down four years ago. My colleagues might not be happy about it but I think I am a better man for it.

Next person I should mention is yet another person I only met once – Jonas Dupuich. I met Jonas once when I was visiting Peter Tea, but I should say that without Jonas I would not be where I am now because it was through his blog that I found out about Peter Tea’s visiting apprentice program that he started when he was at Aichi-en. Of course that naturally leads me into this whole Japanese connection.

Peter Tea himself I am very thankful to (I came across a couple of hikers. Voices in the background “Hi.” “Hi, I am doing a little journaling.”) Peter, I don’t know why, but Peter, I guess out of the goodness of his heart, figured that being an apprentice in Japan is not enough hard work and he decided to share it with the rest of us and he started allowing people to come in and teaching them and hosting them and taking care of them. And I don’t know how many others that benefited from that, but man, have I. I owe a debt of gratitude to Peter because this is when I really got a glimpse at the world of bonsai, in Japan, I should say, but also that created a lot of connections in the US. Peter, a lot of us are indebted to you, but I know that I am.

And through Peter I met Juan Andrade, my brother from another mother. I don’t think that calling Juan a friend is going to do it justice – Juan is family. I am not sure that I would right away give Juan a kidney if he needed but I would have to think hard about it and ask my life. Juan, as long as I live there is a place for you to stay and I am looking forward to having more Chicharones in Costa Rica.

Last but definitely not least, my oyakata, Junichiro Tanaka. A man who let me into his house. A man who is at the epicenter of Peter’s and Juan’s rising up. A man who allowed Peter to bring foreigners to stay at his house. And a man who on a number of occasions had to slow down eating because I was flopping my big mouth open during lunches and dinners with clients. Oyakata, I hope you can feel the love that many of us feel for you.
This list is no way comprehensive. That’s just what I could think about while hiking on the Appalachian Trail at five thousand feet elevation. Over and out.

Update on Bunjin Virginia Pine.

I wanted to write an update on the Virginia Pine I first worked on three years ago - here is the link to the first post about it.

When I wrote the last post the tree looked like this in November 2013.

Then came the terrible ice storm of 2014

In the summer of 2014 I thinned the needles and cut of the long section, but decided not to make any big bends until the fall.

I actually cannot find any pictures of this tree for two years and after I wired it in February of 2016 it looked like this.

Then in June, Juan Andrade styled it further and we decided that next spring we will plant it on the stone.

Since then the tree has filled out slightly and here is what it looks like in August 2016 vs. before I started working on it in 2013 (two years after being collected).



Next steps will be to plant it on the stone and then start working on refinement. More updates will follow.

Bonsai as a hobby

I often find myself stressed about bonsai. I might be in the minority, but there could be others out there who feel the same way. I decided to put down my thoughts about how I tried to decrease the stress of bonsai and increase the enjoyment of it.

1. Making mistakes

I used to be much more concerned about making a mistake and because of it I would not do things, being worried about doing the wrong thing. At some point I realized that doing bonsai means making mistakes, but, hopefully, fewer mistakes each year. Luckily, as long as those mistakes don’t kill your tree, the tree will help you correct the mistake in the future. Compassion goes a long way, and I really had to work on having compassion towards myself.

2. Having too many or too few trees

When starting in bonsai I did not feel like I should buy many trees before I got my skill to a certain level. As a result I had few trees and practiced too many procedures on those few trees. Doing too much to a tree will slow it down, so the collection did not progress well. Then I went in the opposite direction and accumulated more trees than I could take care off and again some of the trees did not get enough attention. However, I do think that having too many trees is better than too few because … you can always give away a few. I am lucky to have friends around who can benefit from a couple of “hand me down” trees. When I look at my trees I think that maybe half of my collection I got for free from other club members.

3. Finding the time

This one I still struggle with the most. Bonsai is way more time consuming than I think, particularly, when I am trying to do a good job . I often feel rushed despite the fact that I have the most understanding and accommodating family. So here are the ways I found useful in managing the time. First, I need to communicate to myself and the family about how much time I plan to be working in one session (usually it is two hours). Then, I plan what I want to accomplish and try to cut it in half. If it is repotting, I hope to just do one tree in those two hours, and when I am done I try to re-evaluate and see if I have enough time to do another project. I always try to remember to leave time for cleaning, but I don’t always have the time to clean . Some jobs can be left for a few hours and be finished later. In fact almost all jobs can be finished an hour later. In Japan when lunch is served the work stops (trees that are out of pots during repotting sessions just get buried in the soil).

Another balance I struggle with is spending time on my trees vs. spending time with the club. I often feel guilty about any amount of time I spend on club related activities, because there is always more bonsai work that can be done. But I try to remind myself that without a club I would not be doing bonsai so I think of it as breaks from bonsai work and just fun. But I do try to be protective of the time I spend on the club, because there is always more one could do.

4. Regret of missing out on work

This one is one of the constant feelings I get. I should have repotted this tree or grafted this tree. I should have done this differently or I should have found the time to do that earlier. What I learned is that there is always next year so and there is never enough time so it is important to prioritize. All this starts with a list or a plan: what has to be done to keep trees healthy. what needs to be done to get best trees progressing, what would be nice to have accomplished.

5. Trees dying

Yet another thing I had to learn to be ok with is that trees sometimes die. Sometimes I know why that happened and sometimes I don’t. Trees dying is part of bonsai. It happens to all of us, even pros. There is an expression I learned in Japan – Shoganai. It literally means “it could not have been changed” but I prefer the more common expression “shit happens”. Amazingly, the one tree that started this adventure is still alive, but it is a bougainvillea and those are hard to kill 
6. Having a vision for the collection

Having a vision for the collection is something I am not certain about, but I think it is important. This is something I am working on. I used to buy trees on a whim, when there was an opportunity or I just could not resist doing it. Now I have somewhere around 50 trees, and I think I need to start thinking about where I would like to be in a few years. I refer to work on just a few species – maples and pines, for now, but at some point I realized that many of my trees have the same feel so I started to think about how the trees would fit together. Another big part of it is how the trees are displayed in your garden. I am still not clear on this, but this is something that I am thinking more and more about.

7. Taking pictures

Probably the most important thing for long term enjoyment of bonsai is taking pictures. There are many reasons for it. Pictures help you document the progression of trees. It is very easy to forget how things were just a few years ago. Whenever you get a tree to a point where it has progressed to a certain point it is good to know how far you have come. The trick is to remember to do it and cell phone camera makes things easier because pictures get automatically saved and are easy to find. I try to keep a folder for each of the best trees where I can document the progress.


8. Travel. A lot. Not only to Japan.

Travel is super important part of bonsai for me for a couple of reasons. First, that’s how I learned most, by traveling to Japan and starting to learn at Aichi-en first with Peter Tea and then with Juan Andrade, both were apprentices in Japan. But also traveling to see Peter in CA when he got back – I learned a lot from spending a few days a year with Peter. I am hoping to continue to travel to visit people. I got to pick up some material and pots in my trips as well. But the most important reason is that you get to meet amazing people and get a different perspective on bonsai. I have not done enough traveling to shows, but that would be something I would like to start doing a little more of. I am hoping to go to Taikan-ten this fall.

9. Hire professionals.

I don’t think there another way to learn that is better than hiring good professional bonsai artists to work on your trees. Figuring out who you are most comfortable with might take a little time but when you find that person or persons try to develop a relationship with them. This is what makes bonsai fun – relationships. This is true for both bonsai artists as well as potters. There are some amazing potters now in the west and we as hobbyists can do a lot to support and encourage them and it is easy too – buy more pots!

Virginia Pine

This blog post will be about one of my favorite trees – It is a Virginia Pine I collected in 2012. Rodney Clemons was kind enough to pot it for me in the box and it spent two years getting strong.

I really liked the bark and the shari on this tree.

Then I repotted it into a bonsai pot in 2014. I had to remove a significant part of a large root on the left side of the tree. The tree grew strongly after being repotted.

In August 2014 Juan Andrade did the initial styling. We decided to do an approach graft on the right side of the tree – you can see the branch attached with plastic tape where it is going to be grafted next spring. This branch is coming from the top (second from the top on the right side). I grafted this branch in Spring 2015.



In May 2015 the tree was growing very strong and the candles were getting ready to be cut.


In July 2015 I cut the candles on this tree for the first time. I also pulled needles earlier in the spring to balance the strength. I think that Virginia pines are as strong as Japanese Black pines and can be decandled every year if strong.

This year the tree is looking very strong and the candles are just as strong as last year. We will see how well it responds next year to getting candles cut two years in a row.

In June 2016 Juan visited me again and we decided that we are going to make it a shorter tree with the apex coming from the branch on the top right after I separate the approach graft. We also cut the candles for the second year in a row.

The graft is almost ready to be separated, but I want to take it slow because it is a very important branch.


And two weeks after cutting candles I got new buds pushing already!

This tree is one of 4 Virginia pines I have. I like Virginia pines for a number of reasons. Frist, they are native to southern US and are strong. The stronger the species the faster it can be developed. Second, since they are native they are relatively easy to find and collect. Third, while the needle quality is not as fine as Japanese black pines it is can be refined through mekiri. And, most importantly, they develop a very nice bark!

I will be posting an update on the first Virginia pine I collected and styled – here is the link to the initial bends. Stay tuned.

To automate or water by hand

Last year I installed an automatic watering system and I was thinking about doing the same thing this year, but then I decided to water by hand instead. There are many reasons and many lessons I learned from going through the process and I will try to outline those here.
The main reason I decided to install a watering system last year was because I was working in Autsin for five weeks and I did not think it would be feasible to find people to water for me for all those times (but I will have to do something similar this year). Five weeks in Austin and other usual summer trips meant asking for a lot of help. So I did some research and decided on a soaker hose based system with a four zone timer.

In case other people are considering whether watering system is worth your effort here are my impressions.

What I did not like:
1) Concerns about failure – this was the biggest problem. My system failed three times at different points. Twice I came home with water running down the street because connectors failed (once before the timer so it could be going for a while). Once the goof plug at the end of the line came out and the water was coming out of the end of the soaker hose instead of the sides and messing up the pressure on the whole bench. What’s worse is that knowing that failures have occurred kept me worried about whether it is going to happen again. It definitely took the pleasure out of the automation. And after all that my timer failed – I checked it in the morning and everything looked fine but when I got home in late afternoon the trees were super dry. The batteries were fine, the program was correct, but I am certain they did not get watered and it was a hot day. I pulled the batteries out and put same batteries back after I checked them and it worked well the next day. I tried figuring out what happened but it remains a mystery.
2) Less control – you definitely don’t have the control you would have with hand watering. Being able to adjust the amount of water to differences in temperature, moisture, rainfall, types of trees, stages of development (e.g. did you just de-candle the tree) makes it less optimal. Some of those issues can be adjusted, but I don’t think it can be adjusted to the point that you can get to with hand watering.
3) Not being able to move the trees easily – because I would attach the soaker hoses with wire hooks to the soil it became easy to move the trees as well as rotate trees. This is not a big problem, but it definitely diminished my ability to work on trees easily.
4) Less contact with the trees – not watering every day, or twice a day, made it easier to ignore trees. I did not get to look at my trees every day and so some things were ignored. It would make it harder to spot problems early.
5) Uses way more water than hand watering – I noted that my water bill was higher than usual and more water was ending up on the ground instead of the pots. I think the soaker based system uses less water than sprayer systems, but it is still more than hand watering, in my opinion.
6) Difficulty with fertilizing – I fertilize using tea bags and I constantly struggled with placement of hoses over the bags, around the bags, under the bags, etc. Somehow, I could not quite figure it out so that the pots with bags would get watered evenly and enough water would go through the bags.

What I liked:
1) Not having to ask for favors and rely on others – this was the main reason I installed the system. I still had to ask people to check that it has not failed but I did not have to find people to water twice daily.
2) Flexibility with schedules when at home – when I hand water I have to be home at certain times, but the system freed me from it. I could water by hand in the morning and set a timer to water in the afternoon only.

So my advice is to not use the automated system if you can do the watering on your own or with a little help from your friends.

A big airlayer that (almost) worked

A year ago I decided to deal with the ugly roots and an obvious graft line on a large maple.

So after considering it for a few years I decided to airlayer it above the graft line. As often is the case, Carrie and I did it together.

I have been pretty successful with airlayers, as in all live, but some don't get 360 roots, but I have never done one on a trunk over two inches. One of the problems of doing it at the same time from both sides is that sometimes the lines don't meet.

A year later we decided to look inside the big pot and see what we got.

Well, what we got was wonderful roots

But only on one side. Turns out it is important to rotate your airlayers, even if the tree is over 50 pounds and is hard to deal with.

After some wrestling with separating this thing without cutting the roots off I came up with the idea of wrapping the roots in a t-shirt and sawing through the stump. It took some time.

I was pretty sure there were enough roots there for the tree to survive. I recut the side with no roots and added more rooting hormone with the hope of better luck next year. I guess I don't need to rotate it anymore :)

The tree seems to be doing well a month later. I hope it growth new roots this year.

Progress on a large Virginia Pine

This pine was collected in February 2013 and potted up with Russell Baggett in a box that he built for me. I think it was about 3 feet by 13 inches by 10 inches. The tree was growing on top of a crack on a rock and was really easy to lift out, but came with a long rootball.

The top two pictures are from August 2013 and March 2014. It spent about a year and a half in the box growing undisturbed with minimal pruning until...

The big bend!

In August 2014, Juan Andrade stopped by and we bent the pine in the section that was almost 2 inches thick. It took some preparation and I had a acquire a few tools, like the large jack, stainless wire, a steel rod. My band saw came in handy to cut a notch in the 2x4.

This is what it looked like before we started cranking.

After about a 30 degree bend the copper wire we were pulling with (#10) broke!

So we switched to stainless steel wire, but we did not want to take any more chances and use 10 loops of it. An overkill for sure.

At the end it was about a 90 degree bend. We stopped every few cranks on the jack and checked that the rig was ok and gave the tree a chance to adjust.

And then we pruned it. A lot.

I took the wire and the plastic rope off in September 2015, a year after we bent the trunk. I put a screw into the trunk and tied the top to the screw with stainless steel wire so that when I cut the pulling wires the tree did not spring back.

Then at the end of February 2016 my friend Carrie and I repotted the pine into a smaller (20x14x6) box. We worked just one side of the rootball and removed a big root. My plan is to start grafting it next year and repot again in two years working the other side of the root ball.
After then I can start working on the upper part of the tree. This is a long term project, but with collected material they are all long term.

PS. right after posting this story I got a Facebook reminder of the picture I posted on FB three years ago - and it this pine.