Archive for December, 2008


Mother Natures Fury

While Mother Nature is a beautiful thing , unseasonal summer storms are very unpredictable and capable of unlashing their fury in the most unexpected times . A hail storm dumped 20mm hail on my place and in 10 minutes it done quite a bit of damage to most of the trees that were out in the open . Stipping foliage , new shoots and small branches off all but a few sheltered under shade sails . I do have a number of trees sculptured by nature and the wildlife in the area including Kangaroo’s in my backyard , this sort of hammering by hail doesn’t do justice to my hard work , i have decided to cover all the Bonsai garden with Sails and Shade Cloth mainly due to the fact the climate changes are quite severe and unpridictable . I recall a hail storm with golf-ball size hail completely stripping a Trident Maple and ripping branches and bark off , my car was in the driveway and it copped a beating on the top panels . Keeping busy fertilizing with a slow release fertilizer and repositioning some trees that have been damaged .

My Passion At Home

This is a small part of my collection of Bonsai ,Semi Trained Trees and collected both nursery stock ,from my own garden and Yamadori collected over a decade and more . Bonsai is more than my passion its an obsession to produce the altimate tree . No not all Bonsaist are obsessed with their trees my hobby has far more appeal than motorcycles which i have had a long association with having owned 72 motorcycles which included several Triumph Flat tankers 1916-1927 To old to ride and carrying to many injuries form my youth , Bonsai is slow and steady with fantastic individual results .

This is a Pinus Nigra “Austrian Black Pine ” collected from the wild 8 years ago . I spotted 2 of these Pines in a plantation of Monterey’s , they were self sow from a nearby test plot . Seeking the land owners permission , i set about trimming and root cutting over a 2 year period . I eventually removed both trees , standing 2.1m high and potted them into Large timber training boxes . Sadly but not unexpected only one survived due to the poor rootball that failed to cope with the transplant . I kept the tree as a large informal upright for several years to promote growth and as a feature tree to the front of the house . I had many comment from locals about this tree . With more than 120 Bonsai scattered around the yard i chose to take a radical approach to the design and contort the trunk down to reduce the overall height . Using rachet tiedowns and good old truckies knots i began to bend and contort the trunk with no lenght reduction to the tree. The “Bonsai in traning” now sits in a extra large tray 800mm x 500mm and has a height of a mere 500mm with a width of 800mm . further reduction in height will continue and the Bonsai will be rotated 45 degree in both side and back directions to the present position and twisted / contorted sidways as it lacks 3 dimesions in the trunk