It's been a busy week that pasted. Not must happened in my bonsai garden. As you know it is autumn in the Western Cape and with that rain we get our fair share of storms. The past week I was away from home on business attending a conference. My wife had to take over the reins and was in charge of caring for my bonsai collection. I always feel guilty leaving her with all the trees especially in winter as the water routine is much different than in the summer.
I completely removed my shading nets from my bonsai garden. This allows more sunlight to enter the bonsai garden and trees get more water from the rain.There are one or two that need to be watered even if it rains at the water does not reach the containers. This is why I hate leaving my wife to look after the trees. She needs to look at all the containers and check the soil mixtures to see if they have receive enough water.
With rain come wind in the Cape. That's why it is called the Cape of storms. As you can see in the feature photo the wind has torn of a few branches from the Jacaranda trees that line our street. I think it is one of the few places that has this amount of Jacarandas besides Pretoria. Jacaranda trees are strong but their older branches tend to be brittle. When the wind blows at 24 kilometers an hour for a few hours on end branches flight around everywhere. This normally happens as the sun sets. As the sun rises the next morning you can see the the aftermath of the gentle storm.
As you can see in the photos above my garden is very wet. Most of the deciduous trees I have has thrown of their leaves or has changed color. I will be spending most my time cleaning my garden and removing dead leaves and pulling out weeds. This is a perfect breeding ground for fungi an pests. I will be dealing with Mealybugs and snails mostly over the winter so I will be apply Oleum and spreading snailban throughout my garden.
Saturday morning at 06:35 I received a sms from Master Voges telling me that he will be available for me to come throught to talk about the new tree I bought on auction last week and a Pine I styled awhile back.
So I replied and said that I would be at his place by 14:00 as this was the time that he said he will be available. I loaded my tree and tools as well as my turn table. I like using my on tools when working on bonsai. I know where the limits are and my tools just feel more comfortable in my hands. I unloaded my trees and tools expecting to work as usual. Normally I would arrive at the bonsai gardens of Master Voges by 08:00 and leave by 17:00 spending a lot of time wiring trees, pruning or trimming hedges. Must say trimming hedges and full grown trees in a garden is a heck of a job and is very demotivating. I did this for a few months before I had the opportunity to work on bonsai trees.
Any how! Saturday I spent a full three hours from 14:00 till 17:00 inside his house catching up. I have been away for almost 3 months, due to work and other commitments. I was amazed at the amount of time we spent talking about my trees and trees that he just took out of the ground and moved into training pots. It was the first time I was asked to give input on a tree that he was going to style. He asked me what I thought the front of the tree was and why? He then looked at my trees and gave his opinions. The Stone pine I styled gave a good impressing of the skills that I learned over the last year that I was apprenticing with Master Voges. He only mentioned one thing that he would have done differently. For me that says a lot.
I left filled with gratitude and new hope in my skills. Although the day did not turn out as I expected I still learned a lot. Not everything with bonsai is about working on trees and developing skills. I have met a lot of good friends and other like minded people that shares the passion of bonsai. By spending time with these people you get inspired to be better and more creative thoughts gets stirred in you.
Thank you for reading this blog. Hope you enjoyed it. Please feel free to leave your comments below.
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