David was our guest speaker for the month of March. It was a surprise what he was going to work on for March. He had planned to work on a heavy branch bending on a california juniper. With the weather so hot so early in the season he changed his mind and brought in a San Jose juniper.
The San Jose juniper was a 15-20 year old plant that already had its first style years ago. David said that any tree can be a show tree within years if the tree is corrected any flaws early in the development.
David started to thin out the tree. He said that his sensei Kimura taught him to thin agressively on junipers and only leaving the strongest foilage to the end. The weaker foilage under the canopy will only weaken the tree more and thus removed to help strengthen tree.
So the picture above shows the thinning process with the strongest foilage at the very ends of the branches. David said to hide long branches with the tuff folage at the end. You will need to layer the branches on top of each other to have the illusion of a full canopy.
David also stated that we have to go back to bascis and wire, wire, wire. He illustrated how to wire by finger walking. Finger walking means the thumb and index finger supports the wire and branch and walks up the branch to the next location. In this technique speeds up wiring and also predicts the 45 degree angle because of the spacing the finger and thumb movement = 45 degree naturally.
The true master shows up (June!). June is the ninja master in the background that supports David. In her own right June is very good in bonsai and its like having two presenter at our meeting! So some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) came up: 1) What type of fertilizer do you use? A) slow release...because I'm too lazy. 2) How do you keep your hair so dark? A) slow release fertilizer....because....never really got the real answer.
Finished tree! and the winner!
FARN!!!!! This man is super lucky!
Thank you David and June Nguy for being our demostrator for the month of March. We hope you will visit us again soon!