My Golden Cedar Bonsai Needs a Bit of a Thin Out

I decided to have a bit of a break from gardening and making pots a few weeks ago.(Nov 2014)

My Golden Cedar needed some of the foliage thinned out a bit.  Well actually, more than a bit.  The moss seems to have taken hold on most of the branches and branchlets.  Very little light was getting into some areas as the foliage was that thick.

It would only be a matter of time before some would get smothered and start to die off.  Truth be told, it should have been done last year.

As usual I'd already started before deciding to grab the camera.



 Its a little hard to see the silhouette of this cedar.  She is really quite wide at the moment. After struggling with the near drought conditions last year I just let it grow without nipping off or thinning any growth at all.

She is looking really healthy now, but all of the foliage is getting quite congested and untidy.  I started by thinning out the foliage quite a bit.  Very time consuming and slow work, as I was rubbing the moss off at the same time. 

 I probably  took a little too much off, but I'm in no doubt that by the end of summer (if we ever get one) it will have filled out again with just as much foliage.

 The foliage then really needed to be wired into the correct position.  However little wiring is done with this cedar as usually shaping is done mostly by pruning.

 This is the tree after I'd finished with it.  The trunk and branch structure is a little more clearer and there's plenty of room for the sun to get into most of the foliage.  The pot is way to big for it, but its the healthiest its ever been since it was potted into it 5 years ago.  Best to have a healthy tree in the wrong pot, than a sick tree in a "correct" pot!

Half a bucket later.....



Its usually a much brighter golden colour at this time of year, but because of a lack of sunshine over the spring it really hasn't coloured up as much.

She is one of my favourite trees. I salvaged her from a rubbish heap at the nursery I worked at as an apprentice many(many many) years ago.  I was just 17 at the time.  We've been though thick and thin together, sometimes I thought it was on its way out, but then it would spring back into life. 

30+ years later.....and we are still together! 

The Glaze was a bit Runny On These Bonsai Pots

Now, don't go getting the idea I have failures all the time!  Mostly things do go to plan.

It's just I'm one of few that will admit to them publicly, hoping that by sharing my mistakes/failures that someone else will learn from them.

Some potters give you the impression that everything they make is perfect, all the time, it's so not true.

My latest excitement came when I opened up the glaze firing yesterday and had another ooops moment. 

There was only a few inches of glaze left in the bucket.  It was a little thick, but I thought it would be ok.  I've put it on a little thinly in the past and ended up with a disappointing glaze colour.

This time it went on too thickly.  When the glaze melted in the high firing kiln, it decided to run off the side of the saucer and pool around the bottom.  It didn't look to bad at first glance until I went to lift it off.

There was plenty of silica sand as well as kiln wash on the shelf and it managed to stick to both layers....it wouldn't budge.  So with a bit of a yank, it lifted off.  Unfortunately the pooled areas stayed on the shelf, not the saucer.

The glaze colour was quite beautiful though, there was pinky coloured crystals on the thick area inside the saucer.  

 This saucer is ruined.  On the next shelf down the same thing had happened to a small bonsai pot.  It too pooled on the bottom of the pot.  To selvage this pot will take a lot of grinding, hardly worth it I suspect.

 

 The glaze, silica sand and the kiln wash all came off with this one.

 My daughter and her friend made a couple of wee pots and I also glazed them with the same colour.  Although I did put these on a bit of broken kiln shelf just in case. They stuck as well. 

Of interest is the fact that they all ran on the white clay.  The one heavily grogged clay pot didn't have any runs at all on it.  Which makes me wonder if the white clay body had a flux that reacted with the ingredients in the glaze to make it run a little more than usual.  Could be a combination of both I suppose. 

I must make a note of that for the next batch of glaze that needs to be made.  Along with all the "extras" I've put in that weren't in the original recipe.  I'm sure there's a note somewhere, just got to find it.