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_____________________________________This little beastie had been sitting outside in front of a table for the last 3 weeks. Slowly but surely it's leaves were starting to fall. It had been left for a year or so to do its own thing.
The group should be proud of what they achieved....the top of the trunk is dead and will need a bit of carving to be done at a later date. To date, the group had only really worked on smaller trees and it was interesting that they made the comment that it was easier to work on a larger one.
I figured I could take it along to the Gore Bonsai Club workshop on Sunday and get some work done on it. Might be good for some of the other members to work on a larger tree??
There was the odd look when I walked in with it...."what on earth are you going to do with that?" Little did they know that they would be answering that question themselves.
As there were only 5 of us there, we decided to work on this Dawn Redwood as a group. The leaves were taken off (most just fell off) and the bark was cleaned up. The colour of the trunk was quite amazing, a beautiful reddy brown colour.
Where do you start! We started by taking out all of the 3 D's - dead, diseased, damaged first. Then any branches that crossed and couldn't be wired into another area. We cut the top off as it was nearly 4 foot high.
I love this pic....it conveys the feeling of "holy heck...where do I start!" This was the ideal chance for some to practise their wiring skills. Some of the thick wire used was a bit of an overkill, but there were some quite stubborn branches.
Various ideas and opinions were tossed back and forwards - "take this branch off", "leave it on and shorten another one", "where should the front be?". If we'd all had the same tree to work on individually, each and every one would look totally different at the end. (Another idea for a workshop maybe)
The wee tree just kept getting smaller and smaller. Lots of wire was used. Pete gave one large awkward looking branch the chop!
The plain aluminium bonsai wire looks rather prominent and jumps up catches your eye waaay too much....a good reason to only use the brown coloured wire as it "blends in" a lot better.
We must do this again, it was fun working on a large tree together rather than everyone doing their own thing individually. I've been in the club for a few years now, and can't recall any of us doing that before. Roll on the next workshop!!
