CLUB MEETING MAY 16

Our Club Meeting had a smaller attendence this month than normal. We did have three new faces thanks to our Santa Maria Town Center Bonsai show last month. Here are some snap shots of the meeting. CLICK on images to enlarge.

SANTA MARIA TOWN CENTER BONSAI SHOW

Sunday April 25 the Santa Maria Bonsai Club had our annual Town Center Bonsai Show. These shows provide our club members with an opportunity to share their enthusiasm for the art of bonsai with the community. I believe the show was successful with relatively good attendance and much interest in the displays. There was some serious interests expressed in our club. The following photos are just a small sample of some of the trees on display.
CLICK on any image to enlarge.


Shimpaku cascade


Chinese elm forest


Ficus

Chinese elm forest

Chinese elm informal upright

Foemina juniper forest

****** BONSAI DEMONSTRATION ******

Our bonsai demonstration is always a big draw, and our father and son team did a terrific job. Kanemi and George are both bonsai instructors, and are past and present club presidents.
The tree selected for the demo is a San Jose juniper that had been trained as a vertical topiary with three balls of vegetation.


Kanemi is studying the tree to determine how he will style it.

George is explaining the process and fielding questions from the audience.

Here Kanemi forms new apex for tree. The top of the tree has been striped of bark and tapered to form a jin. This makes the tree appear more tapered and makes it look much older.

Here he has wired the major branches to allow the branch direction to be modified.

Now the roots get pruned. You should remove approximately the same percentage of the roots as the percentage of top growth you have removed.

Finally the tree is potted.

SPLITTING A JUNIPER

CLICK any images to enlarge. CLICK back arrow to return.

Our February club meeting was held at Ann's house where she demonstrated the splitting of a collected split trunk juniper specimen. The right trunk is quite long but has some interesting movement in the upper half. She wanted her tree base to be just above her shoulder (in the picture above). This could be done by air layering. Or you could keep the live vein and coil it to fit inside the pot. Executing this second method is Ann's goal for this demonstration. She will need to preserve this live vein, hollow out as much wood as possible, wrap it in raffia, coil the vein, and bury it in the training pot. Ann wants to make this into a bunjin style bonsai. Bunjin is a difficult style to define but most know one when they see one. Through the wonders of the Internet I will let John Naka define Bunjin .


Ann is careful to maintain the live veins for both trunks as she splits the root ball. Sawsalls are not just for cutting studs in a wall.


And some serious chisel work, all ways preserving as many roots as possible.


There was a lot of rotted wood between the two trunks. You can now see the split is nearly complete. But the big block of wood under the right trunk needs to be removed.


The Bunjin is free at last!


The main trunk is now back in the pot.



Ann begins cutting wood out of the live vein starting near where the base of her Bunjin will be. This vein must be thin enough to allow it t0 be coiled into the pot.



Here we see the root ball.
I will update this post if Ann gets some pictures of the raffia and potting.