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Fall Bonsai Intensive Boon's 2014

paulkellum
Oct 10, 2014
2 min read

So after a years worth of trips out to California I was on year two the travel side has gotten much easier and comfortable. I now fly into Oakland CA saves me some money and an hour on the Bart rail to get to the hotel.

I have to say this class was when things started to click much faster and the past concepts now made sense. I can finally see a game plan for wiring a branch and I look ahead to plan out what I am doing. I think before I act more and always ask what does this do for my goal. Not without mistakes but the idea about don’t act without knowing what its going to do or what your trying to accomplish.

I have made some great friends from the intensive classes and our trips the restaurants are always great bonding times with good people.

This class my first project was a field grown black pine basically just repotted last year and a little trimming so I wired it to give it an initial shape. It wasn't wired or styled before this. Only reason I say that is I see on forums that people are wiring little pine seedlings branches in place but haven't even grown the trunk, or a needle pulling on tree that isn't to this stage yet and I don't think they know why. The point is what I learned so graciously from Boon don't do something before you know why your doing it and what its going to achieve. This pine had a great shape and some branches would make it in final design but some where moved to get light in and with new buds we would have a new branch if not we graft a new one on.

The main tree I worked on this session was a juniper and it was fun. It pushed my comfort level at the time and introduced be to basic unsupervised carving. I think I made a 100 mistakes on this tree but with each one I learned. In the absence of repeating those mistakes I have grown to another level of understanding about bonsai in general.