Japanese Black Pine Styling: #2
Here’s another Japanese Black Pine with major choices ahead. Let’s take a look. A scruffy little Black Pine with a few promising lower branches and a lot of nothing halfway up. After several initial cuts the pine is half the size. The top came back hard, and the two lowest branches were shortened. A slight […]
Japanese Black Pine Styling: #1
Last week we took a look at this leggy Black Pine. The pine reminded me of a crane. Taking off with its long neck stretched out. It won’t be a good bonsai with such wings. So they need to be tucked in. And that neck is overlong. Nice bark on this one. Maybe 35 years […]
How Kaizen May Be Applied To Bonsai
In the 1930’s engineer Walter Shewhart developed the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle of work. This inspired Taiichi Ohno in the late 1940’s with the idea of kaizen, a manufacturing mindset of continual, incremental improvements. It is credited with the success of Toyota. Now the concept is used in many businesses. The word has two parts, kai […]
2025 Blooper Reel
To continue with tradition, here is the year’s photographic odds and ends. Hope you enjoy. It’s always best to start things off with a chicken, if you have one. This one was drinking water drops off my glass doors. Your normal prop for photographing bonsai. At a Chicago restaurant that specialized in vegan sushi. The […]
How To Decide The Height Of A Bonsai
A reader asked for an explanation of this sentence from a previous post: “With any tree, thick trunk or thin, follow the taper of the trunk and where the two lines of the sides meet, that’s roughly where your tree should end.“ I admit that wasn’t easy to follow. I often say something like that […]
Fall Work On Satsuki Azalea
You wouldn’t think Japanese Black Pine and Satsuki Azalea are similar in any way. And yet the common techniques for Black Pine and Satsuki are mirrors. In spring we trim the new growth. In fall we simplify the robust summer regrowth. Both strong plants, under normal care and reasonably happy Black Pine and Satsuki will […]
Formal Upright White-out Exercise: Part III
Our formal upright design series wraps this week with comments on each of the 9 remaining design options. To orient again around the options, here’s Joe’s thumbnail layout. 7 was covered at length in Part II. 1. This option has one problem that is mostly a problem of position: the bar branch indicated by the […]
Formal Upright White-out Exercise: Part II
Part I was a white-out exercise with an Ezo Spruce, asking, which branches would you cut off, if any? Thanks to all of you who offered your favorite options. It’s a complicated tree with a lot of possibility and many good options. My students in a recent Seasonal class gave the 10 options on that […]
Formal Upright White-out Exercise: Part I
A white-out exercise is a fun way to explore design options. It helps see a new design without needing to cut off a branch. This Ezo Spruce was designed in 2016 and has since filled out. It’s a skinny-trunked tree, and now there’s enough foliage mass that the design might be improved by cutting off […]
October Bonsai Projects
Here’s a handful of October projects and what we did with them. A Vine Maple that has variously been called “The Boot” and “The Moose”. The current puzzle with this collected tree is that from the side, it has grown too much to the front. Where to cut it? One chunky branch to remove. And […]
