Practicing My Bonsai Wiring Skills

It’s getting busy around here. We have new stock arriving every week, at this time of year it’s mostly what we call ‘dry goods’ like pots, tools etc’. Whilst it’s not as exciting as getting a lorry load of beautiful trees it all still has to be dealt with. Last week I spent over 60 hours sitting in front of my Mac listing bonsai pots…. joy. By way of a little relief I was popping outside from time to time and practicing my bonsai wiring skills.

I buy a lot of untrained material. It represents good value and people like it. However sometimes I cock it up and buy something that, whilst I might think is beautiful, fails to find a new home even at half price. In that case I have no option but to whip it into shape. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. Strangely every time I do this I start getting offers of a sale. However I usually end up keeping the tree because I like what I do, some times.

I bought this very unusual sabina juniper a couple of years ago. It had been kept under automatic watering and thanks to that and too much fertiliser the foliage had become long and floppy. I figured such an amazing tree would sell quickly and so did nothing with it. I was wrong and it’s still here. The foliage is beginning to get back to normal but still needs a couple of years.

In the summer my good friend Albie wanted some work to do so I set him up cleaning the trees extensive shari and deadwood. After a couple of days he began to uncover the trees very beautiful appearance and at that point I knew it meant I would be practicing my wiring skills down the road.

So here it is, a rule breaking juniper. It’s first work so cut us some slack and no it’s not for sale anymore.