Welcome to Appalachian bonsai. I'm sorry it's been so long. It's still gonna be a
while before I get some more videos up, but wanted to see if I can get this tree
filmed while I had just a moment of time. Virginia Tech of course is locked down
because of coronavirus, so we're having to teach online. So, I'm recording all my
lessons instead of recording bonsai trees. Anyway, this is a mugo pine. This
was given to me by Kathy Walton, and I'm going to be doing some redesign work on it.
It might be hard to see, but this large rock right here is kind of in the
way of this main branch, which you might be able to see right there. So what I'm
going to do [hush, Rocky! Rocky, hush!] is remove that. You can see right here that big
large void. The main root base is all just right here. This will be eventually
repotted too. There's this main branch on this side. It's very very low.
It's nice. It's a really nice branch by itself, but I don't like where it's
positioned on this tree. I would like to remove this. I'm going to remove this, and
in doing so I'm going to create a jin. But since I'm doing that it means
that this is gonna be a little lopsided and a little heavy on this side of the tree.
And it will be lighter on that side. So what I'm going to do is, I'm gonna reposition
this somewhere like that and rewire the branches down. Hopefully that'll give us
a really nice looking tree with this removed, which I think will make it
better in the future. I have a drawing of that which I'll share with you. Then
we will be able to see this tree in future videos.
So we went ahead and got this squared away. The tree actually looks pretty
good. I do have a dead branch up here which is about to be stripped clean.
That way we can see what this looks like in relation to the rest of the tree.
Now that that branch has gone though, we definitely have more space to work with in
here. There are some branches on this back side that are kind of running
parallel to each other. This one needs to be moved outward. I'm gonna try to
work that without breaking it. It is an older branch so I'll do the best I can.
Thankfully it's a mugo pine. It does bend, it is pretty flexible.
Some of these branches aren't doing so well, so I'm going to try to clean these up by
pruning this one back. I'm also going to try to look at these right here. This
branch, right here, is dead. I'll strip that off some and then see what else we've got.
Okay?
This is a little weird right here, these two spires. I kind of like the way
this curves around, but it's not matching together. They're kind of splayed out, so
I'm going to look at that for a minute and then probably just take that off.
Minute over. Maybe I can try that with some pliers and not do too much damage
on the tree itself. There we go. That worked.
So, there's plenty of work left to do on this tree but I am out of time for today.
I have to teach. I'm going to come back again tomorrow and hopefully the
weather is good. If not I may just keep working but we'll see.
Change of plans folks. I'm going to make a big adjustment. I'm looking at this tree,
this nice beautiful mugo. I'm trying to think in my head about how I
want to see this tree in the future, and I'm looking at all the different directional
lines. I have three main ones: I have this one here, I have this one here, and I have
this one back here. I've been debating and deciding which branches
to take off or leave on. This branch back here, it's got a couple of things
going on. What I don't like is that this is basically in the same horizontal plane as this.
It will adjust whenever I lift it upright, but even with lifting them up [let me
put this block underneath] even if they've been lifted up, something is
not perfect. I mean, there's nothing perfect, but it's still got some problems.
I can lift it up more extremely but still have some problems, especially with
this top line here coming up. If I look at it this way, I've got this branch
coming in this direction and then I have this top in this direction. You might get
a better view from there. This one here and this one here are parallel with each
other, which I could adjust by going up or down. But if these are coming down to
this position and this one goes up then there's a lot of space happening
right in here. I don't like that, but if I bring it down it's gonna be even more
weird with this branch. The reason is because this branch is kind of coming up a
little bit, this branch is kind of coming down, and they meet
together. And I don't like that. Here's another problem.
This front line is pretty much straight all the way through. And, it's not just
straight from this angle that you see here.
It's pretty straight from that angle there, and pretty straight from this angle there.
It's not very attractive. It's got a little movement here, granted. You know,
like, maybe I cut this off and leave this as a separate branch, which I'm
going to try. Or I might take the whole thing down to to a jin and just restyle
this to be like that. Maybe like [you might not see that] like this.
I'd have these branches coming down and around here and these branches coming down here.
I might leave this back section just to see what it looks like. If that turns
out to be good, great. If not, then I'll just take it down to a jin.
But I am going to remove this top. I might remove it completely.
This little branch right here is really kind of interesting. It's got some
nice curves and a nice taper coming all the way through the top. This right here is
still going to be straight as an arrow and I might be able to, I am going to
leave a section and carve it up to see what it looks like. But, I think this change in
direction here and back up again is going to be a nicer line for my jin.