Crataegus Bonsai: Round Two

Well it’s only been a few months now since we returned from our second seasonal at Crataegus Bonsai with Michael Hagedorn, so… I figure it’s time to post. I apologize for the long break. In fairness though, my wife and I have been fighting with internet providers for months now. But after going through several providers I think we’re finally on track with consistent service.

This time we took a few trees along with hopes that we could make the trip more affordable. It worked too! We were able to do a bit of trading and selling that paid for much of the trip. Thanks to everyone who bought and traded with us! (ps- If you bought a tree from us we’d love to hear from you and keep in touch.)

Now to the class: We had a great time as always. Howard, one of Michaels veteran students was great fun to study with, and he’s quite talented! And Bobby, Michaels apprentice, was also great and incredibly helpful. As usual there was plenty of hands on training. We started with styling a limber pine that Steve and I’d repotted in the first seasonal.

Next, several raw trees were brought in to the workshop for debate on inclination and front possibilities. And then the fun began; juniper prep work and wiring. The prep work involved cleaning bark off, cleaning the dead wood (with a cool water pick contraption!), lime “sulfer-ing” (I might have made that word up…lol), and thinning foliage. We wired about as much as we chop sticked in the first seasonal. Well… maybe not that much, but we did several wiring exercises as well as wiring the trees for styling in class. Steve and I took turns working on a Rocky Mountain Juniper that we decided to make into a cascade style tree.

The last afternoon of our class was spent setting up different displays with several of Michaels trees and accents. He brought several stands and slabs out allowing us to play with different set ups.

Here are a few more pictures from Michaels collection, including a couple of grafted ponderosa pines; one with Japanese Black Pine and the other with Japanese Red Pine.