SMALL TREES

Here are some pictures of the azalea that is supposed to be planted in the blueish pot next spring. I received the tree in 2005, one of about ten trees I bought from a former club member, who no longer had winter storage for his trees. It didn't, as you can see from the first picture, have many branches at that point. It had lost several important branches, and there are still ugly scars after those.

Autumn 2005

In 2006 I repotted the tree in kanuma, but didn't cut it back at all, I just tried to nurse it back to health. In 2007 it flowered with beautiful pink flowers and was after that cut back.

Summer 2007

The azalea was again repotted in 2008, in kanuma again. The pot from 2008 is utterly unsuitable, a terrible colour that would have fought against the colour of the flower in the most ugliest way, if the azalea had been allowed to flower. The pot in itself is not bad, it's a very good work by German bonsai pot artist Peter Krebs, the colour is lovely, and very well suited for an other tree. But at the time it was the only one in the right size I had available, so I decided to use it. It was cut back heavily in spring 2009, but has grown wild for the summer. It will be cut back again in 2010, and repotted. I hope to be able to cut the roots more in order to enable me to repot the tree deeper in the pot. I think flowers can be allowed in 2011. Right now it need everything to build new branches, not to produce flower buds.

Autumn 2009

Posted by Maud at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Up for show today are two new pots I received last week. Both pots are made by Andy Pearson in the UK, also known as the Stone Monkey, and one of my absolute favourite pot makers. I have some of his beautifully crafted pot, both with trees in them, and some still waiting for the right tree. The glaze on some of them is so beautiful you would just like to touch it and never put a tree in the pot, but when you do it, the pot rises to new heights and you realize it is the only right thing to do, to plant a tree in it.

The first pot is an oval greyish glazed pot, the size is about 21 cm x 19,5 cm. The pot is 4,5 cm deep and the height from feet to rim is 6 cm.

The second one is for my azalea that will need a new pot in the spring. The tree is right now going trough a quite heavy redesign, it had some ugly scars where the former owner had lost/cut some branches, but the root base is good and it has beautiful pinkish flowers. I ordered this blue pot with the azalea in mind, and I think it will suit the tree perfectly. There is a little pink under the blue, you can see it in the second picture. The pot is round, the diameter 17,5 cm, it's 4,5 cm deep and the height from feet to rim is 5,5 cm.

As you can see, all Andy's pots have plenty of holes for anchoring the tree, and good drainage. Andy is also a very nice fellow to deal with, answering his emails fast, and you have the pots in the mail almost as fast as you type paypal on you computer (I think my pots have always been mailed the next day from payment). Thank you Andy for your good service and lovely pots!

Posted by Maud at 09:29 AM | Permalink

A couple of years ago I bought a dwarf hosta. It sat untouched for two years on my bench, until I this year divided it into two plants, and planted them into this small pots. The soil is sifted plant soil, nothing fancy, but it has worked very well in the small pots. The green oval pot is a Japanese pot, size 9 cm x 6 cm x 3 cm, and the blue rectangular of unknown orign. I bought it in the 80's in Germany, and if it ever had a marking with the maker or country, it's long time ago gone. The size of the blue one is 10 cm x 7 cm x 3 cm.

The hosta flowered with beautiful lilac flowers. These pictures are taken in August, and today there are still flowers on them!

Posted by Maud at 03:53 PM | Permalink

After a longish pause I have decided to restart my bonsaiblog. I hope this will help me to document my work in a more consistent way and as a side effect I hope the blog will give inspiration to fellow Finnish bonsai enthusiasts. We are not that many up here in the north, and bonsai is not yet an advanced hobby for many. I'll put up some links in the sidebar to Finnish blogs I find worth a look at, and other places of interest for the Finnish enthusiast. The shops are the ones I have good experience of, those that have delivered their orders promptly, and with whom it has never been a problem to deal. I hope you too find their sites worth a visit. And I encourage you to take a look at the Finnish bonsai association Kitabis pages (so far only in Finnish). The members of Kitabi are gathering six to seven times a year in the Helsinki area, to talk over specific themes, and to work on different trees.

You might wonder about the language I have chosen for the blog. A Finnish bonsai blog written in English? The reason is simple, I think a lot more of my friends are able to read if I write in English. I have bonsai buddies who speak Finnish, Swedish, English and German. I find blogs written in several languages a bit hard to read, and, speaking out of experience, it takes a lot of time to write good blog texts in several languages. I myself is Swedish speaking, so Finnish wouldn't be my native tongue anyway.

When you read about my trees, take into consideration that I live in the south of Finland, zone 5 in Europe, and when looking at just Finland zone 1b. Here is a good climate zone map on Morten Albek's Shohin site. The climate in other parts of the country might require different time schedules (and those will vary from year to year too) and different measurements for for example winter shelters for the trees.

Then who am I? My name is Maud and I'm a mother of four teenagers and owner of two dogs. I take a deep interest in Japanese cooking, but Italian cooking is also close to my heart. A lot of my free time is dedicated to my dogs and work for their breed club, where I function as secretary. I'm lucky enough to live in a house with plenty of winter storage space suitable for trees in the cellar and a with Finnish city standards taken quite big garden. I have been interested in bonsai since the mid 80's when I came into contact with bonsai while living in Munich, Germany. I have been an active enthusiast since the beginning of this century, and I have visited several big bonsai shows in order to see and learn more than what is possible in this country. Right now I have between forty and fifty trees, most of them native Finnish trees, but also a lot of Japanese maples and other more sensitive trees.

Well, I hope you find interest in my site and will return again! Until then, bye!

Posted by Maud at 10:01 AM | Permalink