I spent the entire day at Boons yeaterday, working on my sad little trees. I don't mean to make mine seem trivial, but when you see the class of trees everyone else is bringing in, I realize my trees have a long way to go. I spent the entire day wiring. Nothing but wiring-and it was great. At first, in the beginning of the day, I was taking a good deal of my wire off, and redoing it. Once you put wire on a branch, and realize it is not put on correctly, whether it was too tight, not anchored correctly, or just plain sloppy, you have to take it off, and it can't be reused. I had a contest with Janet, another club member who was sitting next to me, on who would fill the bucket with bad wiring quicker. I won, hands down. It was good practice, though, and by the end of the day, it was going on much better. Working there among the club members was wonderful, and everyone is really supportive, making a great teaching enviornment. Boon was his usual self, reaasuring, and very helpful. I got a handout on wiring, and went over it page by page with him-very helpful-I used the handout all day as a reference as I worked. By the end of the day, I had fiished the 5 trees I had brought, and went home satisfied that I had learned alot. Just as the front page of the handout had stated, "bonsai is wiring, and wiring is bonsai."
Did some work on the English oak, and also wired and got started a clump shimpaku I had for some time- I also have another one just like it that I will do the work on as practice, knowing my wiring skill is getting much better. Btw, took the top 1/3 off the oak in it's quest to become a better tree. The first pic is the tree in Jan 07, the second is how it looks today.