President Roger Gaede opened the October meeting at 7:30 . Approximately 28 members attended including new member Georgian Granczyk. She took a bonsai class from Connie Bailie and after attending the August show made a decision to join. Welcome, Georgian.
Paul Kulesa reported the status of the nominating committees efforts to complete a slate for the 2005 AABS board and elections to be held in November. Hugh Danville accepted a nomination for show chair, a position he has held for the past two years. Arnold Winblad is willing to be considered for the open Director's position, and Bill Cavers for the publicity seat he held last year. At the time of the meeting, there were five positions open for nominees: president, vice-president/program chair, treasurer, recording secretary and librarian. Paul encouraged members to consider volunteering for positions to help the club continue to function and grow in the coming year.
Kathy Powell reminded members that the annual pot luck is on Monday November 22nd with the buffet style meal starting at 6:30 p.m. She asked that members bring friends and family, a dish to pass, a serving utensil if needed, and a wrapped bonsai related gift with a value of $10 or less if they wished to participate in a gift exchange. Anyone willing to help with set up was asked to come around 5:30 p.m. Connie Bailie offered to arrange for the conservatory to be opened once more to allow members a glimpse of the gardens by night.
Bill Heston informed us that Michael Palmer, a horticulturalist at MBG, had propagated several porcelain berries and was offering ones for sale similar to a sample he left for sale at the meeting. Members wishing to purchase them at $7.00 were advised to call Michael at the gardens.
He passed around information about Mollie Hallar of Grand Rapids new bonsai related supply business and website at www.basicallybonsai.com .
Bill announced that Doug Hawley of Cincinnati would likely head a program early next year and that a bonsai artist from Italy would be presenting a program and workshop on special dates to meet his travel schedule in April 2005.
Lois Vorrath brought a twin trunk maple in fall color and Jack Wikle brought a crabapple that had held onto its fruit, if not its leaves. He also gave away a dwarf orange cutting donated by a friend.
Cyril Grum brought a genetic dwarf gingko that had turned golden yellow. Robert Bryant announced pictures of trees on display at the August show can be viewed through the AABS website courtesy of our webmaster Jarrett Knyal. So, you may be able to see Cyril's gingko in its summer foliage on-line.
Dean is convinced that "root rot" is not caused by too much water, but by "underaeration". When the air space between soil particles is moisture-filled for long periods, roots suffer. Dean has found that even when a pot seems dry on the top, there can be a lot of excess water near the bottom.
His remedy involves thick strings cut from rayon mop heads he buys at a local hardware store. To prevent or cure this problem and keep bonsai healthy, Dean uses the strands as wicks to draw moisture from the area and rescue smothered roots. Dean demonstrated inserting a rayon wick into a drainage hole in several potted bonsai. The bonsai did not appear or feel overly watered. He elevated the pots on supports and let the wicks hang over a plastic cup. Within seconds, water began traveling through the wicks and dripping into the cups.
The size of the pot, species of the tree, and length of the wick are factors Dean uses to monitor and control moisture levels in his trees. In the winter, for example, tropicals brought indoors are not actively growing and it's easy to over-saturate them. Even during the peak growing season, Dean uses wicks to maintain healthy roots and help him judge when and how much to water his bonsai.
He also recommends using the rayon technique on a tree that cant be repotted because its too late in the growing cycle to do so safely. The extra breathing room created by the wick helps the tree survive until next season. He explained that except for hinoki cypress, most trees dont do well with wet feet because their roots dont get adequate air.
Dean also talked about how he uses sandblasting, instead of mechanical tools, to shape deadwood, much like wind would naturally carve a trunk or branch. He had lots of tools, though, to carve wood-- some of which he made himself from pliers, hemostats and damaged bonsai tools. He let members try out one of his favoritesa power electric chisel that is light, easy to use, and has changeable carving tool heads.
In addition to sharing information about materials to help maintain and style trees, Dean showed how several of his bonsai evolved. He kept photos to document choices he made over the years and the results. He also took pictures of trees in nature to help understand how and why trees develop in certain ways so he could apply the same principles in bonsai.
For example, Dean passed around photos he had taken of full sized apple trees. He saw a pattern in the trees of bowed branches. He observed that new branch spikes on an apple tree tend to grow straight up and then bend over like fishing poles with the weight of apples.
Over time, the weight of the apples shapes the branches into a bow. He replicated the look in a bonsai apple tree by bending new branches in June with the shoots are small and pliable into the same bowed shape so his tree could better mirror the natural growth tendencies of wild apple trees.
Thanks, Dean, for wrapping up the AABS program year with a wick-ed good presentation.
Kathy Powell, Recording Secretary.
return
to top
Members old and new are encouraged to bring families, friends and food for the annual pot-luck. This last, and only social meeting of the year, will be held at the MBG in our usual meeting room on Monday, November 22. The buffet style meal will start at 6:30 . The AABS will supply a ham, beverages, and tableware. Please bring a dish to share and a serving utensil if needed.
We hope members will enjoy a chance to relax, enjoy some good conversation and food and maybe a surprise or two. Members, who wish to participate in a gift exchange to kick off the Holiday Season, please bring a wrapped item, preferably bonsai related, with a value of $10 or less.
by Chuck Omer
After spending nearly five enjoyable years in Ann Arbor as a member of AABS, I moved to the Boston area this year. With a (very) little prodding from your new newsletter editor, Robert Bryant, I'm writing to give you a bonsai view of the east coast from the eyes of a native Michigander.
The first thing is to describe moving a bonsai collection 800 miles. This is not an adventure for the faint at heart or those with a weak back. While most of my trees are not nearly as large, or as nice, as those of Bruce Baker, when you put them all in one spot they take up a lot of space. I moved my collection to Michigan from Pennsylvania in 1999 and learned a number of lessons from both moves that I'll pass along.
First, don't move anything that you don't really want. I culled a number of trees from my collection both times before moving. Next was figuring how to get my trees safely stowed for the ride to Boston . I used some big pieces of wood layed on the floor of the truck to make a gridwork that prevented the pots from sliding around and crashing into one another. I also put one of my benches in the truck to keep some large cascade trees from breaking their descending branches. The pots of those trees were carefully wired to the benches. Much of the work of loading the trees into the truck was done by a friend and my very helpful wife due to a bout of the flu or dehydration that (conveniently?) hit me.
By the next afternoon, however, I was well enough to start the trip with the company of my daughter Meredith. The first night we made it an hour beyond Buffalo , New York after taking Meredith to Niagara Falls . The next afternoon we arrived at our temporary apartment in Waltham , MA just outside of Boston . Despite the warm weather typical of June, all the trees were fine and no pots were damaged. Our apartment had a large fenced in patio that readily accomodated my trees and the house plants that I brought. So far, so good. The summer was relatively cool in New England this year, so my trees did surprisingly well. Even when we went on a week's vacation, we were able to find a neighbor to do the watering.
Once our house in Acton , MA was built in September, I gradually moved my trees there with few problems. Now the challenge was to figure out what I would need to do to winter my trees. Acton is in zone 6, somewhat warmer than Ann Arbor , but not as warm as the Philadelphia area where I used to live. While I probably could just place mulch around the pots and cover the trees with my benches surrounded with burlap (that worked fine in PA), I was concerned about the numerous below zero days without snow that occured in this area last year. That was very unusual, but potentially disastrous for my trees. I ended up digging a 4' x 8' pit beneath the deck on a slope behind our house. It's 3 feet deep at the upper end and 2 feet deep at the lower end. The cascade bonsai that I mentioned earlier will go in the garage along with one juniper that is too tall to get into the pit. As I write this in mid-November, it's finally getting cold. We didnt have a hard frost until the end of the first week in November, but this morning there is 4-6" of snow on the ground. I quickly moved most of my trees into the pit a couple of days ago when it was predicted to get down into the teens. This weekend, if the snow melts, I plan to water all trees thoroughly with some fungicide in the water and spray with insecticide. I also hope to use a dormant spray, but that may have to wait a few days. The trees will go back into the pit along with a mulch covering for the pots. The larches that I have will be put in an area exposed to cold, but protected from wind with their pots covered in mulch.
One of the very nice features of the Boston area is that there are three commercial bonsai nurseries within a 45 minute drive of our house. One is only 10 minutes away! I've seen some very nice bonsai and prebonsai since being here. In fact a deciduous holly with an approximately 8 inch diameter trunk at the base has mysteriously appeared in my collection. It needs some work on the branches, but I think I can do something about that over the next few years.
Last week Cyril Grum was in Boston and I took the opportunity to give him a tour of a couple of the nurseries. It was a convenient excuse to spend a beautiful Sunday looking at trees and talking with a great guy (Cyril). While I have yet to join a new bonsai club, there are two in the Boston area. Unfortunately, both are significantly further away than AABS was when I was in Michigan . I'm still looking for a closer club, but may end up driving a bit if that does not happen.
Another nice aspect of this area is the beautiful wooded, rocky countryside. We have 50'+ white pines and 30-40' tall oaks and birches around our house. So far I haven't found much to collect, but the constant view of mature trees both in the neighborhood and on the drive to work are always giving me design ideas. Overall, while we all miss Annm Arbor, we are settling into Acton and the Boston area. Hopefully my trees will like their new environment. I'll let you know next year.
Jerry Mieslik, now living in Montana , is
a well known AABS life member who has a long time interest
in tropical bonsai. Jerry has published a new book Ficus:
The Exotic Bonsai.
Signed copies of the book are available for $32.25 + $4.70
for shipping. Write to Devonshire Gardens Ltd., 161 Ridge
Run Drive , Whitefish , MT 59937 USA . More information
about the book is also available at www.bonsaihunk.8m.com
Send new memberships to:
Tamara
Milostan
4228 Highcrest
Brighton, Michigan 48116
Make
check out to Ann Arbor Bonsai Society
Dues
are $25
AABS EXECUTIVE BOARD
President: Roger Gaede (517) 5922249
VicePresident & Program Chair: Bill Heston (734)
6628699
Corresponding Secretary: Chuck Omer (734) 9964508
Recording Secretary: Kathy Powell (810) 2312782
Publicity Chair: Bill Cavers (734) 9964508
Treasurers: Tamara Milostan (810) 2296355
Librarian: Bob Thatcher (313) 8395815
Past President: Connie Bailie (734) 7476493
Director for 2004: Cyril Grum (734) 9959828
Director 2004: Dustin Mann (734) 4249979
Show Chair: Hugh Danville (313) 4557922
Pete
Douglas (313) 8678644
return
to top
AABS AD HOC COMMITTEES
Auction Chair: TBD
Membership Chair: TBD
Show Chair: Hugh Danville, Pete Douglas
Members: Paul Kulesa, show staging,
John Parks, demonstrations
Chris Burnett, Raffles
Harry Gable, Refreshments Chair
Ways
and Means Chair: Chuck Omer, Bill Powell
Web Master: Jarrett Knyal (webmaster@annarborbonsaisociety.org)
return to top
|
|
by Jack Wikle
Get some wire and experiment. If you are wary of wiring your bonsai, try branches from your yard. Dont wait until you are sure you can do it right. Those were the first three sentences of the Thoughts on Bonsai Wiring handout I distributed at our March '02 AABS meeting. At that time I also made the point that bonsai wiring, like driving a car, is not an activity one becomes comfortable with by watching someone else do it. (If you didn't get the Wikle '02 wiring handout, check with me at our upcoming meeting. I'll have extras available.)
Now here are some additions I would make if I were rewriting the '02 material today:
I wrote, Imagine coiling a garden hose. Your goal is to wrap the branch without putting pressure on its bark. So you are trying to put a curve into the wire --- by giving it a slight twist as you work --- before it makes contact with the branch.
Perhaps it would be better to say that as you wrap the wire, you are pushing it slightly away from you (back toward the base of the branch being wired) and you are rotating it (twisting it clockwise if wiring clockwise or twisting it counterclockwise if wiring counterclockwise) at the same time. If you find this twisting or rotation of the wire difficult to visualize, try imagining the unused wire as a snake with a long, narrow stripe running the length of its back. Then realize that what you do with the wire as you wrap it is like twisting the snake so that its stripe becomes a spiraling line.
I wrote, When spiraling wire up a trunk or out a main branch, being consistent in passing the wrap always slightly above or slightly below every lateral branch large enough to be wired will make it much easier to add the smaller [later] wires --- parallel to the large wire --- and run them out the laterals without a lot of crossing wires.
Now I would say that the best target in applying "passing" wire (wire continuing along the trunk or parent branch past a branch that will be wired later with another wire) is that it should "pass" the branch on the surface of the trunk directly opposite the branch location.
Experiment a bit with this approach using a branched stick from your landscape and you will discover that it gives the wirer great freedom. A secondary wire wrapped parallel to the passing wire can easily be wrapped around the passed branch either clockwise or counterclockwise. The wirer can choose wrapping direction depending on the direction the branch is to be moved.
I wrote, Don't be intimidated by absolute-sounding angle of wire application guidelines. Tightly laid wraps, each loop lying against its predecessor, are obviously undesirable for a lot of reasons. Straight wire lying along the branch without passing around it won't work either. So, it's something between these extremes that will work. And I quoted Kathy Shaner,
"
Good wiring in Japan is not 45 degrees, it's a much broader angle, about 60 degrees.
Today I would add David De Groot's observation that a wiring "pitch" (distance between wraps) of three to four times the diameter of the branch being wired works well. This guideline seems right on target.
I wrote, Whether the spiraled wire is wrapped to the left or to the right makes no difference if the branch will not be twisted --- or pulled --- left or right. If twisting is likely, wrap the wire in the direction the branch will be twisted so the wire will tighten rather than loosen when the twisting takes place.
Not long after writing that paragraph, I paid a Japanese lady to translate an interesting looking wiring article from a Japanese bonsai magazine (Bonsai-Shunju, December 1991). In that article the principle points made concerned the wiring of branch forks and a guideline was offered that I can't remember ever seeing expressed well in American bonsai literature. The suggestion was that in wiring a branch that you will be moving ("swinging") one direction or another, your work will be easier and more effective if the wire is wrapped in the direction that is opposite to the direction the branch will be moved. Simply stated, spiral the wire to the left to swing the branch right, and spiral the wire to the right to swing the branch left. The effect of doing this is that the wire tightens rather than loosens as the branch is repositioned. Confused? Find two similar sticks. Wire one wrapping clockwise and the other counterclockwise. Confirm for yourself that these two wraps are fundamentally different. Though this is counterintuitive for many of us, there is no way these wired sticks can be made to match by rolling one over or flipping one to switch its ends. Now, experiment in bending your wired sticks. You will find yourself almost instinctively twisting each stick as you bend it and you will twist in the direction the wire is wrapped - the direction that tightens the wire and swings the free end of the stick away from the wiring direction. Actually, if your wire is thick enough and your stick is long enough and thin enough, you will find that more and more bending tends to force it into a pig's-tail-like spiral. (Imagine yourself using wire to put the twists in real pig's tails. You would wrap clockwise produce a clockwise spiral and wrap counterclockwise to achieve a counterclockwise spiral, wouldn't you?)
Going back now, even though bending away from the direction the wire is wrapped, when carried far enough, results in a spiral, it is the first movement away from the wrap direction that is the basis for the simple guidelines, "wrap right to swing left" and "wrap left to swing right." Find a branched stick and experiment with these guidelines in mind. Better yet, work on several branched sticks shaping them into pleasing tree forms. Now try this on a bonsai. This kind of wiring not only gives good control it looks nice too.
One of the sketches in the '02 handout illustrated a useful technique I called "frog legs" wire application. The concepts that I am adding here will become much more meaningful to the reader who takes time to get a forked stick and wire it as diagrammed. Holding the fork horizontal after wiring it as illustrated, with the "bridging" wire below the parent branch, you will find that rotating each "leg" in the direction its wire is wrapped -- the "legs" can be swung upward and outward very comfortably with good control. Now, flip the fork so the bridging wire passes above the parent branch and you will discover that twisting the legs now in the direction the wire is wrapped swings the legs downward and together with good control. So! The guideline here is to begin with the bridging wire under to swing the legs up and out, and begin with the bridging wire over to swing the legs down and in. Prove this to yourself.
Another illustration in the '02 handout showed a way of wiring down two branches adjacent on a trunk without passing the wire around the trunk.Notice how much this is like the frog leg wiring and that the guideline of passing the bridging wire over the branches to swing them down and together, or under if you want to swing them up and out still applies.
Here is one more interesting wiring variation useful in lowering isolated small branches growing from thick trunks. Notice that to be effective the "buttress" wire has to go up, away from the direction of the branch bend. Of course, the buttress wire would be directed down if the need was to lift the branch up.
Actually, it is my impression that many - probably most - of the really proficient bonsai wirers follow these guidelines without any need to put them into words. They rely instead on sound instincts acquired through lots of practice. The goal here is to help those who don't have these instincts make their own practice more productive by being aware of these ideas.
Please
send articles, anecdotes, information, announcements,
quotes, artwork or anything else of interest to club
members to:
Robert Bryant, 30685 Rushmore Circle , Franklin Village MI 48025, brybon_2004@sbcglobal.net or Chuck Omer, 4411 Stearns Hill Rd. Waltham , MA , 02451 , email cndomer@juno.com The deadline for submissions to the newsletter is the End of Preceding Month. |
For
Sale or Wanted
10% of Sales go to AABS Club.
Member Ads are free.
Your Business Card Printed Here
$20 per year.
Contact:
Chuck Omer (734) 9964508 cndomer@juno.com
return
to top
 |
Dean Bull
Woodworking