Holiday season is rough. But, this one has a great story line. In November, yes this is an old one that I have not had the chance to archive yet! Al Nelson was scheduled to be our presenter at Baikoen.
Sadly, to say Al was not healthy enough again to make it out to us and we had to scramble to find a replacement under a week's notice. Big Joe was in charge of our programs and found one unsung hero to step up to the plate with under 24 hours to prepare. Cesaro agreed but did not have any material ready for a last minute presentation. Big Joe again stepped up and gave one if his Ed Clark Shohin twisted junipers to be the subject of the night.
If you have never presented before usually I like to have at least a couple of weeks to a month studying the material and really visualizing in my head how I would approach it under two hours.
Cesaro just jumped in full with excitement with only about an hour at home to study the material. Cesaro said he had a plan. He was going to wire and repot the plant by the end of the night. If all fails the plant will be repotted into this shohin pot by tonight.
Cesaro started by removing branches that was not necessary for the final design of the tree. He removed any bar, whorls, parallel branches and any crotch branches from the tree.
Cesaro started to jin one of the main branches. He stated that it would be too large in scale to keep but it would look great as a jin feature in the overall design to make this juniper look much older with the deadwood built into the final tree. Also, the jin will help give the tree some much needed negative space.
Cesaro shorten several of the branches that are leftover to help him visiualize what the final design may look like. This helps with figuring out the overall scale of the final tree too.
Around the mid way point. A jin branch, the main trunk, and all the major branches has been cleaned and wired. The job now is to complete the final detail wire and movement of the wires.
With the detail wiring that could be accomplished for the night be done. Cesaro now work on repotting this juniper in the limited time left.
Cesaro shows the group how to secure the tree to the pot and how to correctly add in drainage holes.
Cesaro's wife checks in on him to see how he was progressing throughout the night. She one tough lady on him.
Above is the finished tree of the night. It is the first step in becoming a bonsai shohin size tree. All trees need a start somewhere.
The lucky winner of the night! Was me! Actually, for what Big Joe had to deal with and it was his tree initially, I graciously gifted the tree right back to Big Joe. So, if you like what you saw here today. Come down and join the club! Until next time.