The deadwood on this unusual juniper looks a lot like a spontaneous Zen brush stoke. The photo was posted by John Milton. Here's his caption: "The final result, not quite sure I pulled 'Stanley'* off but, did my best. Still very raw as the branches are un-styled grafts without ramification, even though it looks full in the before picture. With some mochikomi** over next couple years, should fill out nicely." Scroll down for the before photo.
John Milton has been an apprentice at Aichi-en under Junichiro Tanaka-San since June 2013. He posted the photo above on his facebook feed three days ago. The other two trees shown here are from his seemingly abandoned, but still quite excellent blog (his last post was June, 2015).
Running around in circles? You’re not alone. And without being too obvious, you might notice a feature that all three trees shown here have in common.
In John's own words: "I just thought I’d share a Red pine tree that resides here at Aichi-en as I did some maintenance on it (pulling needles, reducing the shoot’s to two and thinning), plus it is a hard to get a decent picture of it where it is positioned at the nursery. This tree I find, has a good feeling for me and is a personal favourite, although it’s hard to choose here. It in fact technically, has an obvious ‘rule’ fault but, I don’t think takes anything away from it. Rather, I think it adds to its character."
“The whole universe is based on rhythms. Everything happens in circles, in spirals.” John Hartford (from Brainy quotes).
Here's John's caption for this one: "Recently I was given this exposed root White pine to wire. It is a customers tree that he wanted wired. I must say that I like the tree and I’m glad I was given it to work." This is not the first time for us with this tree; we featured it here on Bark last year (if you're interested in the before photo you can find it there).
Before. I guess you can figure out which tree.
*Stanley: Your guess is as good as mine. I couldn’t find any other reference, except maybe this (a bit of a long shot).
**Mochikomi: A standard term that refers to years of cultivation of a tree in a bonsai pot, with the result being a sense of age and elegance.
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