January, 2015. Michael Hagedorn’s freshly touched up Mountain Hemlock clump. From Micheal’s Crataegus Bonsai blog.
If you only had time to follow Bonsai Bark and one other blog, you wouldn’t go wrong with Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai. I won’t bore you by repeating the praise we’ve already showered on Michael in previous posts, but I will encourage you to visit Micheal’s blog and to serious consider reading his highly enjoyable page turner, Post-Dated, The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.
2010. Taking nothing away from Michael’s cheerful demeanor, or the planting, I think the best part of this photo is the shadow on Michael’s shirt.
2010 again. The old box is gone and now some decisions need to be made.
Summer 2014. Michael’s slaves (freshly cropped) bringing it into the workshop for some serious work.
Summer 2014. Much of the serious work involved creating this new base and establishing the planting on this new base (we’re skipping a bunch of photos here to encourage you to visit Crataegus Bonsai and see the whole show for yourself).
January 2015 again, Just in case you’ve forgotten the photo at the top. Here’s Michael caption for this photo: “And this is how the Mountain Hemlock looks today, in January, 2015, after minor wiring touchup. More and more I’m inspired by what I see in the local mountains, which do not have as severe an environment as the Rockies, but tend to feature moister, calmer forests. In the nearby Cascades and Coast ranges I’ve been very taken with the relationships of trunks, just visually, and also the communities of trees ecologically, and have sought out trees for bonsai that might communicate this. I tried to present this hemlock as simply as possible—without a pot or visible slab—to highlight those features.”
The place to be this October. It turns out that Michael Hagedorn is more than just a highly accomplished bonsai artist and teacher, he’s also a majordomo in the world of important bonsai events.
Let’s add author to highly accomplished bonsai artist and majordomo. Here’s something from a posts we did back in 2011. Most people don’t practice the art writing much (if at all) and therefore don’t write very well if and when they have to. Michael Hagedorn is the exception. He writes regularly and he writes very well. Some of Michael’s best writing can be found in his delightful and humorous book, Post-Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.