As you might expect with the Big C on the horizon this week has been a busy one at KB. Everyone is doing a good job and pulling their weight so I had a chance to pull my, not inconsiderable, weight out to the workshop and passed the time digging some holes.

Anyone who stops by here regularly will have heard me banging on about how tough it is to sell raw material. Still, that means more for me 🙂 This week I made a start with a trident maple that had some seriously ugly pruning scars. A few minutes spent hollowing and the tree now looks a lot more interesting. It may not be pretty but that’s a matter of personal preference and besides it’s early days.

Next up was a tree I bought in the spring, a beautiful craggy old prunus mume. I love these but in all the years I have had bonsai never got a hold of a decent one. This ball of rot came in from Japan over last winter and has been growing like a weed all summer. All I had to do was clean out all the soft material and the beautiful natural (and very hard) wood simply appeared. By the looks of the buds this is going to be in flower in just a few weeks time.

My next project was always going to take a bit longer. A couple of years ago I bought a number of these massive oaks. I guess they were a little intimidating to folk because we didn’t sell a single one. This particular lump intrigued me because there were some holes in the bark with no wood beneath. Turns out the trunk was hollow top to bottom. Once I poked a hole with my Terrier & Dremel all i had to do was link it all together and rough up the outside a bit. An hour and a half of ugly wiring (first work on oaks needs some heavy metal work) and the tree was all good. Not a bad start if I do say so. Given another couple of years this just might be a star.

Lastly I thought you might like to see an unsung hero of the Kaizen Bonsai payroll. This is Harley who works security doing a bit of quality control…….

G.