Open Your Eyes!
Open Your Eyes!
My job has, over the years, developed into something more of a lifestyle than just being what I do to pay the bills. Part of that job these days entails putting myself into the public domain. For a socially retarded carrot cruncher from deepest Norfolk with a bit of an attitude and an old school opinion on everything that’s definitely not a comfortable place to be. I get a lot of emails and telephone calls asking for advice on the cultivation of bonsai and many of those leave me dazed, confused, baffled and even angry. The level of ignorance often leaves me shouting at my screen though I do my utmost to help where I can.
“Open your eyes!“
Professionals everywhere, it appears, are often exasperated at the ignorance of their customers. I spend most Saturday afternoons loitering around my mates motorcycle workshop where the endless topic of conversation revolves around events of the proceeding week including great long and detailed recounting of, to us, hilarious tales of ignorance and stupidity. Sadly these days few folk understand the intricate workings of a motorcycle and as a result endanger themselves and those around them. When they come into the workshop for help my very experienced mate can tell instantly wether he is dealing with an experienced and knowledgeable rider bestowed with mechanical integrity or a total numpty. He and I both have an intolerance of fools.
Now before you go off on one let me say, we were all ignorant once and that’s okay. When I was little I wore nappies because I didn’t have sense not to crap myself. However in time I learned what to do, jettisoned the plastic pants and so these days I rarely crap myself. There’s no shame in ignorance, but to remain ignorant is largely unforgivable. These days there’s absolutely no reason to be in ignorance regarding much of anything at all. The internet places almost the entire canon of human knowledge and experience at our finger tips so how can anyone be in the dark about anything?
Of course the issue, as I have said many times before, is that we allow literally any WAF* to publish stuff online. Nobody has to prove their qualification, experience or understanding on a subject before they go posting their two penn’orth. Allow me the bandwidth to recount a tale I read once on a Jaguar (car) forum. The guy concerned had purchased a repossessed Jaguar from an auction. However he could not get it to run in anything other that limp home mode. This was a nice car in good nick, not an old beater. Having tried the obvious he started posting questions online and a whole host of what turned out to be WAF chipped in with their opinions.
This was, as much as it does not sound it, a fascinating example of my point and I sat here and read pages and pages of posts. Over time and at the behest of many armchair mechanics the guy started spending money on things like plugs, coil packs, sensors, fuel pumps, filters and an array of ‘black boxes’. This being a V8 there were a lot of parts and soon the bill reached several thousand pounds. Because nothing worked folk then started to question the quality of his replacement parts. After a year (yes seriously) he still had a limp home Jag’. Eventually he took it to the authorised Jaguar dealership in trepidation, expecting a bowel loosening bill at the end. An hour later the dealer called him and said it was all fixed. The bill was under a hundred quid. Simple fix, a new transponder in the key just needed matching to the cars security system. A moments job with a laptop. Because the car had been repossessed the bailiffs had towed the car without keys, they got new ones but never programmed the car to recognise them.
This illustrates the importance of two things……
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Ask the right questions. (Spare us you opinions)
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Ask the right people. ( Sizzle or sausage?)
Of course in our relative ignorance of a situation it’s not easy to hit these points. A little knowledge informs us that perhaps things just ain’t right but who to ask? Is a self proclaimed expert really an expert or just someone who talks a lot? Go into my mates bike shop and ask the wrong question and he might throw you out the door on your ear. A few weeks back a youngster came in on his little 125 and asked for a new tyre. When asked what size he said “ I don’t know, you got a tape measure, I’ll go measure it.” He got chucked out right there, no tyre and no explanation. That just proves ‘the customer’s always right‘ to be a crock of shite. My own approach to customer service and education is perhaps a little more generous…. sometimes.
Trying to keep your end up. Sounding smart, intelligent, informed, knowledgeable or experienced in front of a genuine expert is a fools errand and best avoided. My own approach is always to plead ignorance and ask for help. I then listen hard, accept and act accordingly. In many things I have a little experience but with the exception of bonsai and motorcycles i’m no expert, and even then I have more to learn than I currently know. In general experts are happy to share what they know when approached with respect. However phone a guy at 10pm when he’s half cut and start spouting off about what you know and who you know and how brilliant you are or waste an hour of a guys time right when he’s insanely busy and you can justifiably expect a metaphorical bleeding earhole.
I could go on about this ALL day. These things ARE important but sadly ‘social’ media has given a lot of folk a sense of entitlement when approaching knowledgeable folk. Seeing as it takes a minimum of 10,000 hours relentless practice to master even a simple discipline we should respect folk who have put in the hours and be very grateful for any help. Keep questions short and to the point, refrain from trying to ingratiate oneself into favour and listen to the answer. Then offer sincere thanks, be polite and finally offer to send lots of free money. Experts have spent a lot of their lives learning through great effort and sacrifice and it’s the height of disrespect to simply expect to receive the benefit of their hard earned wisdom just because you feel entitled and that’s all I have to say about that.
So in relation to helping folk ask the right question of their chosen expert, and this relates to most things……
Open Your Eyes!
Let me offer the following example. It’s early spring and today is sunny and warm, the first day of the year to be so. Walking amongst my trees at first light today I noticed something about all the scots pines (pinus sylvestris). Some are still asleep, some are waking up and some are romping away. Thankfully none are dead! So why are the trees all at different stages considering they are all outside in the same yard? Overall the answer is VIGOUR. A strong tree will be raring to go in spring and with all it’s ducks in a row will begin growth early but the old tired sad sack of a tree that’s been neglected or abused will not.
My advice has always been do not go to the internet for answers before you Open Your Eyes! See what you are looking at and think it through. For this you need some peace and quiet both externally and internally. That’s why I was outside at 5am and that’s why I smoke stogies. Some significant skills lacking in a few folk I speak to are focus and an ability to shut up. Put simply there is just too much noise out there. To make great bonsai we need focus, focus, focus, quiet, quiet and more quiet. A lot of the time we instinctively know the answers we seek but learning to extricate what we need is, yet again, something we have to learn by working at it.
So here are a series of photographs, all taken this morning, of scots pines in my garden. I have put a few notes alongside each to explain what’s to see. Notice these go from absolutely no movement whatsoever to displaying significant early season growth.
Enjoy!
No movement whatsoever, small buds and poor colour. Long neglected tree in dire need of repotting and good cultivation to restore vigour over the coming years. Too early to repot. Unresolved this tree will become even more leggy and begin dropping branches. It’s a customers tree 😉
Strong early candle extension and significant back budding. This tree was previously weak following excess pruning and the use of a shallow bonsai pot years too early. Following work to restore vigour this tree is on an upward trajectory.
Nice even growth of good colour. Good consistent needles that are not too small, early season activity and lots of flowers show this tree is strong which is just as well as it has a good way to go yet. Top to bottom the growth is the same indicating good balance. Lots of back budding thanks to high vigour and correct pruning.
Incorrect pruning has weakened this tree and resulted in overly large needles that have been cut further weakening it. ‘Work’ has been done to reduce needle size but that’s inappropriate for this tree which still needs significant development of it’s secondary branch density.
Recently weak but recovering. Nice even growth and bud formation. This years needles will be much better than last. This will need a re-pot next year to keep progress moving forward.
Beautiful even dense growth on a ramified tree in good balanced condition with strong early activity. Just right!
Neglect papered over with inappropriate wiring makes this tree appear something it’s not. No signs of life and very poor colour in places hint at bad pruning practice and long overdue a repot. A pig wearing lipstick is still a pig.
Even top to bottom, early growth, perfect colour and masses of back buds. No wire and holding itself in place. A mature scots achieved following decades of correct pruning and cultivation, the tree was never wired, this is purely scissor work and patience over the better part of 50 years.
Low vigour, poor needle growth last year and scrappy uneven buds late starting. This tree has minimal density and foliage so will struggle to develop the foliage mass required to build real vigour. Careful considerate cultivation and patience should see this improve year on year.
Overworked but this tree is SOOOO strong it’s a Pitbull. This summer back buds will appear everywhere, growth will be huge but needles will be small as the density is coming along very fast. There’s an incredible pot of roots on this one. Sometimes, if a tree is strong we can take a liberty or two.
A strong tree but under developed. Early days but everything is in place for the right things to happen. Hopefully this years needles will be big and lead to ever more vigour.
A gratuitous update of this monster scots worked in conjunction with Kevin Willson. We didn’t loose a single needle and growth is really early showing exceptional vigour considering how little time this has been under bonsai cultivation. SEE THE VIDEO
Further hints and tips on pine cultivation……
* WAF – Wind assisted f***wit