New Bonsai Videos

New Bonsai Videos

7 months to the day  since my last blog post. I know how many of you lovely folk appreciate these posts and so all i can do is apologise for my absence. If I’m honest I have had the year from hell for a multitude of reasons and entirely lost my way to the point I was contemplating  dumping everything for pennies on the pound and fucking off. Im not going into detail at this time but WTF. I know i’m not alone here either.

So, i’m in a fragile state and in order to try and get back on an even keel i have made a few changes. I had largely become nocturnal, getting up at 2am and only sleeping 3-4 hours at a time took it’s toll. Now I have gone back to what I did for decades, i go outside to work on my trees from about 9pm until 1am. I’m still permanently knackered but at least some of the trees are coming along nicely which is making me feel a lot better and i’m feeling inspired again.

That means (so long as I can be bothered) there’s a lot more bonsai work to share with ya’ll. I actually filmed several projects early in the year but entirely lost interest and they are still on the camera entirely undisturbed. I utterly detest having to sit in front of this fucking screen for so many tedious hours every day and night, it absolutely wrecks my mental state and by the end of most days I become an intolerable savage, just ask Catherine next time you speak to her!

Perhaps it’s the little artist in me. Catherine says I am never happier than when I have my teeth into a project. I love to create things but the moment the projects done I loose interest. I have never met a happy artist in any discipline. Having the ability to imagine what COULD be simply serves to make everything that IS look like a piss poor second rate option.

I take that view of my own work, like all my school reports ever stated ” Graham can do this standing on his head but just can’t be bothered. Must try harder.” Right from the first day I sat up in my cot I have had a significant problem being told what to do so when a teacher told me I must try harder I just did the opposite. My mum always called me “Little Tommy Opposite” because I was such a cantankerous little toe rag.

Smart folk will figure this out right away. I currently have a 10 week old puppy in the house and he simply refuses to do as he’s told. If we need him to sit in his bed he just won’t, he’ll duck and dive and hide, he’ll run all over the house in obstinate defiance. However chuck him outside in the cold and he’ll rush back in and hide in his bed.

Years ago my mate Stuart bought a yew to a workshop and suggested that even I would struggle to make much out of it. Turns out it was some of the best work I had done up to that point and now, 30 years later I own the tree and it’s still pretty good. Tell me I can’t do something and watch it happen, unless it’s something that really matters. Had my teachers told me I was hopeless waste of skin incapable of learning I think I could have gone on to be a fighter pilot. Turns out i AM just a cantankerous old scrote, a dinosaur and even at the age of 60 I can’t quite figure out which way is up. Just another ordinary working class Englishman then!

I say that to say this……

Two new videos posted this week. Seeing as so many folk really like these it makes me happy to share my work even though it cost me three days screen time this week and my heads frazzled. I’m open to offers of help editing videos but before ya’ll rush to offer your time an assistance do bear in mind i’m what they call complicated.

ENJOY…….

Juniper Pruning Video Available Now

Juniper Pruning Video Available Now

Apologies for the recent silence but I have been working on this Juniper pruning video for weeks now. But then the weather here has been atrocious and going outside has been largely unadvisable so it all worked out.

This beautiful juniper came to live earlier in the year. A tree with history created by Harry Nicholl who might be a name familiar to those who were around bonsai back in the nineties or those living north of the border.

Harry’s juniper was not exactly like anything I have had before and so a slightly different approach was called for. I was very keen to only enhance what the trees creator had passed to me because I respect his 30 or 40 odd years of effort and work.

With a tree like this there can be a tendency to rubbish what was done before, storm in and turn the thing on it’s head, put one’s ‘stamp‘ on it or ‘take it to another level’ (God forbid). However doing that is not about the bonsai, that’s all about folk trying to look good or earn.

Juniper Pruning Video Available Now by Graham Potter bonsai

Blaauws juniper by Harry Nicholl. Over 30 years cultivation and no wire…..well only about 7 pieces in this image.

I know that in general folk believe science and technology will save us and provide the progress our species so desperately needs. How’s that going? Personally i tend to think most of the answers we need are not in the future but in the past. I include bonsai within that, most of what we need to know is to be found behind us. That’s not to say we shouldn’t keep our noses firmly pressed against the windscreen (windshield) of progress, I just think we should spend a greater proportion of our time learning and mastering the basics and paying respect to those who came before prior to blasting off all over the place like some ‘Johnny come lately’. I may have been guilty of that in the past, please forgive me!

There is all the difference in the world between knowing ‘about’ something and actually knowing that thing as an instinctive part of our being. For example, after 45 years riding motorcycles I can accomplish some pretty amazing feats on two wheels*. However were I to square up to a master like Guy Martin I would appear to be a complete and utter fool.

I like to keep in mind those who came before, who mastered skills and aced life. Knowing what they know, what do they think of me or what i’m doing?

I have grandkids now and they seem kind of dumb sometimes but when you are 1 or 4 what do you know? It’s for old scrotes like me to clear the way, support, protect and make their growing up and learning the best it can possibly be. I know they will think grandads a dumbass with all his silly little trees but long after I am gone and they are my age those memories of playing amongst the trees or mixing soil in the greenhouse will be absolute gold to them just as the memories of my own grandparents are to me now.

There are some very skilled people in British bonsai, they may not be all over social media or travelling the world but many have a deep understanding of bonsai that can only be gained by decades of experience. Most youngsters cannot possibly hope to know what us old buggers do, simply because we have put in the hours and lived the years. Like we had any choice…….

Let’s make things a little better by paying our respects to those who laid the path for us when we were young and dumb!

G.

* Relative to being an ageing old fart.