grouper52
Masterpiece
I used to have a picture of this thing when I first got it, but I can't find it - just a straight stick, really, for sale at a roadside stand where folks were selling trees they brought down from the northern Cascades. I have no idea what appealed to me about it, but something did.
For a long time, I had no clue what I wanted to do with it, until a photo in an obscure Chinese book inspired me. My initial manipulation is seen in the first photo.
Many subsequent changes and refinements ensued over the next four years - I think there may be a somewhat recent photo of this guy in my gallery or someplace.
It now sits in its final pot (I used to know who made it, but no more) in close to its final form, and yet there is still much work to do over the next few seasons. The jins and foliage need refinement, but that is easy. The guy wires bending it into shape and levering it to stand upright have been erased in Photoshop, but that is where the two main challenges lie.
Mountain hemlocks are notorious for taking many years to hold a bend, and these bends were made under quite a bit of pressure initially, and still put the guy wires under quite a bit of tension. Rather than wait around for years, I may hollow out the heartwood at several spots with a die grinder this season.
The structural need for guy wires - run over the lip and anchored from the outside into the holes under the pot - to hold the trunk upright is required due to the fact that Mountain hemlocks put out rather feeble roots for the most part, and due to the fact that the few roots that this tree has run off of a "nebari" that consists solely of a round section of trunk that runs along the ground, as Mountain hemlocks are often want to do. The rest of the trunk is then slanted back at a right angle to that section of trunk, such that, without thick, structurally sturdy roots spreading throughout the pot to anchor the lower trunk, it is just easily prone to role over under the leverage of the trunk's backward-leaning weight unless it is guy-wired up. No amount of wiring to the pot in the usual manner makes any difference at all.
These trees also don't easily put out roots from buried sections of trunk.
I may just set the pot on the ground or even bury it a bit, and let the tree grow wild for a few years, so the roots will thicken as they grow down into the soil. That may provide a structurally sound base of roots that will support the tree's weight. We'll see.
That's a Ying rock, BTW, in case anyone wants to know but doesn't. If you can't get into the whole mudmen thing under any circumstances, my condolences to you, but I really don't care to hear about it.
For a long time, I had no clue what I wanted to do with it, until a photo in an obscure Chinese book inspired me. My initial manipulation is seen in the first photo.
Many subsequent changes and refinements ensued over the next four years - I think there may be a somewhat recent photo of this guy in my gallery or someplace.
It now sits in its final pot (I used to know who made it, but no more) in close to its final form, and yet there is still much work to do over the next few seasons. The jins and foliage need refinement, but that is easy. The guy wires bending it into shape and levering it to stand upright have been erased in Photoshop, but that is where the two main challenges lie.
Mountain hemlocks are notorious for taking many years to hold a bend, and these bends were made under quite a bit of pressure initially, and still put the guy wires under quite a bit of tension. Rather than wait around for years, I may hollow out the heartwood at several spots with a die grinder this season.
The structural need for guy wires - run over the lip and anchored from the outside into the holes under the pot - to hold the trunk upright is required due to the fact that Mountain hemlocks put out rather feeble roots for the most part, and due to the fact that the few roots that this tree has run off of a "nebari" that consists solely of a round section of trunk that runs along the ground, as Mountain hemlocks are often want to do. The rest of the trunk is then slanted back at a right angle to that section of trunk, such that, without thick, structurally sturdy roots spreading throughout the pot to anchor the lower trunk, it is just easily prone to role over under the leverage of the trunk's backward-leaning weight unless it is guy-wired up. No amount of wiring to the pot in the usual manner makes any difference at all.
These trees also don't easily put out roots from buried sections of trunk. I may just set the pot on the ground or even bury it a bit, and let the tree grow wild for a few years, so the roots will thicken as they grow down into the soil. That may provide a structurally sound base of roots that will support the tree's weight. We'll see.
That's a Ying rock, BTW, in case anyone wants to know but doesn't. If you can't get into the whole mudmen thing under any circumstances, my condolences to you, but I really don't care to hear about it.
