grouper52
Masterpiece
The First picture shows a JBP pretty much they way it looked when I bought it about 4 years ago from Bonsai Northwest. The only thing I had changed by the time of the picture was to remove a downward hanging branch on the lower left, for which I received bloody h*ll from my good friend Rick Moquin and others that frequented BonsaiSite at the time. ![Smile :) :)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png)
I loved the tree’s wild roots, even though few others did, but the stove pipe above the first branch proved impossible to work around - so two and a half years ago I decided to use the tree to test my mettle on Deborah Kershoff’s JBP-One-Season-Air-Layer technique. The air layer didn’t take (surprise, surprise), but when I removed it, the second photo shows what I was left with. I stuck that photo in a folder that I named “JBP-Ugly”.
This past season I hollowed out the heart wood up high on the left branch with a die grinder, and bent that baby down sharply into a cascade. It did fine.
I had surgery on my left hand two days ago. The pain and swelling and mobility were such today that I thought I’d go outside and perhaps do some light work on a tree. This guy caught my eye. I spent some time playing around with branch placement and such, and then I rotated the front 45 degrees and noticed the very complimentary angle. I didn’t do any heavy work or power tool work, but what I could do with one hand, some shears, my carving knives, and some too-thick wire scraps lying nearby on the ground, I did. Much work and refinement remains to be done, but the third photo shows the way forward for this previous ugly duckling.
Curious to know what you think now, Rick, of my having irreversibly ruined this bad boy?![Big Grin :D :D](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png)
![Smile :) :)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png)
I loved the tree’s wild roots, even though few others did, but the stove pipe above the first branch proved impossible to work around - so two and a half years ago I decided to use the tree to test my mettle on Deborah Kershoff’s JBP-One-Season-Air-Layer technique. The air layer didn’t take (surprise, surprise), but when I removed it, the second photo shows what I was left with. I stuck that photo in a folder that I named “JBP-Ugly”.
![Smile :) :)](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png)
This past season I hollowed out the heart wood up high on the left branch with a die grinder, and bent that baby down sharply into a cascade. It did fine.
I had surgery on my left hand two days ago. The pain and swelling and mobility were such today that I thought I’d go outside and perhaps do some light work on a tree. This guy caught my eye. I spent some time playing around with branch placement and such, and then I rotated the front 45 degrees and noticed the very complimentary angle. I didn’t do any heavy work or power tool work, but what I could do with one hand, some shears, my carving knives, and some too-thick wire scraps lying nearby on the ground, I did. Much work and refinement remains to be done, but the third photo shows the way forward for this previous ugly duckling.
Curious to know what you think now, Rick, of my having irreversibly ruined this bad boy?
![Big Grin :D :D](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png)