Loch Ness Monster

As Jason blogged the other day, this tree was acquired from Oregon Bonsai in '06 because nobody else was dumb enough to take it.  I liked the deadwood subtrunks and felt that with some bending and twisting of the trunk and branches, we could end up with something unique.  At the very least it would be a perfect tree to attempt some new techniques with when it was established and ready.  This is the picture from ob.com that influenced everybody to pass it by.

In the spring of '07 the tree was repotted into this smaller pot and the deadwood trunks removed.  They are in a box in my garage, and may make it back into the picture someday - maybe as an accent piece of some sort.  The tree was also with some advanced work down the road in mind, so the canopy would be easier to put into final position.  You can see how well it grew by the length of the needles.

As Jason stated we started to take a look at the trunk of this and evaluate what to do, and to our surprise about 80% of the trunk was dead.  So, out came the Walter Pall signature model Flexcut knives and we did a rough inspection to find the live vein.  This is the result of that, with no other deadwood work being performed.

Jason has some recent experience working with branch benders, cutting away live veins and utilizing some interesting wire/raffia techniques from working with visiting masters this past spring.  This was the perfect tree to gather some knowledge.  Jason wanted me to get out the reciprocating cutter and cut the live vein away from the deadwood.  To me that was harsh, risky and would need a ton of work to make it look natural.  I would need a few more beers to attempt that - so nope, let's bend and see what happens.  The goal being to bring the foliage down to reduce the height of the tree and distract from the straight trunk.

A few minutes into the bending of the trunk it started to pop and Jason got all excited and started to hoot.  As the live vein peeled away from the deadwood we were able to stop using the branch bender and switched to some prybars, and completed the bend by hand.

With all the hooting being emitted from Jason, my neighbor Eric stopped in to see what was so exciting.  Eric brought beer, Jason hooted again.

With a mixed crew around the house: Eric - knows nothing of bonsai, Jenn (my sister and Jason's wife) - knows little of bonsai, Heather (my wife) - can care less about bonsai, but likes to go collecting, and myself (recently declared amateur), Jason took a second to explain the flow of what we were doing.

And this is what we were doing.  As I said, the branches had gotten a little work to prep for this, but we completely wired and styled it in one sitting.  Remember, this is the first styling and there is much to be done in the coming years, much of it will be to continue to work on the section of trunk between the separation and the foliage.

RAL