Nice work on that tree Adair, can you tell me what you think about Mr Robinson's critique? Mainly about the concave cut versus a small stubby jin...?
Dan belongs to the “Jin everything” school of bonsai design. He likes gnarly trees, not highly refined trees. Actually he praised the tree far more than I expected!
He is from the Pacific Nortwest, and they work with a lot of collected mountain trees, where jins get sun bleached and are permanent fixtures.
JBP are native to warmer coastal climates with a lot of humidity, rain, mildew and insects. Deadwood happens, but it rots away pretty quickly, the trees callous over wounds pretty quickly so rot doesn’t set in on the trunk.
Jin and Shari are not “expected features” of JBP like they are for junipers. So, to that end, I disagree with his analysis. However, the tree would be better without the two scars. So, after that, I filled the two scars, each was originally about dime sized and had halfway calloused over, and covered with bark from the tree. I suspect if Kathy Shaner had done the critique, that’s what she would have said to do. Or, if she wanted jins there, she would say go find some deadwood that’s appropriate, drill a hole into the trunk where the scars are, and glue them in! Lol!!!
I spoke to Dan privately about the tree later, and he said it was amongst the top two or three in the show. Perhaps, technically the best in the show. But that’s not his style, he likes them gnarly! So to be true to his soul, he chose a gnarly tree as Best in Show.
Which is expected. I knew that judge couldn’t pick that tree as BIS.
However, many, many, many of the others showing trees came up to me and wanted advice on how to improve their JBP. Which I was happy to give!
