Summer Intensive I, 2023

[bwaynef]

I’ve been to a small handful of Boon’s Intensives, but this was my first Summer Intensive so it was a new experience for me. Also, Boon moved so I got to see a different part of California. Sort of anyway. He used to live out in a heavily-agricultural area. Now he’s in a more urban area.

I flew out and had half a day to occupy myself so I drove to Carson Pass, sure that’s Boon’s warning that it was still covered with snow couldn’t be true. It’s in a remote location but I was able to find that the high temps were getting into the 50s and had been for quite some time …so surely all danger of snow had passed.

I drove out hwy 50 to where it hits (sort of) 88 and was basically there. About 3-4000’ I hit a thunderstorm. About 5k’ it was snowing so I came to terms that I wouldn’t get to do much exploring. At the parking lot for the trailhead at Meiss Meadows I had a good view of the snowplows and it was suspiciously darker than I thought it should be. (Turns out it was only dark because of the snowstorm.) I was surrounded by mountains, covered in snow, with wild trees all around. Not the famous ones I’d wanted to see but they were still other-worldly for this Southeasterner. At one point I thought to myself (out loud?) they really do exist as I saw more and more character-filled trees.

The drive down the mountain on 88 was even more spectacular. I took full advantage (well, maybe not full) of the upgraded-my-rental Mustang on the way down and was soon back into the civilized world.

Later when speaking to other locals at the intensive, they were shocked the roads were open. I’d significantly underestimated.

 

[bwaynef]

The day started with coffee and a video. I’d heard Boon did videos first thing but he apparently never got the TV in the workshop set up at his previous location. If I recall they were all Japanese language. The first one was on decandling JBP. Horrible graphics to the point of amusement, but the info was good, particularly with Boon pointing out the details that aren’t immediately obvious.

Each day progressed to going over handouts, again with details pointed out that are painfully obvious …once they’re pointed out.

If there’s time before lunch we get to apply what we’ve learned on a tree. One of the benefits of NOT being local is I’m working on trees Boon has instead of my own. That has been instrumental in my confidence because I can see that the techniques really do produce great looking trees.

The first tree I worked on was a ginormous JBP, still early in development. I thought it was a little early to be decandling but it was only partially so, since it’s in early development. That meant I only decandled the outer areas that are strongest with the goal of invigorating the interior shoots and buds. (Largest trees are decandled earliest.) After decandling, third year needles were removed. Remember, old needles aren’t necessarily the longest. Age is determined by their position on the branch.

Before decandling, Boon checked our scissors and sharpened those that needed it. Mine was among those he sharpened and I ended up losing some fingerprint as a result. (This was one of my takeaways, that I really need to focus on sharpening my tools way past what I thought would’ve been “good enough”.)

 

[Baku1875]

looking forward to updates on your experience, this is looking like a good share already

 

[bwaynef]

My next tree was a field grown Ume. Boon quickly went over the regimen of care for an Ume and left me with it.

Aside: I’ve been to a few other intensives and worked with Boon back East 3-4x along with some pretty accomplished folks so occasionally I get the sense that Boon doesn’t realize I’m not quite as familiar with what I’m doing as he might think I am. Occasionally that comes in setting back a piece of material …but those are mistakes I only make once. (Juniper branches need top branching also!)

I pondered what he said and spun the tree around. Kept spinning the tree. Finally I’d reconstructed his instructions into something I understood and got to work. Turns out the reason I had such a hard time is that Ume summer work goes against all my bonsai instincts for keeping trees from getting too leggy.

Instead of reducing foliage on the outside, or cutting back and only leaving a pair of leaves (or 3-4), with Ume you remove the whorl of tiny leaves from the inside, at the base of the new growth. Those are worthless and will be falling off soon. Then the next 2-3 first-leaves-on-new-growth are removed. You do that in hopes of having leaf/vegetative buds grow instead of flower buds. If flower buds form at the base of the new growth, no new branching will develop there and your branching necessarily gets that much bigger. I think eventually grafting becomes necessarily regardless but this prolongs the need for that.

Once you’ve removed those leaves, wire the strong growth upward and outward. Add more little movement than you would with conifers. To do that you have to wire with tighter coils (not tighter to the branch, but at a steeper angle). Branch tips should end up in the direction they leave the branch/trunk …unless there’s a good reason not to.

The top of this Ume was untouched with wire. I only wired the really strong growth. Boon kept correcting my wiring as I wasn’t using tight enough coils. I’ve been wiring too many junipers, apparently.

(Another takeaway, embrace the ugly for a while. Working on a tree doesn’t immediately have to result in a beautiful image. It’ll get there. Also, I need to fertilize some of my trees more to get the growth necessary to do this sort of work (with the best results).)

 

[bwaynef]

One last tidbit on the Ume, and deciduous summer work in general, is that I put movement into the 3-4" past the leaves I left on the branch, but didn't continue to wire the branches or concern myself with where they were positioned. That was a large part of what made the final image unkempt looking. The wire will be removed in 3-4 weeks, though allowing the wire to bite just a little on Ume is acceptable since they have such character in their bark. Less acceptable on maples for instance so adjust your timing accordingly.

 

[bwaynef]

Next was summer work on a Japanese Maple. This tree had previously had a technique discovered and popularized by Ebihara performed on it. In an effort to speed the healing of large wounds resulting from branch removal, a wedge was cut halfway and putty applied to the side of the wound on the tree that won’t be cut off eventually. I pointed it out to Boon and he remembered that and told me to continue with it, only to do it again but this time make the wedge cut deeper. I’d never heard of doing it in 3 steps, but apparently he’s taking it slow with this maple. The white bark coupled with the fact that the scarring wasn’t particularly aggressive meant patience was warranted.

I re-wedged it and puttied the trunk-side of the resulting wound, after lightly abrading the previous iteration of callus. I used a grafting knife to slice an ever-so-slight sliver around the inside of the wound, but scraping with the dull side of a knife or a wire brush would’ve worked, and that’s precisely what I was instructed to do later. He offered me a weird knife that’s hard to describe but I scraped with a dull edge more than the slicing I’d done before.

This work made a lot more sense to me. There’d been discussion of partial outer canopy defoliation and cutting back to a pair of leaves and cutting each leaf in half …but those are refinement techniques. We were still building structure on this tree.

I wired branches up and out, but only the strong branches and only the first few inches. By the time I finished working on this tree I was getting less corrections on the tightness of the coils in my wiring.

One technique I’d seen but hardly ever remember to do is once a scar has formed, to come back and address it. I didn’t get the before picture, but Boon mentioned that to help the OUTSIDE of the scar transition naturally sooner to do a similar scraping as you do to the interior of the scar.

I didn’t get an after picture, but it wasn’t exactly a stellar image anyway. The wire will be removed in a month or so and the tree will be cutback in fall.

One peculiarity of Boon’s teaching is that he prefers deciduous be wired in the growing season which means it’s done in-leaf. That makes me want to die a little bit each time I do it but it gets easier, just like he says it will.

(The pictures are showing out of order. You can probably figure them out. I meant to say, I ended up Re-Ebihara-ing 2 more branches w/o fully removing them.)

 

[bwaynef]

I meant to come back to this post earlier but got sidetracked, so some of these details are fuzzy. I've worked on junipers a lot at Boon's. <In-paragraph Aside: He asks you what you want to learn/work on/focus on and tends to have material to choose from for whatever your answer is. I chose Boon because I love his JBP work, and the work his students do reinforces that. That said, I think I've only worked on 2-3 JBP in my few intensives. That's of my choosing, because he asks. It just so happens that one of his junipers usually tantalizes me and I get distracted.> His apprentice (basically) had pulled some developmental trees up to work on and Boon plopped this juniper on my table.

Most of the other junipers I've worked have been much more refined. This one had some extra on it and didn't have as simple of a design as I was used to. It was also very coarse, because it was so early in development. I spun it around and looked at it from all angles and eventually Boon asked where the front is. I'd been considering this. The obvious front along the straight edge of the pot looked nice enough, but I thought it looked better spun 30-45°. He agreed, then told me to angle it forward at that rotation. He was right. That would be the best front.

We talked about what was needed. My tendency was to remove more of the extraneous stuff, but Boon wanted some extra on it as it continues to develop. He wanted several branches wired out and pads developed and a few of them bent into position. I pulled one in particular into position and Boon said "More." I pulled it further and he looked and said "More." I looked at him, I looked at the tree, and pulled it further down and into position. At this point a crack developed along the grain of the wood. Nothing had torn, which was good. I showed it to Boon and he called the others around to look at the damage. He said this was best case. A tear would likely have been recoverable, but this won't (appreciably) impact the flow of nutrients, and will develop scar tissue where the bend needed it to set it in position quicker. A tear would've weakened the branch junction. I puttied it, and mercifully, he said the branch looked good where it was so I stopped bending.

The first work I did, before wiring and bending, was creating deadwood. Removing the bark from recently-living deadwood is SO much easier than long-dead deadwood. I did one of each. As I referenced earlier, Boon's tools are as sharp as you'd imagine. He's got a plethora of carving tools, and most of them come in precarious arrangements so its easy to position yourself in a way that will end in a slice. Branch angles and their position requires the right tool for the job, but luckily I had a pretty nice selection of tools to choose from. It took a while to figure which one worked best in which situation, but eventually the tree let go of the bark on that dead branch. (One of his knives is a death trap. Its got sort of a triangle blade and all edges are RAZOR sharp, but if you position your finger/thumb right on the flat edge, you can apply enough force to get the bark off easily. You just need to make sure the force is perpendicular to the edges that are waiting patiently to remove your fingerprints.)

The finished image is confusing because there were a lot of branching left that won't be part of the final image. They're being grown for deadwood. This reinforced that its ok for your trees to go through an ugly stage. It'll be better for it. Think of 'em as teenagers.