Warminster Bonsai Club

The start of our new year and good to see many members returning and renewing membership.

Few trees being worked on and some brought in for thoughts on the work required for when the weather improves.

We also used this months meeting to have a dummy run for our club display at the Swindon Winter Image, for this year Clive H wanted to have a display of Chinese Elms to how these trees often the first purchase and lost by beginners to the hobby can mature into fine bonsai.

To that end members where asked to bring in their trees any size any style, thia would be quite a challenge as we have three tables to fill with just the one species.

Thanks to all the members who brought trees in Clive H was able to select enough trees to put on a display to show these trees off please see below the final selection well done to Clive H

Our last meeting of the year and it is also our AGM, having learnt over the past few years we now hold a Penjing evening after the AGM we have less thrown at us and considerable less boos as the members are eager to get into the Penjing.

This has been so popular with our members and it is thanks to Amelia who now run these as an event having also been invited to several more clubs she provides all the material from pots, trees, rocks and varied assorted ( read strange ) figures plus much more so that you let your talent

Here are few photos of members selecting their pot, tree and adornments etc results can vary from the wacky to the bordering good.

A fine evening to end our year on and here are the scenes created I let you judge the depth? of artistic talent on display although we think several should be entered in the Turnip prize award.

Members voted for 1st 2nd and 3rd and the result was 12 1st, 5 2nd and 7 third

A chilly evening to say the least but still members brought along trees for their final preparation for winter closedown.

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This was our Saturday workshop with Lee Verhorevoort which is always a brilliant learning day, Lee trained in Japan and brought his knowledge back but adapted this to our climate and is just a library of information.

We use his advise on developing raw material to refining trees this is where you take your trees to another level, amongst the advice on refinement he often picks up on is trees we have had for a long time have been allowed to get too tall and need reducing to balance out the taper.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the day.

Apologies for late posting I wanted to post our pottery workshop with Dan and Carly Butler which took place two days after the club and was so popular I forgot our club meeting.

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Back by very popular demand after we had a Saturday pottery workshop last year Dan and Carly returned to hold another workshop.

There where eleven of us would have been twelve but due to illness one had to drop out, Dan started off with a refresher on the basics of pot making much needed as it is amazing how much we had forgot, covering the rolling of clay for the sides, joining the segments together, smooth joints and detailing.

With that we were let loose and fair play to Dan and Carly they did a fantastic job circulating amongst the eleven of us with help and advice no mean feat you see from the photos just how busy we were.

Some even tried the potters wheel with hmmm varying results, everyone I spoke to thoroughly enjoyed the day and we now have to wait for Dan to finesse our pots and fire and glaze them, many thanks to Dan and Carly.

Our club display at the show many thanks to Sally, Derek and Amelia for putting this display on.

Some photos of the show with thanks to Amelia for these.

Talk amongst the members of trees showing early autumn colour probably brought on by the stress of the high temperatures this summer.

Mixture of work at this months meeting tidying up structures, wiring and restyling while trees still supple and thoughts of repotting late autumn early winter.

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With the heat wave now subsidising the conversation was about the battle to keep trees from drying out.

Many of us were watering two to three times a day but despite this it was not always sufficient to stop trees showing signs of stress, general thoughts were that despite the watering to stop composts drying out it was the sun warming up the pots to such an extent you wouldn’t keep your hands on them this warmed up the water inside the pot creating temperatures damaging to the roots in effect cooking them.

Hopefully the temperatures return to normal levels for rest of summer to give the trees chance to recover.

Our club raffle tree a Cottoneaster with real potential.

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Considering the excessively hot spell we were going through quite a number of trees brought in to work on which is always good to see.

We also held the drawing of the club raffle tree, congratulations to Gary who won this Hawthorn with lots of potential.

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