Reducing visual weight with carving

It’s a pink pixie bougainvillea kinda day today, from the Hippie Dad Bonsai garden.

A big one too. If I remember correctly, it was a tree which was literally in the trash at a landscape nursery, and Doug (the esteemed Hippie Dad) dumpster dived it. From the looks of it when we potted it in this pot a few months ago, it might have been a big cutting at one point. The roots were so non-existent that I had to drill a screw into the trunk to secure the tree in the pot.

Here’s the screw.

Now, looking at the tree, there is a flaw, but not a fatal flaw. The middle looks fatter than…

…..the base. That’s, like I said, a flaw. But not that bad of a flaw.

We can fix it.

Those aerial-type roots will thicken in time, making the base wider.

But, for the moment, we can do something.

See this here wound?

It’s not going to heal, so we might as well do something to make you look at it. Cuz’ chicks dig scars, right?

The stragedy (which is a strategy to help mitigate a tragedy)

Is to carve it out, and reduce some of that visual weight on top. Carving technically removes material, so we are removing some of the obverse taper. But a piece of deadwood, after it’s been bleached with lime sulphur, will look lighter and smaller than it is. That’s just artistic principle. That’s why a person who believes they have a large nose will apply makeup to lighten it.

Notice the difference?

This is the second time I’ve worked on the tree, and it’s time to choose branches. Next step is wiring.

First we defoliate.

Apply wire.

And now let it grow.

Fertilizer, lime sulfur soon (sulfur=sulphur. Depends which side of the pond you live on. Do you speak the Queen’s English or colonial American English? Which is a funny story. Is it aluminum or aluminium? What color do you colour your daisies? After the American revolution, the American founders made it a point to differentiate American English dialect from British English dialect. So words changed spelling and pronunciation in the USA. The irony, though, is that the American accent, according to those that study it, is closer to the accent of the British in the colonial era than the modern English accent. That’s why English language songs tend to be sung, even by British singers, in an American accent. And the funniest thing to me is that the word we use for the sport where you run around kicking a ball into goals (which the world calls “football”), “soccer” is actually from England. It’s an abbreviation and shortening of the term “Association football”. “Association” got transformed into soccer: a-socc-iation- soccer. Weird, huh? It’s the same way where Elizabeth goes to Betty or William goes to Billy. Called “hypocorism” . )

anywho, I read too much. Back to the tree.