HAVING SOME WINTER FUN WHILE PREPARING MY LARCH (XL) FOR A SHOW.

Hannnns. I am pleased the XL is looking much better now. It will be a delight to see it in all it glory. It truly was an inspiration to see this tree in reality and also visit your garden my friend. And yes the hum hummm hummm. i will match you on that one my friend as i have a gift for you.
By the way is there any chance i could get a photo of that pine of your i realy loved. The one we disscussed for almost an hour haha. Thank you

Hi everybody,
it was wonderful weather today so I decided to take a long walk along the sea dike that protects our coastline close to my home. Walking on this highly elevated dike gives you a wonderful view on the sea and the many different birds that seek protection and shelter on it. It is also a great place to find many varieties off mosses that grow on the black boulders that were used to build the inclining dike. These mosses grow directly on those rocks, with out any soil, so they are very thin, ideally for the use as ground coverrich on my Bonsai! Collecting the moss was not as easy as it sounds, because off the steep inclination and the slippery surface of those rocks, but I managed to get enough to replace the weathered mosses and to ad some mosses with yellow and orange colored long seed pots for more detail!

Below: The different mosses ready to put on, the top ones with the seed pots are the ones that I will use to bring more detail in the surface and dept to the whole image.



Below: The soil surface before I started. All off this moss was planted 2 years ago so that by now it is realy attached and grown over and in between the open soil structure and looks realy natural and not as if it is placed just before the show.



Below: After the new mosses were added. The green arrow shows what I meant by adding dept to the image and variety in the structure and color of the soil surface.



I did not use much off those silvery ball like pieces of moss, they are to symmetrical and round shaped and there for looked out off place and unnatural. And their color was to light as well. I think that now the soil surface looks old and natural so I am happy with it!

Below: This is how the deadwood looks now after cleaning and carfully bleaching it in several layers of different strength Lime sulfur.



Just two more weeks until Noelanders, I cant wait to show XL there and to meet all my friend from around Europe again!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Very nice tree !!!
Good Luck at Noelanders.

You can also add china ink in lime sulfur to have a dead wood with natural color

abcd wrote:You can also add china ink in lime sulfur to have a dead wood with natural color

Are you sure you wanted to post this in this thread?

Than with the help of a small brush I started to apply a thin layer off water diluted Lime Sulfur to most off the deadwood, but I tried to avoid the places were I wanted darker tones and shadows! The next day I saw that the bulk off the deadwood was now bleach just enough, so now I could focus on applying some more heavily bleached highlights. This was don with some stronger Lime Sulfur that I softly stamped on with a short haired brush. There was hardly any Lime Sulfur on that brush so the bleaching effect would be open and scattered, so that the darker layers underneed could still shine trough in some places! A day later the same was don, but now even less places were treated with stronger Lime Sulfur. So now the deadwood has a overall greyish white color with some brighter highlight in tactical places and all the places that lie dipper in the surface are still darker colored in various tones, making it all look natural!
Sorry, that's not the subject ??.

stacy allen muse wrote:Very nice tree !!!
Good Luck at Noelanders.

Thanks Stacy!

abcd wrote:You can also add china ink in lime sulfur to have a dead wood with natural color

Hi abcd,
yes I know, but thanks for that tip. I used that trick a few times on a Juniper and on a Taxus off mine with some sucses, but I used water colors from my paint set instead! But I only ones used ink in Lime Sulfur on this Larch and I did not liked the end resuld at all. Those grayish to grayish white colors looked all out off place on my Larch and looked very artificial, I removed it all a few day's later and than decided to let the wood bleached naturally so that it good get that soft white colored almost transparent layer were the light brown colors off the underlying deadwood shine trough, giving it a yellowish to light brown shine. This natural color appears fast on Larch deadwood, but it rubs off very easy. So to preserve and to enhance those color tones I applied only two layers off highly diluted Lime Sulfur, but I made sure non would run into places were shadows were appropriate, like in the deeper section in that hole that you can see in the above picture or on places were old bark was still hanging on! Later I added some highlight with less diluted Lime Sulfur. I think that this present color is just about what I was aiming for, it tells the story off natural Larch deadwood, but it is not shouting it out to loud!
Thanks for your idea abcd!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Ok, I see that you have studied and you master the subject

Hi everybody,
woke up this morning realy happy realizing that I had won just as many Tour the Frances as Lance Armstrong! And just one more day before I will take off to the Noelanders Trophy to bring in my Larch! The last 5 day's were spent trying to slowly defrost XL, he and the rest off my trees were all frozen solid during the surprise attack from King Winter! Although almost all off my trees were in their winter shelter, noting could protect them from 2 nights with temperatures well below - 10 Degrees! To defrost them I had to place heating in the winter shelter, hoping that it would be enough to slowly defrost them with out doing any harm! Bringing my Larch frozen or even half frozen into the show is no option, the temperature in this venue will become real high from all the people that will visit it and that could be realy harmful! And the melting water that would drip out off the pot could distroy my table as well! That's the problem with midwinter shows, the difference in temperatures could be realy harmful to our trees! During this show it is quit common to see flowers and buts start to open way before their time! So this afternoon I will remove all the snow from the entrance off my winter shelter, that was left on as insulation, to see if my Larch is defrosted, fingers crossed! A other nasty side affect from this freezing weather is that my student Ed and me had planned to load XL in to my car later this afternoon so that we did not have to do this early tomorrow when it is still dark! But I cant leave XL overnight in my car because it will completely freeze over all again! So this means that now poor Ed needs to come at 5 o'clock on the Saturday morning to help me load this big tree in to my car, in the dark and knee deep in the snow over a very slippery path! The things we have to do for our hobby! Wish me luck and I will post pictures and stuff as soon as I get back from Belgium!

Below: some pictures off the trees still outside the winter shelter.







Below: Shot of the still closed winter shelter in the back of my garden.



I cant wait to show XL and to finaly meet all my friends again!!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hi Hans,

Looks like it is much colder on the other side of the Netherlands. We have about 30cm of snow (Close to Enschede) but temps are around -2 only.

Looking forward to seeing your Larch in real live tomorrow!

J.

Hi everybody,
here XL is posing proudly in the photo studio at this years Noelanders. It was a perfect start off a day that ended in misery for me when I had to leave quit sick homeward later that day, missing out on the evening banquet, the second day and all the fun with my dear Bonsai friends!



A sad and depressed cheers,
Hans van Meer.

hope you feel better soon

Sorry to hear that. Hope you fell better and are able to go to zolder today in any case.

To cheer you up, another shot of your tree, this time from the exhibition floor




Cheers,

Jelle.

Thats a shame Hans,the show will have missed you. I love your tree by the way.

andre_f wrote:hope you feel better soon

Smithy wrote:Thats a shame Hans,the show will have missed you. I love your tree by the way.

Thanks guy's it appreciated!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

leatherback wrote:Sorry to hear that. Hope you fell better and are able to go to zolder today in any case.

To cheer you up, another shot of your tree, this time from the exhibition floor




Cheers,

Jelle.

Thanks for posting these pictures Jelle!!!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hi everybody,
I just got out off bed! And here are some pictures that my friend Ed made early in the morning when I was preparing XL for the show.
After just a few hours sleep Ed arrived at 5 in the morning to help me load XL into my car, and that was a tight fit. Than after a two and a half hour drive we arrived in Heusden- Solden in Belgium were Ed and me had to carry XL on this home made stretcher over a long and slippery parking than up some steep stars and than finaly trough a long entrance hall to get into the exhibition hall, were it was nice and warm! The things we have to do for this hobby!

Below: Finally, XL made it there and I am still happy here!



Below: Xl in the right place and I am cleaning off any dirt.



Below: XL in his place and ready for the show! It is funny to see how different he looks in some pictures!



Below: Some famous colleges heading my way to say hallo to us, do you recognize them? This is a hour before the doors were opened for the public and they were taking advantage of this quiet moment before the storm to make pictures of all the trees on display! A few minutes later we all were asked to leave the exhibition area so that they and the other judges could judge the trees in private.



Below: A other picture made by Ed in the photo studio. See how much fuller XL looks with proper lightning! I hope it will look just as good in the up coming commemorative book of this event!



So sad I had to leave Xl behind in the show! But I am very happy that my good friend Teunis Jan Klein will take him home for me to night, so that I can pic XL up at his place later this week, when I hopefully feel a bit better than now!
And although things wend so wrong for me later that first day, I am still glad and proud that I was able to show my XL for the very first time at this prestigious event and to meet up with all my Bonsai friends from around the world!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

I am very happy that you were soon feeling better and managed to take XL at Noelanders, Hans! Good luck!

Hans van Meer. wrote:... ...And although things wend so wrong for me later that day, I am still glad and proud that I was able to show him for the very first time at this prestigious event and to meet up with all my Bonsai friends from around the world!

But like you said, the début of your work at this prestigious stage, is your reward healing any wrong situations.

my nellie wrote:I am very happy that you were soon feeling better and managed to take XL at Noelanders, Hans! Good luck!

Hans van Meer. wrote:... ...And although things wend so wrong for me later that day, I am still glad and proud that I was able to show him for the very first time at this prestigious event and to meet up with all my Bonsai friends from around the world!

But like you said, the début of your work at this prestigious stage, is your reward healing any wrong situations.

Thanks for your support!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

XL looked great Hans,
I hope you get better soon.....lots of it going around these days.
Cheers Graham

Hello Hans,
You almost got me!
Last year all that extreme planking in Belgium and now a new sort of crowd planking on the sales floor!
Very convincing but sadly it became clear this had a different cause.
Nice to hear your XL larch is coming back with the XL larch of Teunis Jan Klein.
Take care.
Sunip

gman wrote:XL looked great Hans,
I hope you get better soon.....lots of it going around these days.
Cheers Graham

Thanks Graham I am glad you like Xl!
Well sadly enough this is not someting I got recently, I wish it was as simple as that!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

sunip wrote:Hello Hans,
You almost got me!
Last year all that extreme planking in Belgium and now a new sort of crowd planking on the sales floor!
Very convincing but sadly it became clear this had a different cause.
Nice to hear your XL larch is coming back with the XL larch of Teunis Jan Klein.
Take care.
Sunip

Hi Sunip,
yes I was in a hurry to get some very important things don and than to get out off there to leave for home! Yes Teunis Jan is one off those Bonsai friends you can allways rely on in time of trouble! Because of him I was able to leave my Larch in the show and to leave my self before things would go compleatly wrong! IO him big time!
Thanks for carring you guy's it's apresiated big time!

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Meanwhile outside in rough next to the freezing parking lot....



Makes you wonder he?

Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hello Hans.
Carlos van de Vaart is de lucky owner.
He waited till wintertime and the pots where solid frozen, to get them over from Italy, this way he prevented root damage.
But there was another big one beside of this one, that will be placed in front of his studio.
Not really the mame section for the elderly is it.
Sunip

Here a video from Photographer Willie Evenepoel at work,every year he succeeds to make a gallery skilfully photographed of more than 100 full colour images for the Noelanders trophy-book.
Gr Ed