The one eared Aardvark?!?…

A little while ago I was given this shimpaku/Chinese juniper to wire. Instructions were to do no major changes (like angle changes etc) as it was probably going for a quick resell at auction this month.

The main branches didn’t hardly needed wiring it was just a case of cleaning the pads out, wiring them and trimming back where needed.

This was the tree after work.

I tried to style the tree with lot’s of small pads, making larger pads, Instead of just large pads because the tree had a bunjingi/literati feel to it and I thought this would help to enhance this. Otherwise I felt the pads might make the tree look a little heavy. This isn’t usually the way we do it here, normally we style most tree’s with larger pads. Larger pads have a tendency to make a tree look powerful, where as lots of small pads (as they do in my Oyakata’s apprenticeship nursery, Daiju-en) make a tree look a little more delicate and detailed. Really it comes down to taste and different nurseries have different ways of doing it. There are many small details like this that set nurseries and their tree’s apart.
I think it was ok to do, as nothing was said. One of my Senpai seemed to like it anyway and asked for a price, kind of made my day.

And finally yours truly for scale..

I almost forgot.. The reason for the title.. Well I don’t know if it is just the cold, apprenticeship taking its toll, my vivid imagination or what but, it’s what I could see anyway…

Thanks for reading.

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CBC at Aichi-en

Today was a rather unusual day here at the nursery because we had local TV crew from CBC shooting for a sort programme being shown at 9:00am on the 31st of March.

So the last few day’s we have been cleaning up the nursery etc. This included cleaning out the two tea rooms and putting up two tokonoma’s. It was fun to do, as normally it’s a rare thing here as were not a museum.

(Not really the weather for it but, it had cleared off by the time they got here.)

Here are the two Tokonoma displays we helped Oyakata to set up.

An Akamatsu/red pine.

The other on was an Ume. This tree was one of the original founding japanese plums (one of 1000 grown from seed) that were planted by Oyakata’s great-grandfather when he first set up the nursery over 100 years ago. It has never been grafted.

There is also a display area adjacent to one of the Tokonoma’s, a tribute to Oyakata’s farther.

Also in the tea room on display are a few of Oyakata’s pot collection. His farther never collected pot’s, it is a ‘hobby’ that he took up himself. His knowledge is astounding considering it is all he learnt himself.

It was a fun, interesting afternoon and it certainly made a change from the normally daily routine here.

Thanks for reading.