Seattle!

Sorry I haven't posted much this week, I was visiting the great city of Seattle.  You would not believe some of the amazing things you can do and see there.

Seattle

 One of the places we visited was the Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection.  This free to the public bonsai collection has over 100 bonsai, but only 60 are on display at a time.  The collection is gorgeous and it is shown all year round, so you can see the trees in every season.  If you are ever in the area I highly recommend visiting.  Their Website

This remarkable bonsai had faces carved into the wood.  Winter really was the best season to view it in.

Close up of some of the faces

This is a Chinese juniper on a sierra juniper.  The trunk is a sierra juniper that is estimated over a thousand years old, the artiest didn't like how the foliage grew so he took a Chinese juniper and grew it onto the trunk producing this beautiful bonsai

Here is the information card on it

This bonsai was the last tree gathered from the wild by artist Masharu Imazumi.  In its native environment near lake tahoe this juiper had been battered by seasonal snow and summer drought until most of it's massive trunk had died leaving only a few lower branches alive.  Mr. Izumi carved away much of the dead wood to make a more gradual and graceful transition from the base to the top.  Then he arranged the branches into a downward positions to vividly suggest the impact of the elements through time. 

Taipei bonsai artist Amy Liang Chang developed this tree into a root-over-rock style bonsai by binding it's long flexible roots tightly against a piece of coral limestone, which is embedded into a thin disk of concrete to prevent it's toppling out of the pot.  

The information card 

This spectacular landscape penjing was created from a piece of root cut from a tree that had grown under a wall and begun to damage it.  After being cut the old section of root began to die but new young roots followed it down to the soil.  Guanfshou penjing master Rong Yao Xie realized the potential and extracted the root section,  He laid it on it's side and trained sprouts from the live roots into individual trees.  As the original root decayed the remaining structure attained a harmonious visual balance with the trees that suggested a natural bridge and the present design evolved.