90 cm high without the jin
Around 120 years old
Pot by Derek Aspinall
from a tree which was collected in Germany in 1995
This tree I found on a trip with the late Derek Aspinall, my dear friend. Actually Derek saw it first. When we had this one and a few others home he was kind of disappointed to not get it because he had seen it first. Well, such is life if you are taken into the mountains with a gold digger. He shows you a few tricks, but the gold that is found on the trip is his. Anyway, later on this tree became the one with the long Viking deadwood. Lots of folks suggested to cut it down. One could do it and make this an ordinary pine that looks like so many bonsai. But one could also leave it as a statement. By now people got used to modern bonsai where such extravagance is a main feature of a design.
When taking off the wire yesterday I found that the bark came off at several spots. So we decided to take off all bark where it was dead. And that was quite a lot of surface as one can see. Walter die a very good job in fixing the deadwood. Now it has to decay even further, add some patina and then it will be fixed with wood hardener.
Walter hates the long jin, so i made a virtual for him - the last image. Don't panic I will not do it!
