A  FULL IMMERSION AND LIGHT WORKSHOP .

(Umeä river in evening )

The first July '99 we come to Umeä for a full immersion workshop with our friends of deep north , we known kind , nice and cheerful persons with whom we spend three pleasant wonderful days ; i hope only for a moment to revive those times even for to thank all and in particular Stefan for his marvellous welcome .

Giovanni and I we was proud to share our  bonsai experiences with :

 A great  thanks even to Fereshteh , we enjoyed with her fine and exotic cookery .

The first bonsai showed above was a very ugly tree without style and shape , some magic retouching by Giovanni and look how  it changed completely above all if you will put in a half-moon pot . I'm truly sorry to not have taken of it a picture before ; unfortunately i made some errors like that even with more important trees : please forgive my stupid mind too busy for to follow my master and   translate his answers to many questions and not enough ready to photograph the essential things .

Here Erik is valuing that juniper searching a good way to design it , Giovanni looks amused and curious , he knew already what to do with it :

Giovanni told Erik to dig a hollow on juniper bark ,to put there strong wire and after raffia , so it would have been possible to bend the trunk and reduce its lenght . Unfortunately i forgot to take the final picture , i asked all friends if someone made it , nobody , so Stefan sent me this one ugly picture , please excuse me for quality , i hope to show you another better picture as soon as possible:

Giovanni works on Anders' pinus sylvestris  .

This  pinus sylvestris had a horizontal nebari too stiff , the better front choice was so : now the branches are much more lively and with a better bend they will be nearer to trunk ; the tree has been only coarsely build because it was collected from a few time .

Bjorn and Henrik works on pinus sylvestris : after some branches cuttings ,the needles have been lightened leaving only two or three couples of them ; once all fine branches have been wired Giovanni designed them .

  Now we will see another Anders' pine with a bad horizontal nebari :

We can see the bad nebari ,Giovanni told to Anders that he must ,  once repotted his pine ,to see what root will be strongest ,then other root would have been cutted or at least much more lighted .

This other pine sylvestris step-by-step until final result : the jin has been made because the tree was too high  for to lower apex at least optically .

This other pine was too stiff and upright , so Giovanni , once looked roots , decided to cut roots in half :

The penultimate picture shows where root has been broken .

The broken root is clearer here ; where there is wound it is necessary  mastic to protect it .Last two pictures show Giovanni who paints how foliage should do : in that occasion ,since he worked roots , one must not touch branches until next year .

Above Giovanni searches to bring nearer branch to trunk and pot .

Now you can see other trees :

                - Literati -                  

( thank you so much to Henrik Gistvall ,the last two pictures are here for his kind courtesy ).

Before to end our visit to UMEÄ , i want share with you some tree in Anders and Stefan Gardens:

ANDERS :

STEFAN :

With this last tree we left the Sweden happy to have known so nice people , we enjoyed for endless days during summer and exquisite Welcome from Stefan's Parents and all sharers to workshop , thanks again to you all .

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