spainbonsai

"the breeze"
By Erasmo García Cartagena The first time that I saw the tree, I fell in love with him. His freightage, his elegance, his angles and his different perspectives captivated me. This supposed a problem: his owner and minder during more than ten years were feeling the same for this olive tree. By fortune for me, we are close friends and our friendship allowed sharing feelings and emotions until the tree was transferred to me, that so much had captivated me.
	When the issue is about of forming a tree, every cultivator of bonsai finishes by being faced to situations that disturb him. According to the solution that each can adopt, determine if a tree go evolving progressively in a way promising, offering in each moment the best of itself through a full and satisfactory contemplation and encouraging perspectives; or on the contrary, that itself east without a plan of adequate execution and consequently we see it always as an eternal broken promise, to say, like a work whose execution manage to be never glimpsed. It occurs at times that costs to determine which will be the adequate front of the tree and its more convenient position in the pot. This circumstance is complicated when a material of great quality offers several solutions and we do not appreciate with facility, which is the best option so the bonsai reveal all the splendour hidden in its nature.
This is the case of our tree. I tried to surpass the impatience to working it by providing him a cultivation of high performance. In the meantime, dedicated good while to contemplate and to study it from all the acceptable perspectives that occurred to me. With care to not break the development, we do not get confuse: in no way, I forced the nature of the tree, but I tried in each station, to take advantage of its possibilities to the maximum.
We should keep in mind that trees are alive beings; do not respect his life cycle or to apply him aggressive interventions, above all if we do not know the characteristics of the species, the state of the plant and the exact timing for strong works, can brake his evolution and even truncate his life. Good test of it, are the "corpses" that remain after important "demonstrations". It happens that the trees have been incapable to resist the tests that have been submitted or, simply, they do not have received the opportune cares and have dried. To obtain an optimum cultivation of the olive, at least in the zone of eastern Spain, suffices with provide to the tree: land, water and fertilizer of great quality in the opportune dose, and always sun and ventilation. During this period, I permitted me to give some touches to the dead wood, respecting always the shaped of the natural elements had done to him. The humid air with particles of sand and salt; the rain, the wind, the cold, the sun, the rock that gave living, they have left us a magnificent work, that no human hands can surpass; and as I was not willing to damage a work of carved natural at length centennial, I limited me to clean that wood and to give him preservative, leaving al discovered the beautiful aspect that already presented you stripes and rings twisted In the old bark of the trunk.
I prepared the tree for the following step. The transplant to a harmonious small special pot according with the elegance of its trunk. This highlighted immediately the magnetic postage of the tree. From the transplant, the olive responded to all the works as I expected. So that I decided to present it to an exposition celebrated in the Museum of Alcobendas in Madrid, where twenty-two trees were selected to represent Spain in the European exposition Gingko 2005. When returning from the exposition, I decided to go on deep in the life of this olive. I began then to give him turns and more turns to seek the best possible front, therefore is so special that offers a lot options. Finally, I decided to change the planted position and to cut the branches to give them form in harmony with the new perspective that I had chosen. Nevertheless, I respected the mature and important branches that configured the olive.
I chose him a pot of the same model, but without varnishing, so that stood out the peasant style of the species and remained the tree just as is found currently. It did a good role. It was chosen among the fifteen better trees of Europe, and received a very pretty prize that consists in a book numbered from the collection of Mr. Iwasaki, who was the judge of said event. The future of this tree rests in maintaining the elegance and the delicate and female postage that offers, maturing in company of its attendant. This olive was "baptized" with the name of "Breeze", and, just as you will have deduced friend’s readers, is one of my favourite.

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