We still continue to have a lot of people who died of the coronavirus in the world. And a lot of people died from the floods and landslides in the rainy season in Japan again and again. The extreme heat of summer continued to give great damages to not only a lot of people who lost their houses because of the floods and landslides but also other people since the rainy season had been over at the start of August. The maximum temperature was more than 40 degrees C in some districts. They didn’t use any home appliances and couldn’t have bathes though their bodies were dirty for a long time. And besides, the minimum temperature was more than 25 degrees C at night, which we call “Tropical night.” I would like to hope that they will regain their daily lives as soon as possible and pray for the dead people.
Since we gave some rose trees to one of our friends and sold a lot of them, I transplanted peonies and tree peonies in the place where a lot of the rose trees had been dug out last year. And their bottoms didn’t have the sun light in November, December and January. Therefore, these flowers are a little bit smaller than before. And I grew green onions and egg plants in the place where I had dug out peonies and tree peonies and we enjoyed water melons which were grown in other places where I had dug out a lot of rose trees. But we had to build the strong structures against monkeys lest they should rob us of them.
The colour changes of flowers in my young Kogetsu
Though I introduced the colour changes of flowers of my young Kogetsu in the web site whose date is 5th August 2019, I would like to introduce it again to compare the flowers of them on the photos which I took because I think it is very interesting and useful to see them. To come to the point, young Kogetsu trees never have the same colour arrangement of flowers every year. Therefore, we have to consider pruning them after blooming. If a tree had some red flowers, it is very important to attach colour rings to the shoots and to remove them when we prune it after blooming not to make it increase the number of red flowers, and to remove the red shoots whenever we saw them lest it should have a lot of fukurin (white jewel border).
But when young Kogetsu trees were completed as bonsai, since they are asked to have the good colour arrangement of flowers, we had better make them have some red flowers and some fukurin. And their numbers depend on your preference. But it is a fact that, once a young Kogetsu has a lot of red flowers and fukurin, nobody will make it have a lot of white flowers.
Section 1. The changes of flowers and styles in my young Kogetsu
I introduced 8 young trees of Kogetsu in my web site from 2013 to 2019. It is because I continue to have the strong interest in the changes of colour arrangement of their flowers and the process of their growing to bonsai that I introduced them 6 times for 6 years and do so in 2020, too.
And I have other strong aims. Since 7 trees of young Kogetsu are about 14 years old though Kogetsu A is 5 years older than they are and I wrote a lot of things about these trees, if a bonsai enthusiast accepted my methods and grew the saplings of the varieties which have multi-coloured flowers from the cuttings, he or she will be able to enjoy a lot of beautiful flowers in 3 or 5 years. It is very easy to get the good saplings if you got the new sprouts as cuttings by the small red-striped flowers and inserted them into the Kanuma soil. But whenever you find out any red sprouts in the seedling tray or small pots, you have to throw them into the garbage box or burn them after pulling out them from there.
Though a lot of large satsuki trees are expensive, if you can get good cuttings, the saplings will be very cheap. I would like to make a lot of people enjoy the beautiful flowers of satsuki in the world. But I am very sad to see a lot of satsuki trees which don’t have flowers of all colours that each variety has to have.
And besides, it is very healthy to grow satsuki trees in the pots. Since a lot of people would like to see their beautiful flowers, they don’t dislike handling the soil. This is a good working to make the body and mind healthy. In fact, I could not dream that I would live at the age of 78 when I left the hospital at the age of 29, where I had stayed in bed for more than 5 months.
Frightened by the fear of death, I had a plan to grow satsuki trees from the cuttings and to give a half of them to our friends, which I thought would continue to live even if I had died. Since my father produced a lot of green tea near Kyoto city, I knew a lot of things about tea trees well which has the same properties as satsuki trees have. Though I made about eight hundred saplings, a lot of them were bad saplings which didn’t have good flowers that each variety had to have. It is because I didn’t know how to take the good cuttings. I gave a lot of them to our friends as garden trees and had to dispose of a lot of them. Therefore, I wouldn’t like to make each of you make the same errors as I did.
If you did read these articles in the archives of my web site, you would understand how to grow Kogetsu from the cuttings. This is the reason why I often introduced how to grow the satsuki trees which have multi-coloured flowers. It is very easy to take cuttings from the satsuki trees which have single-coloured flowers and grow them. Nobody makes such errors as I did about the satsuki trees which had multi-coloured flowers if he or she reads my web site carefully.
Their dates and titles are as follows.
The first date is 14th June 2013: How to Grow the Saplings and Young Trees of Kogetsu: http://macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2013.06.14/satsuki-1.html
The second date is 15th July 2016: How to Prune the Young Trees of Kogetsu After Blooming: http://macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2016.07.15/satsuki-1.html
The third date is 7th November 2016: To Prune Young Trees in Midsummer Again or Not to Do: http: //macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2016.11.07/satsuki-1.html
The fourth date is 10th September 2017: The Results of Pruning of Young Kogetsu in Midsummer: http://macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2017.09.10/satsuki-1.htm
The fifth date is 8th July 2018: Repotting of Young Kogetsu in March: http://macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2018.07.08/satsuki-1.htm
The sixth date is 15th August 2019: The Colour Changes of Multi-coloured Flowers of Satsuki: http://macknisi.sakura.ne.jp/2019.08.15/satsuki-1.html
A. Kogetsu A
Though I introduced the photo of two-trunked Kogetsu A which I had taken on 3rd June 2012 in my web site whose date is 27th November 2012, I would like to introduce the left photo of this tree which I took on 30th May 2011. These flowers are very beautiful though it doesn’t have any red flowers. I like this colour arrangement of flowers of Kogetsu because I hope that it will have some red flowers in the near future. Since it has been planted in a terracotta pot, it is about 10 years old.
I took the second photo of the flowers on 31st May 2013. This tree has much better colour arrangement of flowers than before. I repotted it in a bonsai pot after wiring and pruning it. Therefore, the whole figure of this tree is very good when I took the third photo on 24th May 2016. But since it is not in full bloom, you cannot judge the colour arrangement of flowers perfectly. Unfortunately, the main trunk was broken by the May storm at the start of May 2017: it fell down from the shelf. You can see the miserable figure on the right photo which was taken on 29th May 2017.
Fortunately, since I found the good new shoot, I made it into the core of the main trunk by wiring it after pruning the tree drastically. Judging from the left photo which was taken on 21st June 2017, its whole figure is very clumsy. And it was amazing that the scar had been cured by the medicine and plaster in a year. And I repotted it on 18th March 2018. Since the shoot of the core grew very long, you can see a good style of a young tree on the second photo which was taken on 20th May 2018 though it doesn’t have a lot of flowers. You can see two flowers of white throat on the branch of main trunk on this photo, but cannot see any of them on the third photo which was taken on 29th May 2019.
And you cannot see them on the right photo which I took on 28th May 2020, either. Comparing these two photos with those in 2011 and 2013, you can understand the changes of colour arrangement of flowers. I think the colour arrangement of flowers of this tree was better year by year because I removed the red shoots and the shoots which had red flowers. Since I like the variety of Kogetsu which have a lot of white flowers and the taper of the main trunk will be much better in 2021 when I will repot it, this two-trunked Kogetsu A is one of my favourites.
B. Kogetsu B
This young tree of Kogetsu B has several white flowers on the left photo which was taken on 25th May 2013. Since I thought that it would have a good colour arrangement of flowers in the near future, though it had some long branches, I styled it to make a two-trunked bonsai. It was about 7 or 8 years old. The style is simple on the second photo which I took on 6th June 2013. And I repotted it in a bonsai pot after wiring and pruning it in June 2014. Though it has passed two years since repotting, you can see the whole figure of this tree on the third photo which I took on 20th May 2016. Though it doesn’t have a lot of flowers, it seems to have a good colour arrangement of flowers. Now the style and the colour arrangement of flowers are good on the right photo which was taken on 31st May 2017.
Since I repotted this tree in June 2017, you cannot see a lot of flowers on the left photo which was taken on 20th May 2018. But it seems to have a good colour arrangement of flowers. It has a good colour arrangement of coloured leaves on the second photo which I took on 20th December 2018. Therefore, it has a lot of beautiful flowers on the third photo which I took on 29th May 2019. I think that the colour arrangement of flowers is very good. And I repotted it in March 2020. I think that the colour arrangement of flowers isn’t very good on the right photo which was taken on 29th May 2020. It is because this tree has a lot of coloured flowers. If we prune a young Kogetsu drastically when repotting it, will the colour arrangement of flowers be able to change drastically? I would like to see it in the next season carefully.
C. Kogetsu C
Since this Kogetsu C has good flowers as a sapling to make it into a bonsai on the left photo which I took on 31st May 2013, I styled it into a two-trunked tree after blooming. Though it doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the second photo which was taken on 22nd May 2016, the colour arrangement of flowers is good. After blooming I repotted it in a bonsai pot, but the style as a two-trunked tree is not good on the third photo because I didn’t restyle the main trunk with the thick wire. Though it has a lot of white flowers, it has only one red flower and a fukurin on the right photo which was taken on 29th May 2017. Therefore, the colour arrangement of flowers isn’t very good, but I can hope that it will be a good bonsai which will have a good colour-arrangement of flowers in 6 years. I wired the main trunk after blooming.
The colour arrangement of flowers of Kogetsu C and the style of this tree are good on the left photo which I took on 20th May 2018. Though these flowers are beautiful and the colour arrangement of flowers is good, the whole figure of this tree is a little bit clumsy because it has so many flowers on the second photo which was taken on 29th May 2019. Since I removed a lot of flower buds when I repotted it in March 2020, it does not have a lot of flowers on the third and right photos which were taken on 27th May 2020. The third one is the front side of this tree and the right one is the back side. I think that it has a very good style and colour arrangement of flowers now. But the whole figure is a little bit clumsy because this pot is a little bit large. The whole figure is better on the photo in 2018 than that in 2020. I think that I have to make the main trunk higher than now or change the pot when I will repot it.
D. Kogetsu D
Since this Kogetsu D has good flowers as a sapling to make it into a bonsai on the left photo which I took on 25th May 2013, I styled it into a two-trunked tree after blooming. Since it doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the second photo which was taken on 22nd May 2016, I cannot judge whether the colour arrangement of flowers is good or not. But it doesn’t have any red flowers and fukurin but has some red-striped flowers. Therefore, I thought that it was a good material to make it a bonsai. When you see the flowers on the third photo which I took on 31st May 2017, you can know that the colour arrangement of flowers is good though it is not very good. When I repotted it in a bonsai pot after blooming, I wired the main trunk and restyled it. You can see a good style of this tree on the right photo which was taken on 18th March 2018.
Repotting this tree in March, I removed a lot of flower buds. Therefore, it doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the left photo which I took on 25th May 2018. But the colour arrangement of flowers is good. Since it isn’t in full bloom on the second photo which was taken on 29th May 2019, you cannot judge whether the colour arrangement of flowers is good or not at this point. But, judging from the swelling flower buds and small stripped flowers, you can guess that the colour arrangement of flowers will be good when it will be in full bloom. The third photo is its front side and the right one is the back side. These photos were taken on 29th May 2020. The colour arrangement of flowers and the style are good. Comparing the colour arrangement of flowers in 2020 with that in 2016, the former is much better than the latter.
E. Kogetsu E
The left photo is the front side of Kogetsu E. Though this tree doesn’t have a lot of flowers, the colour arrangement of flowers is good. But you can see some flowers of white throat on the second one which is the back side. I removed the branch which had them to make it have a good colour arrangement of flowers after blooming. Both photos were taken on 21st May 2016. Therefore, you cannot see any red flowers on the third photo which I tool on 29th May 2017. And the colour arrangement of flowers and the style are good. The right photo is the whole figure of this tree after I repotted it in a bonsai pot on 18th March 2018. The style isn’t very good.
Since I removed a lot of flower buds in March, this tree doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the left photo which I took on 27th May 2018. But the colour arrangement of flowers is good. Though it has a lot of swelling flower buds on the second photo which was taken on 29th May 2019, since it doesn’t have a lot of flowers. you cannot judge whether the colour arrangement of flowers is good or not at this point. But, judging from the swelling flower buds and several flowers, you can guess that the colour arrangement of flowers will be good when it will be in full bloom. The third photo is its front side and the right one is the back side. These photos were taken on 23rd May 2020. The colour arrangement of flowers and the style are good at this point. Comparing the colour arrangement of flowers in 2020 with that of the back side in 2016, the former is much better than the latter. My removing the branch which had some flowers of white throat in 2016 had a good result.
F. Kogetsu F
This Kogetsu F is about 9 years old because the bottom of the trunk is a little bit thick on the left photo which was taken on 31st May 2013. Though this tree doesn’t have a lot of flowers, since it has a fukurin and some red-striped flowers, it is a good material to make it a bonsai. It has a good colour arrangement of flowers on the second photo which I took on 21st May 2016. I pruned and repotted it after blooming. You can see the whole figure on the third photo which was taken on 26th May 2017. Though these flowers are beautiful, the colour arrangement of flowers isn’t good. If I continue to grow it without removing some shoots or branches of red flowers and flowers of fukurin and white throat, it will increase the number of those flowers year by year. Since I repotted it, you can see the whole figure on the right photo which was taken on 18th March 2018. The style isn’t bad.
Since I removed a lot of flower buds when repotting it in March, this tree doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the left photo which I took on 25th May 2018. And the colour arrangement of flowers is better than that in 2017. But it isn’t good on the second photo which I took on 29th May 2019 though these flowers are beautiful. It is because a lot of flowers have large red stripes and some flowers are white throats. These mean that this tree will increase the number of red flowers and flowers of fukurin and white throat year by year.
But the colour arrangement of flowers isn’t bad on the third and right photos which I took on 23rd May 2020. The third one is the front side of this tree and the right one is the back side. Since it had a lot of long shoots which disturbed the whole figure, I trimmed a half of them and removed the rest in April. Therefore, it does not have a lot of flowers. And I have to continue to remove the shoots and branches which have wide red-striped flowers and flowers of fukurin and the white throat to make it have a good colour arrangement of flowers.
G. Kogetsu G
Since this Kogetsu G has been planted in a terracotta pot and the bottom of the trunk is a little bit thick on the left photo which was taken on 21st May 2016, it is about 9 years old. Though this tree has a lot of swelling flower buds, since it doesn’t have a lot of flowers, you cannot judge the whole colour arrangement of flowers at this point. But you can guess that it will have a good colour arrangement of flowers when it will be in full bloom. Though the style isn’t very good, these flowers are beautiful on the second photo which was taken on 29th May 2017. And the colour arrangement of flowers is good. The third photo is the whole figure of this tree when I repotted it in a bonsai pot on 18th March 2018. The style isn’t very good because the top is weak. Though I removed a lot of flower buds when repotting it, it has a lot of flowers whose colour arrangement is good.
Though this tree doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the left photo of the front side, since it has a lot of them on the second one of the back side, judging from a lot of swelling flower buds, you can guess that it will have a good colour arrangement of flowers when it will be in full bloom. These photos were taken on 29th May 2019. The third photo is its front sided and the right one is the back side. These photos were taken on 28th May 2020. Since the colour arrangement of flowers is very good, these flowers are very beautiful. But the style isn’t good because the trunk base line isn’t good. Therefore, this tree won’t be one of my favourites.
H. Kogetsu H
Though this Kogetsu H doesn’t have a lot of flowers, the colour arrangement of flowers is good on the left photo which I took on 21st May 2016. Therefore, though the style isn’t good, I decided to keep it to use it as a material in my web site. These flowers are beautiful on the second one which was taken 29th May 2017. And the style isn’t good because the trunk base line isn’t good on the third photo when I repotted it on 18th May 2018. Though I removed a lot of flower buds when repotting it, since it has a lot of flowers, you can judge that it has a good colour arrangement of flowers.
The left photo is the front side of this tree. And the second one is the back side. These photos were taken on 29th May 2019. Though it doesn’t have a lot of flowers on the left photo, since it has a lot of them on the second one, judging from a lot of swelling flower buds, you can think that it has a good colour arrangement of flowers. These flowers are very beautiful on the third photo of its front side and the right one of the back one. And the colour arrangement of flowers is very good. But the style isn’t good. These photos were taken on 28th May 2020.
Judging from the above first photos of each tree, I think you could understand that any saplings or young trees of Kogetsu didn’t have some red flowers. I disposed of the saplings which had some red flowers and some fukurin in the web site whose date is 14th June 2013 because they weren't suitable to the saplings for bonsai. And you cannot see some red flowers on the above photos though you can see some flowers of fukurin and white throat. But when these trees will be completed in several years, I am sure all of them will some red flowers. It is a fact that they have the genes of red flower because I have removed the shoots which had red flowers for a long time.
Section 2. The flowers in my gardens in August
The maximum temperature was 38 degrees C in Ise city on 17th August 2020 though it was more than 40 degrees C in some other cities. Since it continued to be more than 35 degrees C from 12th to 18th, I couldn’t work in the garden in the daytime and at the same time this extreme heat gave me a great damage because it is my first experience in my life. Though I had endured the temperature of 33 degrees C from my childhood, I couldn’t endure this extreme heat. Since it was 34 degrees C in Ise last year, I felt that I was happy. It is because the maximum temperature in Ise always is much lower than that in Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo in summer and it always is much warmer in Ise than in those cities in winter.
Though the rainy season had been over in Ise on the 1st August, it was on 27th that we had a lot of rain in Ise. I had to water all satsuki bonsai, other plants in the pots, satsuki trees in the nursery and gardens and other trees in the gardens. It took me more than three hours in the very early morning to give a lot of water to the satsuki trees in the nursery, garden and pots and other plants in the pots every two days, and about 50 minutes to water the satsuki trees in the pots and the plants in the pots every morning. And it took me a half day to water the garden trees on Sundays. These jobs were very hard to me in summer because I didn’t have any strong powers to do so in my body in mid-summer now.
But though the weather was very severe in mid-summer, when I saw a lot of flowers in my garden, they often gave me some fresh feeling and made me forget the fatigue for a while. I would like to ask you to see and enjoy them.
A. The flowers of Crape myrtle
A lot of crape myrtle trees continue to have flowers for more than two months. My white crape myrtle tree always shows me very beautiful flowers through August though it begins to have flowers in the middle of July. Though I never give it any fertilisers, since it has spread the roots to the rose garden to which I always give a lot of fertilisers, the shoots are so long that some of them cannot endure the weights of flowers.
And this red crape myrtle tree begins to have flowers at the end of June. It was called “Hyakujikko” in Japan which means that it continues to has red flowers for one hundred days. These flowers are beautiful in July and August. Since red crape myrtle trees are often seen in the temples, some of Japanese don’t like to plant it in the garden. Since they continue to have a lot of flowers for a long time when it is very hot in summer, the whole figures with a lot of flowers give us the energy to live and the power to endure the extreme heat through the mid-summer, for they are so strong that they seldom die in summer.
B. The flowers of hibiscus manihot
We cannot see these flowers in a lot of gardens of other people. Though this plant continues to have a lot of beautiful flowers for a long time, it grows so large in a large pot that it is difficult to carry it to the safe place when we have a typhoon. But it is popular in some people because it is the material for a medicine. If we sink the new flowers in the shochu (a kind of liquor) which has an alcohol concentration of 35 degrees, it is a good medicine for insect bites and cuts. I made some bottles. And the juice of roots is so sticky that it has been used to make Japanese paper since the old time.
C. The flowers of rose
We have about 50 rose trees in the rose garden because we gave some rose trees to one of our friends and sold more than 50 trees last year, Though I and my wife had decided to sell all trees at first, she insisted that she would like to keep a half of them when she saw the beautiful flowers last autumn. And since we always make them have flowers from May to January, we can see the flowers in summer. But they are smaller than those in spring and autumn. And their colours aren’t pure. But we can enjoy them.
D. Th flowers of lily
We can see a lot of this kind of lily in our garden and around the house. Thy are so strong that I often have to pull out a lot of sprouts in the pots and garden. But since the flowers are beautiful in summer, I didn’t pull out more than10 sprouts. You can see a huge lily which has 6 flowers in the courtyard on the photos. Though these flowers are beautiful, it is so huge that I think it doesn’t match the courtyard.
E. The flowers of gourd
The flowers of gourd are unhappy because they are beautiful at night. Since it begins to flower at about 6:00 in the evening, though it spreads them at 6:30, the ends of petals bow because the air still keeps the very high temperature. Therefore, we have to go to see them at night with a light. Since I gave them fertilisers only twice, the leaves aren’t dark green.
F. Broomrape (Aeginetia indica)
These are the strange flowers of broomrape. It seems to be a kind of parasitic plant. I was given these two kinds of cultivated varieties of Japanese silver grass 40 years ago. Having the very short leaves, these varieties can be used as accents at the bonsai shows if we remove a lot of old leaves and make them beautiful. Therefore, we can enjoy them twice.
G. The flowers of fringed orchid
I have 5 varieties of fringed orchid. I could plant only 8 bulbs in March whose variety is called “Ama no kawa” which means the Milky Way. But they didn’t have good flowers. All varieties of fringed orchid are so vulnerable to illness that all of them in the pots died perfectly twice for 40 years. Though I didn’t make any of them die in 2020, a considerable number of them died every year. Therefore, I have to spray 6 kinds of germicides with two kinds of insecticides every ten days. It is the problem that I cannot spray them while satsuki trees have flowers for about a month. I never use the old Kanuma soil and sphagnum when I plant the bulbs after applying them to the germicide solution. I think that it is most beautiful if a bulb is planted in a pot though it is beautiful if two or more bulbs are planted in a pot.
But I was sad to see all fringed orchids having much smaller flowers than always. Though I don’t know the reason why they had very small flowers, I think it is sure that the extreme summer heat gave them great damages.
I always plant a lot of bulbs in large pots to secure a lot of bulbs for next year. When I planted 10 bulbs or more in a pot, if the height of them is same, these flowers look like a clump. Therefore, I always plant some large bulbs, some middle ones and some small ones when I use a middle bonsai pot to plant a considerable number of bulbs. But when I plant several bulbs in a terracotta pot, I use the same size of them. Though I planted them in about 40 pots last March, I sold a terracotta pot where seven fringed orchids were planted for 1,500 yen and brought 4 pots to one of our friends to put two of them in the rooms and two in the pearl shop.
The archives
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