How do we learn?

Mostly we learn from others. Learning typically begins in infancy as we interact with parents, guardians and family members, then continues as we learn from friends and other people with whom we come in contact. Eventually we go to school and learn from teachers. When we go to work at a new job we learn the ropes from others who already work there. If the teachers we had in school were successful in teaching us how to read, we can learn a great deal from books or from reading on the Internet. Many people now learn by watching videos. In every instance we are learning from others because other people write the books and online articles, or make the instructional videos. We also learn by observation of non-human phenomena in our environment, but largely we learn from others.

I should correct myself before going any further. Rather than saying we learn from others, it might be more accurate to say, information is passed along to us by others. Is receiving information the same as learning? We can say it is, but then we have to acknowledge that it is possible to learn things that are not correct, or not entirely sensible. Is it right to call it learning if what you learn is wrong or stupid? And even if what we learn is not necessarily incorrect, the information may be woefully incomplete. There may be much more to learn about any given subject than anyone can possibly teach you — then what?

For example: I now know that taking the formula I learned for styling a bonsai and intentionally introducing into it a new element can produce an unsatisfying result. The reason I know this is because I tried doing it and ended up with a problem child bonsai. Perhaps other people have tried the same thing and experienced a better outcome, but I was not pleased with what I made of the Chinese quince. That dissatisfaction was the start of a learning curve that began with figuring out exactly what bothered me about this particular bonsai and why it happened. The learning curve then continued through several years and right up to the present as I took measures to bring the little tree to a more satisfying form. I might say I learned from this bonsai, although I think the better way to phrase it is to say, with this bonsai I learned by doing.

In early April, 2019, just as leaf buds were starting to break, I took the Chinese quince and removed the upper half of its canopy. The first and second branches were also strongly pruned back. This sequence of photographs shows an in-the-round view of the result (click on any image for full view):

April 2019

To give a more graphic sense of the alteration, let's look again at the image from autumn of 2017. The photo on the left is the tree as it was, while the photo on the right shows an approximation of what was removed:

The restyling session in the spring of 2019 resulted in a giant step backwards for the quince bonsai. The purpose of such a radical overhaul of a tree's design is not to produce positive effect in the short term, but rather to position the tree to grow into a new and better presentation sometime in the future. The challenge is to visualize what is possible and then do what is necessary to begin moving toward that goal. After doing the dramatic removal of the quince's crown, I might have gone into Photoshop or taken up a pencil and a piece of paper to graphically illustrate what I hoped a new crown might look like. I didn't do that because it wouldn't have been worth the time. The tree decides what happens next. I could draw new branching wherever I wanted on my picture and give those branches whatever shape I'd like, but it's not entirely up to me. After I make the cuts it's the tree's turn to be creative.

This is how it works in bonsai — you, as the grower, do something to the tree. Then the tree does something in response to what you did. Then you do something in response to what the tree does. The tree is not an inanimate object. The tree is alive, it has agency and responds to stimuli in its environment. You provide the stimuli, hopefully with intelligent purpose, then you wait and see what happens. If you play the game well, the back and forth relationship goes on like that for years, maybe for decades.

The next two images show the quince in July of 2019, three months after the redesign session. The tree had already responded to the cutting back by flushing out new growth. I had already made my countermove by pruning the new parts, removing some shoots entirely while heading back others, leaving only a portion of what had been produced. Traditional wrap-around wiring was used to adjust the position of numerous branches (click on either image for full view):

July 2019

These images from February of 2021 show the Chinese quince just prior to another work session (click on any image for full view):

February 2021, before

The tree had been allowed to finish out the previous growing season with several months of unrestrained growth. That growth reinvigorated the tree while providing new material for me to work with. Cutting back the quince so strongly in 2019 addressed the issue of excessive height and legginess, but there was another aspect of the tree's structure that still bothered my bonsai eye. The big "Y" shape formed by the sharply shifting angle of the trunk in combination with the strong right angle first branch was still in the middle of the composition, looking as awkward as ever. I wanted to address that now, but short of removing that big branch what could be done?

I decided to mitigate the problem by adding an element of visual interest to mask the openness of the tree's structure in that area. I decided to add a new secondary branch to the number one branch. This called for a graft and the method I opted for is known as a thread graft. The following sequence of images illustrates the thread graft process:

Here is an in-the-round view of the quince at the conclusion of the work session (click on any image for full view):

February 2021, after

Note that in addition to the thread graft, numerous branches are being repositioned by means of guy wires. Green plastic tubing protects against possible damage caused by wire biting in under the pressure being exerted on the branches. Otherwise, shaping of the branches at this point is being accomplished by means of a cut-and-grow pruning technique.

This image from June of 2022 shows the quince just prior to yet another developmental work session:

The results of that session:

These images show the quince as it appeared after a work session in March of 2023:

Close comparison between the above images and those made in June of 2022 will reveal that the tree has once again taken a step backwards, albeit a small one. The canopy is slightly less full, the result of my continuing search for the right structural arrangement. At this point I did not yet know what I wanted the tree to do up there, but I knew I hadn't seen it yet. The process at work here is a sort of visual feeling around, looking at the tree from as many different angles as possible, removing parts that seem unhelpful. Feeling is the right word. This isn't an intellectual process, but rather one of sensing — relying on your visual sense to lock in when what you're seeing has the right feeling.

What feeling is that? It's the feeling of truth, that the structure in front of you is true to what you're attempting to represent. When I do bonsai the truth I'm trying to tell is the truth of trees. I know it when I see it, even if I can't do a very good job of describing it.

These photos from December of 2023 capture the look of our Chinese quince at the end of last year's growing season. Consequently, they also depict how the tree looked at the start of this year:

Note that the thread graft is now complete. The secondary branch that was brought around so it could be threaded through the number one branch has been severed at the point where it made its entry into the drilled hole. The introduced branch now exists as an independent component of the number one branch; a new secondary branch. The remains of the branch that had been brought around for the threading through has been cut short, but not entirely removed. The situation worked out in a wonderfully positive way that hadn't been anticipated. The bending back of that branch gave it an interesting curling shape, and who could have known that little feature would wind up sitting pretty right in the very spot that had always looked so unappealingly empty. The successful thread graft was employed as a means of breaking up the monotony of the extending number one branch, and it does that in a satisfactory way. But the unique character of the curling branch perfectly positioned in the visual void, mirroring the movement of the trunk line framing it, was a matter of pure serendipity. There's nothing wrong with good luck!

This past spring the quince was repotted and, for the first time in at least eighteen years, found itself in a new container. The choice of container was counter-intuitive and made impulsively. It produced an immediate and dramatically different appearance for the bonsai, one to which I'm not yet entirely committed. I am getting used to seeing it this way, though:

To be continued...

The Problem Child - Part 3