My bonsai teacher, Mr Wong, always says, “I don’t worry that my trees won’t grow, but worry only that they become overgrown.”
I had never really known how bad of a problem an overgrown bonsai tree could be until I saw a real-life example last week when I was working with Teacher Wong in the bonsai workshop.
When we grow a bonsai tree, most likely, we have to prune and wire the branches to style the tree in the early stage of its training. And after each round of pruning and wiring, we will just leave the tree alone until its branches have grown thick enough or the tree has developed into the shape we want before we move on to more pruning and wiring.
But sometimes, we may get too busy in life that we have forgotten our bonsai tree until it’s too late…
This is the overgrown bonsai tree. Teacher Wong has probably left the tree alone for too long that the branches have overgrown, becoming too thick, and getting out of proportion with the trunk of the tree.
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Look how unhappy Teacher Wong was when he was cutting off the overgrown branches. Once the branch has overgrown, the problem cannot be undone. And instead of leaving these ugly, unnatural looking branches around, Teacher Wong just cut them away, and waits for the tree to grow some new branches again.
Teacher Wong said that this tree might not be able to survive. If there is no sign of growth in these coming few months, he will have to give up the tree.