The work shown in last week’s post was done in late June. By this week, the wires were completely buried, so I took a few minutes and unwired the tree, did a little cleanup, and rewired a couple branches. These things grow like weeds, so I better hurry up and post this one, or we’ll get stuck talking about it for months, right?
Before:
Unwired:
Pruned lightly, and a couple branches wired to the right side:
The trunk shows a bit more, and some primary branching structure is becoming apparent, though I’d like to shorten and round out the profile some more…
Ok, enough of the ficus, right?
I have been studying bonsai since 1994, in an ever-increasing obsessive fashion. In our last 5 years prior to moving from Iowa to Alabama pursuing a career in the foodservice industry, my bonsai collection was limited to a few varieties that could survive brutal winters outside, or winters under dim light in the dank basement of our humble duplex...my wife puts up with a lot. Including the trailer hitch I put on our brown 1983 Chrysler New Yorker to pull a U-Haul full of trees to Nashville for a 3-month stop along the career path that led us to Alabama. 12 years later, we no longer have the New Yorker; and not a single one of those trees remain on my bench, having given the last holdout to a new club member this summer. I prefer collecting native trees and buying the classical species used in Japan, feeding organic, and reading everything I can get my hands on.
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