I haven't worked on the trees much recently, but there have been some insertions and deletions to the collection that I never documented. Check out this monster:

 My spring collection craze culminated in the acquisition of this mountain hemlock. It was a real pain to get off the mountain, but I had help from a friend. It's been about two months since I planted it, in the ground for now, since I didn't have a big enough pot, and it seems to be in good health. Some few needles have been lost, but the entire tree is coming out in new growth, which you can see from the picture.

The other new addition to my bench is this smaller western hemlock, though still plenty big by my standards:

It too is in good health, though I haven't styled it hardly at all, only the most rudimentary adjustments have been made. Several large and unsightly nubs still remain as anchor points, that will greatly improve the tree when removed. Overall though it has great promise, with a large shapely trunk, plenty of foliage, and health growth.

Next, witness a failure and a mystery at once, my poor poor hemlock.

Alas, it is the same tree. During the hot weather I was pleased that, while some of the other trees were suffering, this fellow was putting out new shoots. However, the upper branches died almost overnight, crumbing off in my hands when I brushed against them, leaving only the smaller branches from below. I now wish I hadn't pruned so many of the smaller low branches away.

I'm mystified by this development, because it appeared to be in good health before the massive die-back, and whats more, the remaining fronds have exploded in shoots. Here is a picture of one of them:

I really don't understand what happened, or why.

Lastly, I have some developments on my favorite hemlock. I worried over this tree during our very, very hot spell. I wanted it so badly to live, and it kept looking worse, yellower and yellower. However, it didn't seem to be losing needles, and the needles remained cool and silky to the touch. I wondered then if it was suffering from lack of nutrients. I planted it in largely orchid bark, so it seemed at least sort of likely. To test, I took a good amount of my slow release fertilizer pellets and scattered them over the tray, and in the last week and a half the tree has responded by improving its color. Not all of it is the healthy green I want to see, but I'm hopeful that it soon will be.

One thing does concern me. This tree has not put out any new growth this season. I can see buds on the tips of many fronds, but they lack the silver bulge that heralds imminent growth. I have pinched a few sacrificial buds and found their insides green, but I do not know if any will sprout. Is it possible that the tree never sprouted because of lack of nutrients? Might it yet? My other mountain hemlock only started growing last week. I'm having difficulty finding resources relevant to this issue. I hope that, in the event there isn't any growth this season, the tree can survive until next year. It seems plausible, since the majority of hemlock needles on any given tree are clearly not from the last years growth, but it is not a great sign.

Dad's Fukien has Flowers!

 I bought this Fukien Tea online, from amazon, for my Dad's birthday. At Christmas he seemed to like my Mom's elm so much, that I thought a tree would be a good gift. Every year the gift ideas get scarcer and scarcer. When it arrived, however, I was disappointed.






This picture was taken several weeks after the tree's arrival. Still with barely any leaves, and portions of foliage turning black, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I bought a Fukien Tea knowing that my Dad would enjoy flowers, and knowing that it was a species capable of surviving indoors. However, I somehow missed the mountains of precautions regarding their delicate temperaments, and their susceptibility to pests.

Still I held out hope. I raked apart the root brick with a fork, planted it into this over-sized pot, and gave it plenty of water. I also added some slow release Bonsai fertilizer pellets, and it came to life! With a little string and wire, it now looks like this:



It's growing lovely little flowers all over, a little hard to see from the picture, and shows no signs of stopping.

Shore pine styling

Here's a small shore pine. I grabbed it after very little inspection for three reasons. It had an ok trunk with cool bark, it was growing in an area that actually encouraged roots, and it had a whole lot of foliage.

 

It took me a fair bit of thinking to decide what I wanted to do with this tree. Looking closely, I saw that the biggest horizontal branch was just as big as the ascending trunk, and that it really just looked like the letter T if you took a step back. This was unsatisfactory. It was also very long, with many secondary branches, and many buds, so I took this step to draw it away from the T shape, and condense the form of the tree.

  

It still didn't look right to me. The top left branch was coming out too far. There was also a wonderfully ramified little cluster being hidden inside the crown, and I didn't like the dead branch on top. I saw a nice back branch that I wanted to pull up to be the new apex, while chopping off most of the current one, but that seemed drastic, even though it would look good. In the end I cut off the dead top branch, and used the stump to pull the top left branch up vertically. I pulled the end of that branch down to improve the silhouette, and I spun the tree 180 degrees to make use of the "back" branches.

This is the result, which I am pretty pleased with. It is much improved, but for some reason not yet satisfactory. I will fiddle with it no more until next year: a time I pray it lives to see.

Also, here is the small new planting area I created. This used to be a mound of dirt, run through with salmon berries, but I dug it all apart and made a spot for growing too-small trees.  If you look closely you can see a few tiny ones that I had, for lack of another place, in pots.

More muskeg shots

 Click image to enter full-res slideshow mode.

New workspace

Until now I've been working and re-potting my trees on a table made of stacked up rope spools and blocks of wood. Trees not currently being worked on were quickly filling up deck space, or being rat-holed around the yard. But, no longer! Yesterday my dad and I built a new bench! Here it is: already home to a few trees.

In frame you can see my ridiculously large and ugly alder. This tree was blown over onto the beach, and I couldn't resist dragging it home. New leaves are opening on the few branches I was able to save, and I think it will pull through, given the tenacity of the alder. For the future I'm envisioning a broom/savannah top on the main trunk, which will be cut where the stump emerges. Hopefully I can find someone to carve that rightmost branch into a person emerging from the tree.

I collected this spruce today. The roots are amazingly cool, just somewhat hidden for now. When I saw this tree int he ground I was planning on eventually cutting just above where there's a mini-spruce growing off the trunk (about half way up). I left more branches above it though, to help it recover from the move and chop. But, it was hideous. So I rashly began styling the upper branches to improve the silhouette for the appreciable duration before I removed the top. However, after doing so I kind of like what I made. Almost makes me want to keep it. But the trunk is perhaps not thick enough to justify that kind of height. We will see.

I wasn't going to wire this tree at all, but I got the wire out for a few other things, and I got carried away. I know it is not recommended to style trees just after they have been collected, but the styling was not drastic, and lets be real, sitka spruce is invincible. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

The other things were putting some initial movement into these two small trees (alder and hemlock).

Which I know, I know, should not be in pots, but I don't have anywhere to put them just now.

Aaaaand, I used some soft rubber, wire, and string, to make a sling for the problem area on my wonderful mountain hemlock:

A few comparisons

I've been sitting on this spruce since I collected it, getting more and more unsure that it was actually worth having. It had a lot of elements that I liked, but I wasn't sure how to bring them together. This is the start I made:

That front branch will need to be adjusted more, and the lower trunk crossing branch too. I had them the way I wanted them before pulling the tip down with a wire, and they are no longer in alignment. I thought of just chopping the front branch off, but I can always do that later

I want to keep it so I can try developing a line that resembles a favorite stance of my old teacher Steve Smith (R):

This is not a great picture for showing the side profile, but it's the best I could find. I want the tree to evoke a forward piercing into an oncoming force. The back branches that form a bow do this well, but they are not obvious from the picture. The could be made more obvious by trimming, and I will do some trimming eventually, but for now I'll let it keep all its parts.

EDIT: I was not as patient as I tried to seem, I cut of the branch. The more I looked I realized that the forward intent, but backwards sweep seemed like a bird or a dragon to me.

I wish I had a picture of this hemlock as I originally had it. It was impossible to see into it because of the branches, it was a lot taller, and it had a whole extra dead trunk. Alas, I will start the progression from here.

After much string and wire I got it into this rough shape. In the future the stubs of the trunks will be trimmed down and hidden with foliage, but for now I am using them as anchor points for my strings.

I am sure experienced bonsai people would find my string techniques quite awful, but they seem to be doing the job for me, and string is cheaper than wire.


He is my dad's Fukien Tea, it has become much healthier under my care, but he doesn't want me to cut off the long branch, or any branches for that matter.

  

Thankfully the foliage is getting dense enough to hid the ugliness of the branches. In time maybe I can make the long branch acceptable.

Here's a Chinese elm. The second picture may look unruly, because of new growth, but I consider it an improvement. I've been trying to order the branches into a more natural shape, and expand the crown the crown laterally. I also decreased the crown of the tree quite a bit before this picture was taken.

Here it is now, after changing the soil and with many adjustments made to flatten the large branches.