Little Laceleaf Maple trees for my Girls

Last year I'd put 2 tiny Privet into small pots for my 2 little girls - unfortunately their trees were among my losses from our vicious winter (and my poor 1st attempt at winterizing my trees).  So, I replaced them with a few saplings from a large number of seedlings I planted last year.  I thought these to be 'lace leaf' maple trees, but I'm now not too sure; The bark on mature trees peels like paper bark, revealing rich oranges and browns beneath.  The leaves closely resemble a Trident Maple.  I will work on the correct species.  The seeds were collected from a local park with lace leaf trees that were loaded with ripe seeds in season last Autumn.

I'm using seashell material on 2 of the pots.   We recently were on a family beach trip to The Outer Banks in North Carolina.  While there, I thought that this light airy shell material might do well for soil for some bonsai! This is shell material gathered with the tides; any beach you can goto, if you dig a few inches down you reach this 'shell' layer that is crumpled, and quite fine.  We'll see how they do compared to a more 'regular' pea stone w/ bark mixture (The shell plants also have some organic material mixed in underneath the top shell cover).

Juniper Shohin Bonsai in the works

Another nursery Juniper found it's way home a few weeks ago.  I'm really getting into the Junipers - I'm 2000 miles away from infamous California species, I'll have to see what grows naturally in the Appalachians here and try to piece together a yamadori trip  (I've spotted some nice Junipers on top of Stone Mountain, so there must be a few species that could be found in these parts or a little further north in the App. Mtns. I'd imagine).

Pretty standard Nursery plant!  Albiet it was extremely healthy and putting out a good amount of 'adult' needles.  Luckily I thought to grab a picture before I removed too much.

Closer look at the trunk after some more branches are removed.  When I purchased the nursery plant I looked deep in the heart of the tree to see what was there, and saw a decently beginning upright trunk.  Almost all my Junipers I have are trained as Cascade (follows the plants normal growing characteristics), this one will be different.

I didn't work on this tree for 2 weeks after I got close to the trunk; I had surgery, and it took awhile before I was able to sit upright for any length of time and tackle a tree.  So when I got back to it, you can see I lost a lower branch that got Jinned instead, and some trims on top had turned brown already.  Either the jinned branch, or the one opposite from it will be eventually removed, I'm thinking the left branch to give the tree some balance.  (It looks like all the branches are from the left side, some balance and hopeful new growth will provide places for the tree to go).

Future work will involve working the green growth pads some (pinching, wiring), just letting it get used to having so much removed already, before I decide what else to do.

Beast of an Azalea

Earlier in the year I showed a quick picture of 2 rather large azalea's that used to be in my front yard landscaping - that got pulled out to make room for some more delicate plant material in the front of the house.  This is an update on 1 Azalea (The other is still sitting in a large garden pot), how it's progressing and what it looks like.  Still not too sure of the species, but not one generally used for bonsai because it has large leaves (For Azaleas).  Because the tree/bush itself is large, having larger leaves may work out ok in it's final presentation - years from now, once good ramification has occurred and the leaves reduce somewhat in size.

Here it is again, back in early May a few weeks after coming out of the ground, being hacked from a 6ft bush back to what you see, and already putting out a good amount of new growth on old wood.

In a large resin bonsai training pot from BonsaiMonk 3 weeks ago.

This past weekend, showing tremendous amount of new shoots on old wood and some newer branches I'm holding on to for now.   For having removed so much of the rootball I'm encouraged by it's rebound.  A shady spot and plenty of water through these hot months should have it's vigor recover fully.  Some light liquid oraganic fertilizer is being applied every other day (misted on).