Daily Archives: April 4, 2012

Apr 4 2012

Snow in the Mournes

I jokingly added a post on April Fool’s Day about there being snow in my garden. Here we are a few days later and it has snowed in many places in the UK. We have been lucky here in Northern Ireland with snow only lying on high ground. I took this photo this morning with my mobile phone when I was working in Newcastle, County Down. White tops on the Mourne Mountains.

This is one taken in the North of England today. After high temperatures last week and spending a little time basking in the sun, we dropped back below zero!

Apr 4 2012

Shohin Japanese Maple

This little maple is about to come into leaf.

I recently read somewhere that if you remove the stipules from the bud as it opens it allows the stalk to dry out faster which causes the inter-nodal length to become shorter. A desirable feature in shohin maples.

Here you see the stipules at the point of my scissors.

This is how it looks with the stipules removed. I will hold judgement on the technique until I see if there is any beneficial results.

Anybody used this technique before?