A friend asked me to take over this white pine’s recovery back in March. It was given a death sentence at a master’s workshop last year, because it has a large wound on the trunk that bled profusely. My friend managed to stop the bleeding with cut paste, and stabilize the tree, but didn’t have enough sun in the yard to kick start the recovery.

When I received the tree, it had been slip-potted into this white crate, loosely wired in, and packed with mulch. For a white pine that needs to be pumped up, we need a different course of action. It needs to be immobilized in a freely-draining coarse soil that can dry quickly after watering.

So what to do with a weak tree at repotting time? Start over, assertively, and quickly. When I got it to my garden in early March, I removed it from the mucky…

…with a title like that you’d think I was lost in a poem by Tennyson…but I was only looking at a tree in my yard.

I tend to photograph this Red Maple at this time of year… it was created by Anne Spencer, one of our talented Portland artists who passed several years ago. Some months before she passed, I was honored with a phone call from her asking if I’d want to be the next caretaker of it. Being impulsively impish, I replied ‘Is that a trick question?’ In any event, I’ve had the tree for several years now. Especially in fall, when it’s looking so beautiful, I am reminded of our dear friend Anne.

Bonsai is, in so many ways, the art of change: That constant, lovely, haunting dance of loss and addition.

Your tree is looking well, Anne. It’s been the treasure of my yard, a chest of…