Dragged out shopping earlier and I spotted these sitting outside Pounder Stretcher. I’m always on the lookout for decent looking pots to put collected material into. Wash hand basins are a bit unsightly sitting around the place. These were £1.99 each with a nice wide top and a bit of depth to allow for heavy roots at the base. The plastic is hard and has no give in it, ideal for what I want them for. All I need to do is drill them for drainage.

I checked a Jacqueline Hillier Elm in the dark on Friday night (long story, don’t ask) only to find about 20+ baby slugs eating all the emerging leaves. Never seen this before on an elm in so blatant a fashion. I have liberally scattered the whole garden with pellets in an attempt at revenge!! Get your torches out and get checking!! Little b*%%^&s!!!

Photographs that is 🙂

I took my camera on my usual Sunday morning walk today, always on the lookout for inspiration for my trees. Here’s a few snaps from today. They are all point and shoot as the walk is just about as fast paced as we can make it. Walk from Clandeboye Estate to Bangor in County Down.

I'm fixated with Beech Nebari

Silver Birch

Wild Primula

Twists and turns in the canopy

Wanted to clear some leaves to expose more nebari 🙂

Mighty Oak

Stenna Line leaving Belfast Lough

Panoramic of Grey's Point Beach

My bonsai mucker (Belfast term for friend, pal buddy etc.) Phil brought his Pine down to my garage last night for repotting. He didn’t need any help with it, just to use my grit and pop it into my poly tunnel 🙂 Hey, what are friends for.

It’s a Scots Pine in a Semi Cascade style. He’s been trying to repot it for 3 years but at last all the pieces fell into place. It has been in this plastic improvised pot for longer than I can remember.

On removal he was happy to see the amount of mycelium. We kept some to add to any other Pines without it.

A rare sighting of Phil without a hat on, now you know why 🙂

It was a bit of a squeeze to get it into the new pot due to a rather nice surface root. Once he restyles it next year it’ll look fantastic. Now a full cascade but there is an option for a shorter semi cascade.

A few other trees repotted on the night.

Ian’s (not me, another Ian) Larch and Cork bark Elm.

I’ve added a guest book tab. I keep wondering who all these people are who find my day to day bonsai doings of interest. If you want to remain a lurker, that’s ok, if you want to say Hello, then this is the place to do it. Either click on the image or the Tab to leave a message.

I repotted this Rhododendron Blue Diamond this year exposing about another inch of trunk base and nebari. The pot is far from ideal, but was the only option I had size wise for it at the time. I was told that I would be better to remove all flowers this year but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! I did take an hour and go over the tree removing any tips with multiple flower buds. Some tips had 4-5 flowers each. I reckon I have removed about 1/3 to 1/2 of the flowers but I’m still expecting a nice even show of colour. Its just starting to open its first few.

This is the back, but when in flower it gives a better display.

Just added Part 4 of the Bonsai school series to YouTube. I’m now sitting here trying to decide if I’m going to take the day off work. The sun is shining and I’ve a garage to get ready for about 15 bonsai mates coming tonight to play with wee trees. What shall I do?

This Japanese Larch is slightly further on that any others in my Garden. I had spent a bit of time working on the branch structure last month. Today I gave it a look again as some buds don’t always grow the way you expect on a Larch.

Here’s the first pad on the left. I just love this time with Larch. All those little green shaving brushes.

If you look at this pad, some of the buds are opening facing downward under the pad. Unless this is a bare area within the pad where you can let it extend and then wire into the space, it’s better to remove these now.

By removing them, you clean up the image with nice clean lines under the pad.  Here’s the pad with the two offender removed.

As needles grow and extend during the year the underside of the pads can become very tatty and by plucking any downward facing needles before exhibition you can greatly improve the Silhouette of the tree.

Note to self, keep a close eye on this tree, the wire will need checked again shortly. I hate taking wire off, nearly as much as putting it on 🙂