This is my oldest surviving bonsai, one of the first I got when I started in 2016. It *really* shows the scars of me learning how to keep a tree alive. It used to be tall, until I let it try out and much of it died. It used to be a rounder, till I left it without repotting for 6 years.
Which brings us to now, and it’s just gotten narrower and weaker. But it is still there, so let’s see what I can do.
Starting point, a week or so into spring growth.
View from the other side. There are only two branches clearly alive, and one not obviously dead.
That moss is thick around the trunk, which I’m given to understand rots out the bark and causes inverse taper.
I can peel back that layer of moss and gunk, to see the original mix underneath.
Yup, inverse taper.
Turns out I hadn’t wired that into place. Apparently, once upon a time I didn’t live in a very windy space.
That’s an OK root ball, although a lot of those roots are from the ground cover.
Cleaning up.
Actually, that’s not too bad. Some regular work could really help.
I thought I might deal with the inverse taper by creating a hollow at the base of the tree.
I also smoothed out the cut in the center joint. In retrospect, maybe I could have left that alone.
And repotting.
That’s it for now. Let’s see how the growing season does, because right now it’s terrible.
That’s a slightly better view. But one of those branches is going to go.
EDIT: Here’s some more photos from a month later, which doesn’t seem worth its own post.
Certainly, the tree survived. Yay!
Allowing those catkins to grow does not seem like a good idea at the moment (don’t want energy going into seeds), so I cut them off.
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