Shoes and ships and sealing wax....

I discovered something yesterday. I cannot bend the thickest wire I have. Don't get me wrong, if I have a length of it and put both hands on either side, it bends easily. I cannot bend small areas with my finger tips while I am wiring a tree though. I spent a few minutes, very perplexed over this, and eventually just switched to two strands of a smaller gauge wire. I don't have many larger trees that might require the largest size of wire I have. Heck, I didn't even buy the largest size, but had it given to me as a throw in on a purchase at Golden Bonsai two years ago. I don't even know what gauge it is, but for reference it's about as thick as my pinky finger. I was going to use it to wire up a new leader on a Japanese Maple I acquired earlier in the year, but otherwise, in two years, I've have no use for it whatsoever. And now, knowing that I can't even bend it the way I need to, well.... it'll just keep the bottom of my wire tree balanced.

We (my son and I) went to Green Garden nursery in Northport yesterday. Mostly, I've been searching for a pot for a banyan style schefflera, but you can't go to Edna's and not look around. And I can't go there and not walk out of there with at least three things I didn't actually go there for. In this case it was two J. maples and a Sargent Crab apple. One of the maples and the crab apple are just whips, though the lowest part of the trunk on the smallest maple is nicely shaped. The larger maple is destined for shohin (heck, all three of these are eventually). I found the pot I wanted for the schefflera. It's an interim pot, shallower than the pot it is in now, but not as shallow as I'd like yet. Heck, it is a poor match for the tree in general, expept it was the only pot that was the right width, length and depth. As schefflera are tropical trees, I'll be repotting this sometime in the next week and will post pictures then.

My son turned seven last week. Two years ago, we started a tradition. Beside the usual birthday stuff (this year, he wanted these things called Bakugan), he also gets to pick out a piece of bonsai stock, something that will be his tree in years to come. Sometimes he likes to help water them, sometimes I take care of them (let's face it, mostly I take care of them, but watching him water his trees is too cute for words). This year he picked out a Japanese Maple. The trend is generally whatever tree I've spent the most time on before we go is the kind he picks out. He always picks out the tiniest trees he can find ("Because I'm small too"), and this year I was pretty impressed by the piece he picked out. It's only five or so inches tall, but rather than just being a thin, whippy trunk, the bark is mature and rough (rather than smooth and green like most of the rest of the similarly sized maples), the trunk well shaped and quirky, and the tree, in general, is going to be a nice little shohin in a couple of years. The leaves are abnormally large, however, so we'll see how they reduce in time. Edna actually gave him the tree in question as a gift, which was very sweet of her.

Rowan and his little maple under the big maple in our yard.

Happy Birthday Ro!