AusBonsai

Post a very overdue hair cut. A bit brutal at the top left but it was getting over extended.

I'd love to add a few branches to fix the gaps 2/3rds the way up the trunk. Maybe time to grow some cuttings for approach grafting

drill and hammer in a couple of false jins in the more open areas -- perhaps?

Cool Tree thoglette ,i personally like the starkness of the tree. Adds character. John.

Thanks for the comments. I've got some thinking to do.

I'm slowly (very slowly) starting to understand how thujas grow & still have a few years to get the foliage pads right. When healthly, it needs at least two hair cuts a year - leave it too long (like this year) and not enough light gets in where you need it.

Yet another bad photo

But it sort of captures the lovely bright yellow tips of the new growth in spring. I'll need to do some thinning out, particularly at the top, which is where the growth dominates.

Pre trim update, five months later. Which shows how these get quite vertical and “hairy” in a hurry. Lots of wiring will be required to bring the pads back into shape.

I’m toying with approach grafting to solve The Big Gap, which remains the #1 flaw (to my eyes)

Update time. I'd been putting this off as there was a lot of work to do. Four hours of wiring later I've done two branches Finally, looking like it might be a bonsai, someday

It's really getting there now. Some nice aged bark on the trunk too. I like what you've done here.

Patmet wrote: ↑February 19th, 2024, 9:34 am It's really getting there now. Some nice aged bark on the trunk too. I like what you've done here.

Thanks, still living with the consequences of my mistakes of a decade ago: not sorting out the roots; leaving a bar branch; chopping out one too many branches. But that's how one learns.

Great to see a decade progress thread!
On June 9th 2013 you posted your vert. I'm interested to know if you still plan to shorten the branches? I just read through this from the start. I liked the tall slender naked look you saw back then. You've done well. There are some very long YouTubes of Elanden gardens owned by Dan Robinson, I Remember seeing some ancient ones there.

Great to see a decade progress thread!
On June 9th 2013 you posted your vert. I'm interested to know if you still plan to shorten the branches? I just read through this from the start. I liked the tall slender naked look you saw back then. You've done well. There are some very long YouTubes of Elanden gardens owned by Dan Robinson, I Remember seeing some ancient ones there.

Nickbb wrote: ↑February 22nd, 2024, 8:34 am I'm interested to know if you still plan to shorten the branches?

Probably not much. There’s two main reasons: firstly the tree is no longer budding back to bases of the branches. Again, a mistake from many years ago when I didn’t keep the branches short enough. Compounding that is the difficulty of getting a believable foliage pad given the way the foliage grows (I’ll have to take a photo of what I’m talking about).

It’s still back budding in the foliage pads but I’ll have my work cut out just maintaining the current profile, I think.

Thanks for the feedback and interest!!

thoglette wrote: ↑February 25th, 2024, 9:15 am (I’ll have to take a photo of what I’m talking about).

Unfortunately I can't take 3D photos.

But basically, all the foliage around the edges is the lower bit of the "cloud" and the rest forms the upper parts.
Now, the yellow arrows point to (some of) the budding/green foliage points. Note that other than one, they're all 3/4 down the branch so I've got very little to cut back into. I don't feel confident cutting back behind the last green shoot : best outcome seems to cut back to one or two then let the tree re-shoot.

The shiny new copper coloured branchlettes should reshoot and then I can cut back into that. But there's little I can do about the bulk of the branch: cutting back to the degree of the 2013's "virt" would leave almost only old wood. The positive is that it still occasionally buds back into an "armpit" (as per #2 arrow on the left, which is only two years old).

The amount of green leaf left is as little as I consider safe: it'll only get bigger and that also limits how small the tree's profile can be.

I'll keep working on it, as time rolls by. But I don't think it'll ever quite get the proportions of the virt. If I'd let it grow to 6' perhaps. But at 2'4" (72cm) it's quite big enough as it is.

I think your tree looks alright mate. The missing branch is unfortunate but trees in nature aren't perfect either.