I dug this tree a while ago so I don’t know what variety it is unfortunately. I decided to dig it just because it had some trunk movement which appealed to me as most gums have a relatively straight trunk, at least the ones I see in the wild. I wasn’t good at keeping records of this tree so I don’t know when it was dug but it would be at least 4 years. I have made a new pot for this tree and I will repot it this year.

I recently joined the Victorian Native Bonsai Club and this was following the AABC convention conducted by the club that featured only Australian native plants as bonsai and to say the least I was hooked. I have had an interest for some time but this exhibition really excited me in what can be done. To celebrate my acceptance into the club I thought I should post a few of my Australian natives just in case other members have a look at this blog. Hopefully I will post one every week for a while (it won’t take too long to get through all of them as I don’t have a great number).

This Callistemon pityoides was purchased as tube stock some years ago and has always been pot grown. It grows well in the conditions here and has flowered for the past few years. It is currently in a Pat Kennedy pot that is a bit too big for it but at the next repot a further reduction in pot size will occur.

This photo was taken at night with a flash and that accounts for “different” coloring.

Its not quite winter yet but the wind has been blowing a gale, its raining (sideways) and its freezing cold. That’s all the ingredients necessary for a bonsai to be blown off the bench and that is what happened.

The spruce that hit the deck was due for a repot this spring but this early in the season is not what it needed.

It was in an old Japanese pot and needed one slightly larger but alas I haven’t got another Japanese pot so during the emergency repot it was placed into a Chinese pot as a temporary measure. I hope that in the spring (the proper repotting time) I can slip it out of its temporary home and put it in a new home more in keeping with the tree.

Old Japanese pots are difficult to find now so if I’m looking a bit sad, that’s the reason. Looking on the bright side, no branch damage to the tree so now it gets a little rest before the next intervention.

Quite some time ago I was out walking the dog and picked up a pomegranate fruit. I took the fruit home and extracted the seeds and sowed them in the spring. A number of plants eventually grew from those seeds.

I selected three of those seedlings a couple of years later, the long skinny ones and knitted them together with the idea they would “weld” themselves together and form a small twisted trunk bonsai. Well that was about five or six years ago and every year I check to see if the “welding” process has been successful but to date there has been no success.

The trees are cute but the trunks are yet to fully develop as I had imagined. I know I could let them grow unchecked for a year or two but I wish to maintain the small branch structure and inter-nodal length. A sacrifice branch could be advantageous but the large scar let behind is not part of my plan either. So I persevere and hope.

Here is a photo of the back and front and I took the photo just to show the fruit.

I will keep going until I have the required result, because patience is all part of bonsai.