Winter is here....

We got back to our house today after celebrating Cristmas with the family and had to shovel away 50 cm of snow. Now the birds can get to the food we give them again:-)



My trees are luckily protected from the forcasted extreme cold next week by the insulating snow cover

Lonicera cutting

Whebn I colleted some of my big loniceras this last spring, I decided totake some cuttings of some thick branches against my better judgement just to see if they would take root. I found 3 suitable branches and all of them took root! That shows just how easy it is to collect Loniceras! Here is the development of one of them.

Here is how it looked in april just after I took it.



This is how it looked in the beginning of desember after I had cut back the thick branches a bit.


The other side


And here is how it looks now after some work on the dead wood and wiring of the few branches it has. I expect many more shoots to develop from the trunk next spring. The trunk diameter is 7 cm anf the hight is 22 cm. (The top will be cut back further later on)

Ribes nigrum again

Here is another of the black currant bushes I dug up this summer. It will be some kind of a clump style....

Another Ribes nigrum

Here is another blackcurrant that I collected from my garden this summer.
This one has also grown well and it also has many dead stumps that needs to be removed.


When I started to remove the dead stumps it turned out that much of the interior of the trunk was build up by clay that had accumulated over the years. When I removed the clay the tree changed apperance completly. It looks much more interesting now I think


Here it is after styling. It will be interesting to see how this species developes as a bonsai

Ribes nigrum update

Here is obne of the black currant bushes I collectd from my garden this summer. It has grown profusely this summer and it's time to start some work on it. There are many dead branch stumps on it. The deadwood seems to rot away almost instantly so it seems to be impossible to use deadwood in the design.




I took off all the dead branches and as much of the dead parts as I could and cut back and wired the branches. here is the result.

At the moment it looks like the tree has two tops, but I will remove one of them next summer, I will leave it as it is untill after repotting to see wich one is the best to keep.

Honeysuckle no 4

Here is the tree after a light pruning and some wireing. I had left many branches in the apex too long last year so I had to cut them back quite a bit so the apex isn't as developed as it could have been, but one learnes from ones mistakes....

Honeysuckle no 3

Here is what the tree looked like a few days ago. Because I had left the wires on for too long this summer the growth has not been as good as on the other honeysuckles I have so the tree hasn't increased as much in ramification this season as I had hoped for.

Honeysuckle no 2

Spring 2008 it was repotted





And this is what it looked like summer 2008

Honeysuckle part 1

This tree was collected spring 2007