A New Option for an Old Ficus

When I joined my club in late 2007 I got rather bogged down by the rules for branch placement and for a while it seemed that I was trying to turn every tree into the "perfect" informal upright. It was only a couple of years later when I was looking for candidate trees to put on the club show that I realised that my more developed trees all looked very similar. That didn't make me very happy.

Over the years I've slowly learned to do things differently and some of the trees from my early days are now undergoing radical transformations. However the Ficus Natalensis I started as a cutting shortly before I joined the club is still very much on the path I first set out for it.

After time spent in a bonsai pot I moved it back into a training pot in November 2015 but all the new growth hasn't made a great difference and I'm still not happy with its overall appearance:

November 2017

During a routine haircut a new idea came to me. I'm contemplating removing the first branch, changing the slant ever so slightly and flattening the knob at the first bend. I'm not going to rush into making any drastic changes that I may come to regret though. That's why for now the only restyling was done in Photoshop.

Virtual pruning in Photoshop

What would you do if this was your tree?

My Purple Maple

Just a teaser for an upcoming post.

When I came across a link to an advert for "sky blue maple seeds" on Reddit, I thought it might be fun to turn one of my own trees purple just to show that those trees aren't that rare - with a bit of computer manipulation.

Aside from the colouration and slightly artistic edit, this is what my tree looked like before I pruned it a few days ago. Once I've managed to sort through all my old photos, its life history will be revealed.