This week I'll be preparing to prune some of the small bonsai trees in my collection.
As you may know, Winter is Coming...
...to an end, and the buds on the tree branches are starting to swell with vigorous life energy.
Here are the four trees I will be pruning for this week.
Forsythia #1
Pictured above is forsythia.
Check out more photos of this tree in my post from this past summer called Little bonsai tree waiting for Spring.
Forsythia #2
This one shown above is also forsythia, but it is a completely different tree. Both of these two forsythia trees were originally cuttings from the same mother tree.
Check out more photos of this tree in my past post Identifying inner spirit within a young tree.
Unknown Variety
This one pictured above is a bush I haven't been able to identify yet.
Check out photos of its vibrant red, yellow, and green leaves in my post about it called Burst of Colors.
Maple
Lastly, this is my maple tree. It is not a Japanese maple. It is a tree that grows native in our area here. Most likely it is a Vine Maple.
There are many photos of this maple tree in my post Four Seasons of Tree Growth. I also have a friend who made some paintings of this tree. It is becoming quite the star of my collection.
All of these trees shown above got pruned today. Strategic pruning at the end of winter will help these deciduous trees generate more energy into the best buds, to make the tree healthy and beautiful in design.
The work went really quickly, simply by cutting off the dead wood areas, and sticking to the rule of two I wrote about when I showed how I pruned my Chinese Elm. If you enjoyed that post, you'll definitely want to follow me this week.
Stay tuned, and I will release future posts about each of these trees throughout the week. I will be sharing photos to show you the after images of what they now look like with the pruning done.
Bonus: Also stay tuned for this Sunday when I'll be sharing the results of my first saikei (rock landscape) project.
At the next bonsai meeting I attend, I'll be working with the rocks I collected to build a new landscape scene for bonsai trees to grow in.