Potting a bunjin Ponderosa that was styled in a Seasonal last fall. Clockwise from left: Ben, me (or perhaps tree), Ron, Howard.

Bobby with the challenging job of holding a tree while the rest of us hoot and jeer. Bobby’s a Portland Timbers fan. Naturally.

Expressive wand technique by Ron-

Howard enjoying lubricating the drill bit…and getting me wet. In a new twist of the Tom Sawyer tale, I sold the task of drilling the hole to someone else…

Working on a Hinoki forest. The next two photos are of this same tree-

Our hinoki forest as it was found, grown together for more than 10 years, with nearly equal sized trunks and nearly equal spacing. That was our starting puzzle. With only one small hinoki we could add… (because it’s all we had!)

Our solution: Without taking the trees apart which would have made a wreck of them, turning the group about 15-20 degrees clockwise made the trunk placement have more engaging spacing. And we added a little wee hinoki to the far left, tucked under the eaves of a large one. Some of the differences in the size of these trunks can be mitigated over time, with growing and training the trees differently. And then, maybe we’ll feature another few upstart hinoki saplings tucked in here and there in another Seasonal. Some other year. When we have more upstart seedlings. I think the nylon slab we put it on is a bit overlarge for these (cough) six trees, but the trees are weak and need a lot of work and will develop in size. And in a few years we can redo it perhaps with a few more trees added. We did make cuttings…

Pine roots after 5 years in oil-dry. This is why I don’t use oil-dry.

Pine after 3 years in pumice. This is why I use pumice. The root ball is this tight all the way through.

It was a delight to have Jonas here for a Seasonal, who is an old college buddy. And joining him is Randi, also from their Virginia bonsai club.

In repotting this limber pine we found a double helix root structure down below-

I’m not sure Jonas knew I was quietly doing bonsai in college, too…