Winter’s just a week away, meaning it’s almost time to gear up for collecting season. It’ll be a few months before the new bald cypresses, hornbeams, hawthorns, etc. start hitting the site, but there’s a lot of activity going on behind the scenes. Today I decided to experiment a little with a winged elm that spent the last four or five years annoying me in my former vegetable garden area. I had edged the garden with cinder blocks, an assortment of volunteer trees sprouted up through the openings, and when I removed the blocks I had some nice pre-bonsai material. Most of it’s still in the ground for further development, but this one caught my eye because of its root structure.
The tree had grown over a mound of dirt inside one of the openings in the block, so when it came out of the ground it was – voila! – an exposed root specimen. Now, without this feature the tree’s a pretty ordinary specimen, but I think the root structure makes a pretty nice statement. Of course, there’s a lot of tree to build so for the time being it’ll sit on the bench while we wait for warmer weather …
… And to see if it survives.