Recent content by Grok42

7 Year followup. Click through to see the tree in December of 2013, 2015 and 2019.

Thanks as always Johng for your help with cypress. I'll let it get cut and cleared with the rest of the tallow trees. We're not touching any of the upright cypress of which there are about 2 dozen.

Thanks for the advice Brian. I agree, there is a lot near me once you escape the local wasteland. Brussels is 3 hours north, there are a variety of very good Bonsai Nurseries and artists around New Orleans 3.5 hours to the south-west, Gulf Port and Mobile seem to have active groups about 3.5...

Again, thanks a lot for the information. I was also considering using fence material in mine to blend in with my fence. What I was unsure of is would I make the legs completely out of wood or include blocks inside. Question, are the blocks primarily for ballast or are the legs attached to the...

We were clearing part of our property and we came across what I at first thought was a dead cypress. After cutting the downed top off with a chainsaw we noticed that it was still alive. It has one upright branch which is also alive based on green wood after cutting a secondary branch. It...

There are 3 of them all labeled "Assorted Conifer" at a big box nursery that can barely keep weeds alive. They tend to have slow turn over and therefore a lot of material that is a year or two older than it should be. There is even a corner where they keep a few misc. plants they're really...

Good to know it's a quality brand. I did brave the miserable weather and attack someone's innocent bit of shrubbery with my new tool. They performed quite well and I'm sure now that they will be able to handle a bit larger material than my smaller scissors.

Thanks for the excellent advice. I'm just excited I now have some idea what a black pine actually looks like. The tree is very healthy which is unusual for this particular store. The secondary branches are very straight with needles in large clusters on the end of the branch. The trunk, what...

Thanks for you advice that I not waste time on this material. I say time since I think they are only asking $5 for the pines and $2 for the trees. My geography makes taking lessons not possible without 3 hours of travel each way. Money isn't so much an issue as knowing what to spend it on...

Just got some for Christmas So I wasn't planning on getting some big handled scissors after this thread. However, I wasn't diligent enough communicating this to my family and sure enough I opened up a pair of a brand I've never heard of, Yoshiaki. I haven't used them yet but I do see how I...

I'm new to bonsai and in the buy a bunch of not very good material to lean on. So far I've acquired about a dozen boxwoods, repotted them for further work this spring. The big box stores are in deep discount mode and I'm contemplating buying more victims. The attached image of the pine is...

Great tree but I wanted to post specifically to thank you for including pics of your benches and the new stand (dais?) you built for this tree. I really like how you did your benches and I might copy heavily on the benches I build this winter. I wish there was a dedicated section for benches...

I'm one state over in Mississippi and I'm just a few months ahead of you as far as being on this forum goes. I have to say that you've already gotten some good advice and I highly encourage you to take it all in and consider it seriously. I too am interested in collecting bald cypress...

Makes me want to try a trident I want to keep the number of tree species down as I'm starting off so I'm going to stick with Boxwood and Cypress if I can but this thread and some of Smoke's really makes me want to get some tridents to work with. We'll see if I stay smart and restrain myself...

We've had a lot of early freezes this year too. After I acquired several boxwoods I bare rooted and reduced their foliage. The next week it decided it would start dropping into the 20's off and on several times. For the first couple of hard freezes I took them inside during the night and left...