Kishu Shimpaku with nine lives

Smoke

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In 2001 I purchased a Kishu from Gary Ishii. It was beautiful. It was at the time one of two trees that I had paid more than $200 for.
In 2003 the Fresno and Hanford bonsai Societies teamed up to host the GSBF Convention in Fresno that year. For that convention I was asked to do a display of shohin trees. No one in Fresno at the time was much into the smaller trees and they looked to me to provide a display since I had more than one. Not especially because they were great, just numerous.

This is the oldest picture I have of the tree and even at this time it had already lost some of its Ishii luster. That's it on the top of the stand. It was shown with a trident ( of course) and a boxwood and a stone. I built the stand for the display.

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Over the years I have battled dreaded spider mites and they have taken their toll on the tree. each year it withers a little more. Here it was almost dead and I nursed it back showing green foliage again after taking off all the grey foliage.
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Then it got a little worse, and more sparse.
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Then the tail was completely dead and I cut it off making deadwood of what was left. This was around 2010.

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Smoke

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So the poor thing looked pretty bad in 2013. Most of the foliage was removed that was dead and wire removed.

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In 2014 I repotted it into the semi cascade pot and rewired it. Once again I was able to get it pretty healthy but not thriving. Spider mites can devastate a juniper over night when the infestation is big.

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In looking for suspects to take to the beach, this one looked well enough to try once again for a restyle. This thing has been changed so many times it looks like a teenage girl getting ready to go out. So this was tonight while watching reruns of Big Bang. Sheldon always inspires me. I almost jumped the gun and I already had a wire stuck in before remembering to take the before shot.

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While working on the tree, since it is so small I used another pot as a dish to work out of while I laid it on its side to get to some difficult wire areas.

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So now the money shot. 15 years later and it's still not all the way dead. Maybe I'll name this one Garfield;) I'm dedicating this one to Mr. Trump and his win. You know, king of the comb overs. Notice that the tree is now reversed and back to the original direction.


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JoeR

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Garfield is a very suiting name.

It almost looks like the deadwood is a copy of the foliage to the right of it
 

aml1014

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Garfield is a very suiting name.

It almost looks like the deadwood is a copy of the foliage to the right of it
I definitely agree that Garfield is a great name!
I also was looking at the Deadwood thinking how it is a near exact image of the foliage.
Very cool tree smoke, it almost dying every year sure has given it some character.

Aaron
 
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